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Chair: Giuseppe Civitarese
Presenters: Bruce Reis, Ruggero Levy, Beatrice Ithier
In his introduction, Giuseppe Civitarese articulated the panel’s intention: to venture into the “mysterious lost world” of non-represented or weakly represented elements in the mind as they emerge in the psychoanalytic relationship. The panelists addressed this subject in differing but connected ways.
Bruce Reis began his presentation by saying that his original title of “Phantom World” might more appropriately be “Faith-Works”, referring to Bion’s ideas about an analyst’s act of faith that opens us to what lies beyond our understanding. In this act of “negative capability” the analyst waits in a state of relaxed attention until something finite emerges from the infinite layer in the unconscious mental world. Bion stressed the non-religious aspect of faith in the psychoanalytic encounter by citing a scientific state of mind unaffected by memory and desire; Reis chose to return to the religious aspects by re-examining the conception of faith in the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament and the Epistle of James from the New Testament to inform Bion’s approach to exploration of the internal world.
For Bion, an act of faith becomes apprehensible when it can be represented in and by thought; for Reis, prior to this emergence, the analyst puts the self in a state of uncertainty, eschewing the sensuous body, desire and worldly things, beyond simple belief to an action in a path towards access to the unknown. Reis pointed out that in James faith consists, not in simple belief, but in action that aligns itself with nothing other than itself. Similarly, in Abraham’s obedient response to God’s command to sacrifice his son, Isaac, faith and conviction surrender to an action, justifying the self. Abraham is released from the horror of sacrificing his own son by the appearance of an angel who allows the substitution of a ram for the offering, discovered through an act of faith. For Bion, reachi