Chapter VIII. The Role of Myth in the Employment of Thoughts

In the previous chapter an attempt was made to describe and examine Bion's effort in ‘The Elements of Psycho-analysis’ to imagine an apparatus capable of generating thoughts and producing growth in them in the direction of sophistication in both the level of abstraction and of organization. This he has given graphic representation by means of the grid, where the possibility of growth in use and level of abstraction and organization is represented in a two-axis system, movement within which is conceived to be implemented by two mechanisms: container-contained (♀♂) and paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, plus selected fact (Ps↔D). He also attempted to give a cogent description of how such a system could have come into existence in the species and in the individual, using a quasi-astronomical model of the ‘uncertainty cloud’ and the ‘loose reticulum’. It was suggested that by thus emphasizing a structural metaphor and omitting the economic aspect related to emotional attitude towards value inherent in Mrs Klein's formulation of ‘positions’, he was setting himself an unnecessarily difficult task in regard to the ‘employment’ of thoughts in thinking, as contrasted with the problem of the ‘manufacture’ and ‘growth’ of thoughts. It was suggested that Bion's proposed model might be compared with Mrs Klein's description of the events which usher in the depressive position or the examination of the origin of the conception of psychic spaces as outlined in ‘Explorations in Autism’ (Meltzer et al). We must now move on to consider the way in which Bion's apparatus is imagined to function to ‘employ’ thoughts and how this is seen to relate to the psycho-analytical situation and method. It should be emphasized again that in this discussion the grid is being treated only as a method of exposition and not as a thing meant for use in ‘meditative review’ or ‘the psycho-analytic game’.

In order to approach this problem of ‘employment’ of thoughts Bion has proposed, intuitively,