Notes on the Desire for Knowledge

The desire for knowledge, which was much discussed by Freud, Abraham and Melanie Klein, had for many years scarcely been mentioned in the analytical literature until it was taken up again by Bion, but from a different point of view. For Freud the desire for knowledge was related to the sexual instinct—it was even called an epistemological instinct although it was never considered to be an instinct in the narrow sense of the word. Abraham and Klein followed Freud, but in her later writings Klein understood the desire for knowledge as part of the defence against anxiety due to fantasied damage done by the aggressive instincts. In this paper I discussed Bion's contribution to the psychoanalysis of knowledge in detail and illustrated it by clinical examples. Bion restricts the concept of knowledge to what is knowable and knowledge can only be an approximation to the truth. Interpretations make the truth knowable. The desire for knowledge of the truth is for Bion elementary and necessary for mental health. This view, although different from, is not dissimilar to, Freud's, who described the compelling nature of the desire for knowledge as an epistemological instinct.