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Bion: Before I start airing some more views perhaps you would like to raise any topics which you think need to have further exploration.
Q: How can an observer say that another person is thinking thoughts or not thinking thoughts?
Q: You described how you changed your vertex the better to understand what was happening with a patient. I would like you to talk more about this.
Q: The object of life is to get closer to the truth. How far would you consider madness the only way to get closer to reality?
Q: I would like you to say more about rational conjectures and imaginative conjectures.
Q: I would like you to speak about the specific communication within an analysis. Also, the difference between psychoanalytic conversation and other kinds of talk.
B: First, I will try to approach this profound question of getting to know the truth. To take a simple example: An infant sees something that it wants and discovers that it is out of reach. So it starts to crawl towards it. In this way it is reacting in a complex fashion. It is difficult to say of what it is thinking because the infant may not have learnt how to use its own methods of communication. As far as crawling to the object is concerned it discovers that it is very hard work. I don't know how it learns to use its ‘voluntary musculature’ as we call it; it is already a complex activity. It involves the use of the eyes; it involves the activation of an ambition to reach whatever it is that is out of reach. To answer the question – How do we know the infant is thinking thoughts? – we have to resort to imaginative conjecture. We cannot ask the child, and there is no way of thinking about what it is thinking about. But if the baby starts crawling towards the fire
because the flames look so pretty, then the imaginative conjecture can become a rational conjecture – you still don't know what it is trying to do, but you can think it may be going to take hold of a pretty piece of fire. So the observer – the mother, father or nurs