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ALICE So we are back to square one?
MYSELF I fear so – the concern ultimately is ‘people’. This is why some of us think personality must be an object for scientific study. Most people are familiar with acts which employ articulated musculature, and find it easy to use articulated language. Perhaps it is easier to use that kind of language and that kind of musculature. Smooth muscle in action is usually easier to match with inarticulate speech. I love' and its vocabulary and grammar is usually easier to match with the ‘activity’ itself when the rules of articulation are relaxed. The action, associated with love, is easier when ‘the laws of articulation’ are similarly relaxed. The most adequate forms of loving communion appear to be proportionate to the relaxation of conformity to articulation in thought, word and deed. I speak of love, but it is equally true of all feelings whether expressed in physical or psychical domains.
BION I can see that the idea of the individual being a ‘group’ – like Hobbes' idea of the group being an individual – could be an illuminating one. I don't quarrel with it, or even with the idea of the definitory hypothesis as you have defined it. What I am not convinced about is that there are others besides you and me who would agree, or who would be similarly complacent or tolerant or qualified to agree or disagree.
MYSELF This doubt about the acceptability of an approach which depends on thought or discussion is as valid today as it has been at any time in its past history. Nevertheless, neither you nor I have suggested an alternative to the present choice between inadequate procedures.
BION That is not my point. I doubt that any problem remains that is not affected in a way analogous to that which Heisenberg detects
in the domain of physical investigation: the thing itself is altered by being observed. I suggest that this change cannot be assumed to be without an analogue in the mental domain. An ‘analogue’ may be applicable to the physical w