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Bion: One of the questions which analysts have often not asked themselves is, “Do I want to be a psychoanalyst?” Men and women have problems that they think are going to be ‘cured’; so they go to see an analyst to ‘get cured’. The question of embracing the psychoanalytic profession is not considered. It is assumed that they can be analysts and that therefore they want to be. But it is an open-ended question worth constantly asking yourself. There are other versions of it: Do you want to be a particular person's analyst? Would you like to have another patient? Would you like to have another patient like the last one? You can consider which of the patients that you ever had are the ones with whom you have had the most rewarding experience. It can be something of a surprise to find which are the ones you find most rewarding and what sort of person you must be to like that kind of patient. That is another reason for regarding the question as open-ended; you do not stop learning something about yourself.
If your central nervous system is in tolerable working order then your senses give you a lot of information. After that what you think that information means is up to you. But that depends on whether you want to know the meaning; you may not. Similarly, there are patients who get a ‘nice’ sensation from the sound of your voice and possibly from the sound of their own. So analyst and analysand settle into a meaningless debate because it feels so ‘nice’. The patient feels something which is analogous in physical terms to being stroked; the one mind has a caressing, soothing effect on the other and the mutually gratifying seduction goes on unobserved by either party – so much so that it is forgotten that the patient has come for help. The patient has forgotten it; the analyst has forgotten it; they are locked in a mutually gratifying experience. It may be a long time before the
patient becomes aware of discomfort. It is as if he had access to some soporific drug so that h