At-one-ment, intuition and ‘suchness’1

Many senses exist for perceiving sensory experience; there are in turn others which make it possible to perceive emotional experience: intuition is one of these. The author, using W. R. Bion's work, studies intuition psychoanalytically, considering it to be a powerful ‘sense’ in clinical work. He describes the metapsychology of intuition, and proposes models that make it possible to think—from different perspectives—about how to make use of it in an analysis. To this end, he examines a series of useful processes and concepts: growth, tolerance, ‘suchness’, suffering and courage. The author defines the intuitive mechanism as a derivation of the renunciation of memory, desire and understanding; such a renunciation, learning from the experience of suffering the pain of facing the Truth in at-one-ment, makes it possible to tolerate the frustrations associated with observing the analysand ‘such-as-he-is’. Finally, once immersed in the intelligence of intuition, the author considers ways in which intuition might be linked with concepts, with a view to interpreting the facts that must be transformed in the analysis.