Clinical Choices and the Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique: Commentary on Papers by Mitchell and by Davies

Lecturing in Rio De Janeiro in 1974, Wilfred Bion—who was by then 77 years old, a former President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the psychoanalytic world (not to mention what may, in fact, be most relevant, that he had been a World War I tank commander and genuine military hero)—was asked a series of questions about the handling of fundamental technical matters. Do you ask patients questions, or do you wait for free associations? Are you willing to speak with the relatives of your patients? Would you visit a patient who had to be hospitalized? I want to begin and end this article with portions of Bion's reply, which are ironic, coming from someone who spent half his life charting the elements of psychoanalysis and ruling over the psychoanalytic establishment. “In the practice of psychoanalysis,” he responded, “it is difficult to stick to the rules. For one thing, I do not know what the rules of psycho-analysis are” (Bion, 1990, p. 139). Now, of course, these comments may be dismissed by some as the ramblings of an old man who should have already retired, but I think that there is much wisdom in his response.

Let's begin with Steve Mitchell's remark that the great value of classical technique was that it helped the clinician decide what to do. Steve is contrasting this approach with psychoanalysis in our own postmodern, constructivist age, where the nature of the analyst's