What I want to draw attention to is this idea that the human animal has a mind, or a character, or a personality. It seems to be quite a useful theory, and we behave as if we thought it was more than that. When it comes to being psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, this cannot be treated as if it were simply an entertaining theory. Nor do patients come to see us because they are suffering from an entertaining theory. We could say that there is one collaborator we have in analysis on whom we can rely, because he behaves as if he really had a mind and because he thought that somebody not himself could help. In short, the most important assistance that a psychoanalyst is ever likely to get is not from his analyst, or supervisor, or teacher, or the books that he can read, but from his patient. The patient—and only the patient—knows what it feels like to be him or her. The patient is also the only person who knows what it feels like to have ideas such as that particular man or woman has. That is why it is so important that we should be able to hear, see, smell, even feel what information the patient is trying to convey. He is the only one who knows the facts; therefore, those facts are going to be the main source of any interpretation, any observation, which we are likely to be able to make.
Wilfred Bion, Italian Seminars, Seminar 1 Rome, 8 July 1977 Copyright © 2005 The Estate of Wilfred R. Bion
authentic analysis 