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Bion and Meltzer were both, especially in their later years, concerned about the “durability” of the psychoanalytic spirit in the midst of the “clamour of gang warfare” and the economic pressures of a conformist society. The true psychoanalytic spirit, if it can be found among the brambles, is the one that should live for “hundreds of years” and reaches right back to the archaic origins of mind, and is only accessible through the countertransference dream of an art form. In the Bion-Meltzer view, psycho-analysis—that single stripe on the coat of the Tiger—existed in the world for centuries as a sleeping idea awaiting discovery by Freud, who “gave it form” (Meltzer, 1978a, Vol. III, p. 2). It was finding form that enabled him to think the underlying thought of psychoanalytic process. The Platonic artist-lover-scientist seeks for the idea of the beautiful “through all the shapes and forms of things”. And, as Keats showed us, the light-winged spirit of the Nightingale moves from one form to another and sings in the next valley-glade.
With this in mind, the aim of this penultimate chapter is to open the language of the countertransference to the opportunities of