I then go on to look again at the subject of Bion’s ‘method’ from another angle of vision. Meltzer (1978) discerns in Bion’s style of writing a genuine search for ambiguity. His readers are certainly very familiar with this ambiguity, which they experience as a source of both delight and torment. Also the colleagues who attended his seminars had direct experience of it. But for Bion ambiguity has a defined value. It activates the psychoanalytic function of the mind. In his view, in fact, psychoanalysis can be seen as a special probe that explores the unknown of the psyche in an act of reconnaissance that continuously expands the field. Thus, Bion’s darkness, the black light of dream projects on to things, is nothing other than the desire to be ‘precisely obscure’ (Bion, 19975, p. 191), to achieve the ideal state of mind which he calls negative capability, and to free oneself as far as possible of preconceived ideas. To focus on knowledge you need to be able to tolerate the frustration that comes from not understanding, from paradox, from the aporias of reason, and what Freud called overdetermination, in other words, the plurality of possible meanings.
Civitarese, Giuseppe. (2012). The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis. Routledge.
authentic analysis 