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Throughout his life's work in psychoanalytical research, Freud never ceased calling for its acceptance as a scientific, rather than an artistic or religious discipline. From the Project to The Ego and the Id, from the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams right up to the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, he maintained this proposition, convinced of its acceptability.
W. R. Bion was no less convinced of this. His work carries on that of Freud even under this particular aspect of proposing to humanity that psychoanalysis be accepted as a science.
It seems worthwhile at this point to recall the justification of attributing a scientific status to psychoanalysis as set forth by Freud himself in The Future of an Illusion and in the chapter on the scientific Weltanschauung in the New Introductory Lectures (Freud, 1932), where he says:
«Psycho-analysis, in my opinion, is incapable of creating a Weltanschauung of its own. It does not need one; it is a part of science and can adhere to the scientific Weltanschauung. This, however, scarcely deserves such a grandiloquent title, for it is not all-comprehensive, it is too incomplete and makes no claim to being self-contained and to the construction of systems … Any of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it».