Bion’s ideas resonate for me with Zen and other
metaphysical ideas about being and
ways of being, but they are, in their descriptions, too often over burdened
with jargon. Those who embrace and write about Bionian theory (e.g. Grotstein) can make it unnecessarily more difficult to comprehend when they continue to
use Bionian jargon. I personally prefer how Ogden illuminates Bion (see below). While I may
be fluent enough in alpha and beta and L, H, K, O, and their impediments (or
negatives), and decades ago I may even have excelled in theoretical calculus, I
nonetheless find jargon in a conference setting obfuscating instead of
elucidating. It is as if a secret language has been learned by some and is
expected all should have learned it or be excluded.
On Saturday, Oct 6, 2012 at the local Tampa Bay
Psychoanalytic Society Speaker Program Meeting Walton Ehrhardt. EdD from New
Orleans did make some of Bion’s principles more accessible. These were my
favorites from the day:
1. Thinking is driven by the human need to
know the truth.
I do not necessarily cotton to the idea that there is a the
truth, as truth is varied and contextual to each therapeutic relationship,
but I accept the inclination.
2. It requires two minds to think disturbing
thoughts.
I especially like this idea, as it
applies so well to the therapeutic dyad. What one finds untenable to bear alone
may be shared, made bearable, with another.
3. The capacity for thinking is developed in
order to come to terms with thoughts derived from disturbing emotional
experience.
A little broad reaching, but
certainly one of the motivators for thought. And thought, symbolized in
language, can help one “contain”
disturbing experience. Ehrhardt emphasized that for Bion thought and emotion
are inextricably intertwined. I think there exist ineffable experiences that
are sometimes not traumatic.
I longed for Ehrhardt to metabolize terms such as
container, reverie, alpha function, beta, and K and re-present them to us in
usable form so that the attendees might make use of them and more easily
dialogue.
Ehrhardt did elaborate three of many types of projective Identification, all of which
are, of course, are about relationship. [I was unsure what Ehrhardt intended to
illustrate clinically with these]:
1.
Projective Identification as communication: the
content of words, thoughts, ideas, dreams-- both waking and sleep dreams [Bion
believed we were always dreaming] --projected,
then introjected by the recipient, and, if a good fit, a relationship ensues.
2.
Evacuative
type: The unconscious wish to rid
oneself of unacceptable parts, so these unwanted aspects of the self are
projected on the other. The other accepts the projections whether through identifying
or despising them.
3.
Through Control
and Possession of the Object: when the other is treated as an object, related
to not as a subject but as function, or a good or bad part-self or -object
representing otherness.
Here is what Ogden says about it:
The
idea that there is something therapeutic about the therapist's containment of
the patient's projective identifications is based upon an interpersonal
conception of psychological growth: one learns from … another person on the
basis of interactions in which the projector ultimately takes back … an aspect
of himself that has been integrated and slightly modified by the recipient. (Ogden, 1982, p. 40)
[Ogden refers here to the alpha function]
Bion’s basic
assumptions about groups were also thrown in:
1.
Dependence:
group members behave passively as if the leader = parent; then resent,
undermine, finally topple the leader;
then begin again choosing a new leader;
2.
Pairing:
the group expects something new to be produced as if met only for a
reproductive or sexual purpose. Two
group members or two subgroups do the work; others watch, relieved they do not
have to work, and await the product of the ‘couple’ (a messiah, a rescuer of the group, a savior).
3.
Fight or
flight: The group may be bonded by aggression (gangs, teams) or in flight
(late arrivals, stories that occupy all’s attention, or avoidance of personal
involvement of one’s emotional being).
What I found most fascinating was contemplating Bion’s
idea that intrapsychically we are all made up of ‘groups’ which can behave
according to these same basic
assumptions.
Still the struggling as a group to apprehend some of
these concepts was invigorating, and taught empathy for those who were not
fluent in ‘Bionese.’