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Bion: We who occupy a certain position in the story of the development of the human culture can know a little about the history of where we have come from so far and, if we look back on our road, the route we have followed. But it is difficult to know what words to use when we want to talk about the ‘road’ or the ‘route’ which psychoanalysts are trying to follow. There are so many histories – of religion, mathematics, economics, civilization – but how would you write the history of psychoanalysis? Where would you start it? Which is the origin from which it springs? How have we got from there to here? It is hard to see – to fall back on a sort of psychoanalytically oriented genealogical history – who are our ancestors and what way our offspring are going. If we talk about genetic history we could suppose that the process followed Mendelian laws: A distinction was made between what were supposed to be the laws of inheritance, which followed Mendelian laws, and other things which were considered to be acquired characteristics, transmissible. But Mendelian laws don't help us much in considering the question of the inheritance of psychoanalytic development.
It is convenient to talk about the “British Psychoanalytical Society”, the “French Psychoanalytic Society”, the “Brazilian”, and so on; at first sight it would appear that that probably followed Mendelian laws. But when we think that we are discussing the mind or the personality or the character, then it becomes difficult to say what laws that inheritance follows. We could say: who has inherited Freud's ideas? Obviously Mendelian inheritance would be useful – Freud's children and Freud's grandchildren. But suppose we think that people who had no blood relationship with Freud had something to do
with this story; how do they come to have psychoanalytic ideas? Who or what are these people, and where do they come in the story?
Last time I mentioned that Euclid might not be able to recognize the statements and formulation