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Bion: In most scientific disciplines there are material objects to observe, but in the kind of work that we do the problems of observation are different. Even the word ‘observation’ has to be used by us in a peculiar manner because there is nothing to ‘observe’ in the way that we observe physical objects. Heisenberg's introduction of the Uncertainty Principle made it clear that even the observation of physical objects is not so simple as it may appear; those difficulties are inescapable when we observe what we call the ‘mind’. Nevertheless, we have to observe before we theorize.
Francis Bacon described the possibility of approaching scientific work from above as if one was considering the general principle first and then arguing the existence of supporting evidence. The alternative is to observe the material evidence and then to deduce the general principle from the totality of the observations made. That, he said, is the correct approach. When we have to observe something which has no shape, smell, colour or sound, the problem of evidence – the counterpart of evidence of physical objects – is acute. And yet I do not think it is possible to be engaged on analytic work for long without being convinced that there is a mind. You can observe an animal which is not verbally articulate and yet be convinced that it is thinking. The same thing applies to very young children or even a newly born baby. I was asked yesterday what the clinical evidence was. There cannot be clinical evidence because nobody has analysed a foetus. But it is ridiculous to suppose that a new-born baby has no mind, or that a child of five has a mind but had no mind before infancy or before birth.
In carrying out an analytic investigation we should be aware of the fact that what Melanie Klein described as ‘projective identification’
takes place even before birth – that is supposing that an embryo can be aware of primordial sensations. If we all became as silent as possible and then noted what we hear