You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
the Privilege of seeing great things in loneliness
yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers nightly
What are the implications for both psychoanalysis itself and for psychoanalytic writing (and reading), of the post-Kleinian view of psychoanalysis as an art form? Bion, says Meltzer, treats psychoanalysis as “a thing-in-itself that existed in the world prior to its discovery by the mystic genius of Freud who gave it form”.3 Bion sees the process of coming to knowledge in terms of transcendence, breaking through the barriers of lies and basic assumptions. “What sort of artists can we be?” he asks.4 Meltzer also sees psychoanalysis as an art-form, in which the psychoanalyst's quest for meaning is driven by awe of the beauty of the method that can make contact with the mysterious creativity of internal objects. But both have an essentially Platonic view in which the psychoanalytic activity takes place under the aegis of a source of knowledge beyond that already