Matte Blanco

Dear Sir,

I would like, through you, to thank Professor Matte Blanco for his clear and instructive letter published by you in Volume 67, Part 2, 1986 of the Journal.

I have been following Matte Blanco's work on the logic of thought with great interest, especially his gigantic efforts to bestow a logical pattern upon schizophrenic thinking. In joining psychoanalytical authors who have dealt with the formal aspects of the Unconscious, such as J. Lacan and B. Wolstein, Matte Blanco's studies in the logic of the unconscious are outstanding.

I would like to elaborate further upon one of his clinical findings. This is the problem of the coexistence of logical models: the symmetrical and the bi-logical. Although this does not reflect current accepted logical theory, yet, it is nonetheless found in clinical practice. At this point we re-discover a basic epistemological problem: the divorce of theory from clinical experience (which we are currently investigating) and our natural need above all as doctors to rescue the clinical in spite of theory (or theoreticians). We are all well aware of the basic question of the exactitude of clinical discoveries or interpretations, but, be it symmetrical logic versus bi-logic, or any other logical system for that matter, we can hardly deny the existence of contradictions in the inner world of neurotics, let alone paranoiacs.

Following the clinicians Fried and Agassi, it is the logician Leo Apostel who has suggested a model in which there are interrelating logical systems which thus allows for a multi-logical structure in the mind of an individual. This proposal, coming from a very well-known logician, relieves us from the criticism of not being aware enough of the theory of Logic. From this, most importantly, we realize how Piaget's constructivism touches the very core of psychopathology. Let me elaborate this further:

• 1It seems that Piaget's stages (preoperational, concrete and formal) reflect different kinds of logical system whi