Seminar 2. 9 July 1977. The Italian Seminars

Q: Before yesterday's seminar, I was curious to know what Dr Bion thought about music. I'd been reflecting on an analytic experience of mine when I felt that a woman patient preferred music to analysis and was trying – and had begun – to find music in analysis too, for certain reasons: music banished visual experiences, especially terrifying ones associated with the phobic space. She was able to dissolve the terrifying experiences of sounds by putting them together in a melody and using only certain sounds or certain limited pitches. If the music was broken down, the sounds took on a terrifying quality reminiscent of the terror of the visual, almost bodily, three-dimensional images of a claustrophobic space. But I had attributed this possibility of seeing terrifying images to her phantasy of a Cyclopean eye – the third mental eye that psychologists talk about – which she seems to see graphically before her.

An experience with another analysand puts me in mind of Ulysses, who turned himself into “Nobody” so as not to be seen and eaten by Polyphemus. So I wondered if Dr Bion feels we can also invoke a Cyclopean perception that has to do with music and analysis, as some psychologists have demonstrated.

Does Dr Bion think there is any connection between all this and the problem of musicians who play without reading the notes and others who can only play if they have a score in front of them?

Bion: If your patient is a musician or has musical capacity, then it is likely that in the consulting-room you can hear words and music. The patient's problem is not simply his relationship with the analyst. Obviously the analyst is a person the patient only meets for a few sessions a week for a limited period – it is not supposed to be

a permanent attachment. Then why does the patient come at all? It certainly cannot be because he disagrees with the analyst, or likes the analyst, for the analyst is not a person of any importance. As far as we are concerned, the real trouble is the