Where are We When We are At-One? Discussion of Bion’s O and His Pseudo-Mystical Path

Civitarese’s demystification and reinvigoration of the Bion concept of O (this issue) are applauded for its effective re-grounding of the concept in the experience of unison. Yet the paper leaves ambiguous the question of whether the experience of unity in O depends upon how language brings us together; or whether, on the contrary, O reflects events occurring sub-symbolically, unmediated by language and self-reflectivity, through performative engagement in the communal world of psycho-sensorial experience. Eloquent references in the paper to non-linguistic and sensory-based phenomena seem to suggest that O might happen precisely where language does not, which Bion himself seemed to be pointing to in his insistence that O cannot be known, but only experienced. But in then reasserting the primacy of words and the oneiric functions of the mind, does Civitarese undercut the most radical insight of this reimagining of the concept of O, namely that O is the experience of living beyond our individual identities, unarticulated by language? Distinguishing three terms - the linguistic, the emotional, and the sensory – might allow us to consider that O is not a meeting of minds, nor even the consecration of an emotional event, but is a realization of the profound pre-reflective experience of de-subjectification, where one’s existence is affirmed beyond one’s individual identity by entering the world of shared sensory perception.