[Undated - 1969] [3]. Cogitations

The failure of a function should excite suspicion. It may be due to a natural lack; or it may be a Category 2 element [see The Grid, p. vii this volume]. What is that? The maintenance of a theory known to be false in order either to keep another out, or because there is no better. Is this a field on which a pattern can be traced?

The capacity of the mind depends on the capacity of the unconscious – Negative Capability. Inability to tolerate empty space limits the amount of space available. Curiosity should be part of the dependent group, but it can share fight–flight qualities [see Bion, Experiences in Groups, Volume IV] when the wish is to avoid impending discovery (Category 2). Is any impulse one way only? No. What then are the poles? Are there poles, or is there some better scheme?

The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions are related to a part of the domain of thought, that part of it in which there exist thinkers corresponding to the thoughts awaiting someone or something to think them. The thinkers might be likened to objects sensitive to certain wave-lengths of thought, as the eye or radio telescope is sensitive to a particular range of electromagnetic waves. Such thinkers can be impinged upon by thoughts that are too powerful in relation to the sensitivity of the receiving apparatus. Or they may be unmatched by a reciprocating thinker.

The human being, despite similarities to other human beings, may not, through over- or under-sensitivity, have an apparatus adequate to thinking the thoughts. He becomes aware of these thoughts usually through the medium of what is ordinarily known to him as religious awe, and is variously expressed as incarnation, evolution of godhead, platonic forms, Krishna, mystic experience, inspiration, and the like. Thus the source of emission of the received or evolved thoughts is felt as external, God-given, derived from a particular person or occasion, phrase, book, painting, awareness of a constant

conjunction. The fate of the