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Q: I am wondering if there is a psychoanalytic way to the truth.
Bion: None whatever. Psychoanalysis is only a technical instrument, something we can make use of for any purpose we want – to make confusion worse confounded, or to mislead or deceive people, and so on. It all depends on who is making use of it. Is this building for the use of psychoanalysis, or have psychoanalysts been made use of in order to build this building? Are the available rooms conducive to the pursuit of psychoanalytic efforts? Or are they not?
The profound question in that is the problem of whether the person who purports to be searching for the truth is genuinely trying to arrive at the truth, or is a fake, an artificial representation of a seeker after truth. It is a very difficult question to answer. If you felt you could rely on your own judgement about that, then you might be able to tell whether somebody's paintings or writings are the work of a real genius. But as for the technical accomplishments of psychoanalysis, that doesn't tie you down at all – you can do what you like. Any idea that it inevitably causes you to speak the truth or discover the truth is pure rubbish.
Q: Yesterday you were speaking about patients' reluctance to talk about their own achievements. I am wondering why that is so difficult to do. Is it something linked with the harsh superego that prevents emotional enjoyment and development?
Bion: From time to time one can find various characteristics that seem to be related to obstruction. For example, this point where we can detect from a person's behaviour and discussion that there is a moral system emerging from it. We could say that the patient appears
to be dominated by very powerful moral impulses. If we had the opportunity to go on listening to and observing the patient, then it might become possible to draw his attention to the very important part that his morals were playing in the analytic experience. Perhaps we could go on further and get a bit clearer what