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Bion: Does anyone feel the urge to express an idea or have an idea expressed?
Q: I'd like to ask something: against the background of informal thinking of the last few days, and influenced by what Dr Bion has said at our meetings over the past week, the question of a concept of time occurred to me several times. The way things emerge in the present had seemed to me to be a peculiarity of the group situation, but it also came up, for me, in a dyadic setting – not only as a trick of the trade, but as the only possible way to relate or, rather, to exist. Well, how does Dr Bion see time? Is it a property of space? Is it the act of linking or the conscious link between two or more spaces? Is it the way we perceive our mental space as alive and filled with living objects? … How are we to ensure that the concept of relativity that follows from the abolition of definitions does not coincide with stasis?
Bion: It would be interesting to know what has stimulated or caused this particular topic to be initiated. As it has been initiated here, it may be possible to form an idea about the source from which this problem has been derived. We can hear the actual person who has asked that question, so we can locate among all of us individuals the particular geographical spot at which this idea of “time” has emerged. We can also feel that we would like to be able to locate the space from which it originated – it would appear to be at a particular spot, which we could describe by giving the name of the person asking the question or by observing whereabouts in the room it seemed to arise. So far, it lies within the capacity of our senses; we can use our eyes and our sense of hearing; and we can use both the binaural capacity and the
binocular capacity to see the point of intersection. Suppose – or, in other words, imagine, use your speculative imagination – that this group has a character. Going on from there and making a further supposition, a further speculation, could the fact that