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Dr. Bion's opening remarks about the potential vitiation of memory are statements of fact, not likely to be challenged. It is his conclusions about technique, drawn from these facts, that are debatable and less easy to construe and relate to more familiar current views.
Rightly or wrongly, reflection suggests to this discussant that the paper is not advocating a revolution in technique but is concerned with emphasizing that analysis is not an intellectual process but primarily a matter of “rapport.” Freud himself recognized this when he surmised that it was the unconscious of the analyst that analyzed the unconscious of the patient. Effective rapport depends upon the intuitive ability of the analyst. Empathy will be favored to the degree that he can relax, empty his mind so far as possible of all other concerns and attend tranquilly to the impressions he receives of the patient's “psychological realities” and to his own responses to these messages.
If it is this basic importance of “rapport” that Dr. Bion is stressing, I agree with him so far. His recommendations are designed to help analysts to acquire the desired receptivity, though I must admit they read rather like counsels of perfection, attainable only in varying degree but pointing in the right direction.
What seems to me the most controversial aspect of this paper is its underrating of the role of perception, intelligence and memory in analysis. This role may be auxiliary, but it is nonetheless necessary and inescapable.
Reference here is not to theoretical preceptions, which are indeed much better left outside the consulting-room, but to such things as decisions
about the timing and character of interpretations. For instance, in regard to dosage of anxiety, surely interpretation calls for judgment as well as for inspiration. Such judgment can only draw upon past experience and must entail some forecast of probable reactions. In one sense, the patient always knows more than the analyst though he cannot bear t