International Forum of Psychoanalysis.

2009; 18: 8285

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

From disciplined subjectivity to taming wild thoughts: Bions elaboration of the analysing instrument

LAWRENCE J. BROWN

Abstract Freud encouraged the analyst to use his unconscious as an instrument of the analysis, but did not elaborate on how this should be done. This recommendation opened the door to a consideration of unconscious communication between the analyst and patient as an intersubjective exchange. Both Wilfred Bion and Erik Erikson emphasised the importance of the analysts intuition, and the author compares and contrasts these two approaches. Erikson advocated a more cautious attitude regarding the analysts subjectivity, while Bion promoted a broader application of the analysts various private reactions to the analysand. A brief vignette from the analysis of a five-year-old boy is offered to illustrate the importance of the analysts reveries, the mutual process of containment and transformation between analyst and patient, and the co-creation of an analytic narrative.

Key words: Intersubjectivity, transformation, intuition, containment, child analysis

I will begin my talk about how Bion has influenced my clinical work by telling you about Billy, four and one-half years old, who was in analysis for aggressive behavior at home and school. His mother was regularly overwhelmed by his behavior and struggled to set appropriate limits, often feeling like a single parent because her husband was frequently very depressed. Billys father was a fragile man, and the family tended to walk on eggshells around him. In a typical session, Billy dumped all my dinosaurs and action figures onto the couch, which was the arena for battle. Gradually, we each gathered an army and then arranged the figures according to fighting skill. As usual, Billys fighters easily trounced mine, and I was left feeling predictably demoralised. I repeated some of the interpretations of this play that addressed how my men had all the losing feelings, which felt really bad and made them angry, and that his men were lucky to be so strong and have all the exciting winning feelings. Billy shrugged his shoulders and said, unimpressed, Yeah, I guess. At one point, I decided to withdraw my men to the desk a few feet away, saying that they needed a break. As I moved my pieces to the desk, I noticed that there was an incoming telephone call and the caller ID

indicated that it was from the hospital in New York where my mother was then a patient. I immediately became quite worried since she was very ill with congestive heart failure. I am not sure what my expression looked like nor do I know how long I was actively distracted by this. Nevertheless, I quickly came out of my distraction and said, probably with a somewhat forced exuberance, Ok, lets get back to the battle! However, Billy said that he wanted to play something different, and he introduced a theme that had never previously appeared. He said that he was going to be a mummy and I heard mommy. Mommy? I asked, and he corrected me, No, mummy, you know those creepy guys with the bandages wrapped all over them and pretended to have unraveled ragged gauze dropping off of him. I dismissed my mishearing him as an artifact of my worry about my mommy and let the play unfold. Billy said that the mummy had to be buried, lifted up the couch mattress and began to inter himself between the mattress and the wooden slats it rested on. I was a bit disoriented, in the midst of what felt like an uncanny experience. I said something about dead mummies are buried in a grave just like he was

Correspondence: Lawrence Brown, PhD, 37 Homer Street, Newton Centre, MA 02459, USA. Tel: 1 617 244 7587. Fax: 1 617 969 6785. E-mail: larry.brown8@comcast.net

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/08037060802670640

From disciplined subjectivity to taming wild, wild thoughts showing me and thats very scary and sad. Billy quickly replied that this mummy wasnt really dead: it was an alive mummy that used to be dead. I said that when a mummy that used to be dead becomes alive again, the people who love that mummy arent so scared and sad anymore. Now in an excited state, he went over to the desk draw where the supplies are kept, took out a roll of scotch tape and asked that I wrap him in it so he could be like a real mummy. This very brief, but complex, vignette is a multilayered intersubjective precipitate of the interaction between Billys and my own unconscious communication. Freud (1912) instructed the analyst to use his unconscious as an instrument of the analysis. However, he did not tell us how this should be done, thereby leaving it up to future generations to develop effective techniques. Erik Erikson (1964) recommended that the analyst and patient must each engage in what he called disciplined subjectivity in order that the two subjectivities join in the kind of disciplined understanding and shared insight (p. 53). Like Bion (1970/1977), Erikson considered the analysts intuition as a central component of ones analysing instrument but cautioned that the clinician seek to discipline its operation (p. 49). However, unlike Bion, Erikson took pains to distinguish between those products of intuition which emanate from the patients versus the analysts psyche. In contrast, Bion (2005) praised the something fascinating about the analytic intercourse; between the two of them [patient and analyst], they do seem to give birth to an idea (p. 22) but it was not important to be aware of the genealogy of that particular thought (Bion, 1997, p. 27). I (Brown, 2009) have termed Bions reference to the something fascinating about the analytic intercourse a procreative model of the analyst and analysand thinking together. I emphasise procreative because it implies the appearance of something new, a cognitive offspring that owes its existence to the interpenetration of unconscious communication that is, in many respects, sexual in nature. I believe that Bion meant to underscore this element when he chose the symbol for masculinity ( ) to represent the contained and the symbol for femininity ( ) to stand for the container. In Attention and interpretation (Bion, 1970/1977) he states that The use of the male and female symbols is deliberate . . . (p. 106) and constitute a marriage in which the sexual relationship plays such a part (p. 107). Thus both the container/contained and the apparatus for thinking (Bion, 1962/1977) are represented by , further linking an individuals capacity for thought to the internalisation of the early marriage of mother and infant in which both partners penetrate and are penetrated by the other, which results in mutual growth.

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The session with Billy began with a repetitive game of competition and defeat that left me demoralised, which I interpreted with the unsaturated (Ferro, 2002, 2005) comment about the losing feelings being in me. However, on this particular day, I was unable to contain the demoralised affect, probably due to my worries about my mother of which I was unaware in the moment, and withdrew from the play to my desk. I suspect that, in my withdrawal, I became for Billy his withdrawn and depressed father, a perception of me that was galvanised by the likelihood that he sensed my troubled response to the call from my mothers hospital. Thus, for Billy, the analytic situation had devolved into a familiar conundrum: what to do with a depressed father/analyst? Although I tried to get us back to the play, it was clear that Billy and I had crossed an emotional Rubicon from which we could not return. Billys introduction of the mummy character (Ferro, 2002, 2005) signaled the start of a process of mutual containment of each others untransformed affects that resulted in our shared growth as our narrative was spun together. Given his propensity to be carefully attuned to his fathers emotional states, it is not surprising that he sensed my distress at the telephone message. He picked up this distress signal and worked on it through his reverie to transform it into a play theme that was meant to comfort his sad father/analyst. The fascinating question is: how did Billys unconscious, through its collaboration with my transmitting unconscious, chose the mummy out of a myriad of potential characters? The mummy figure seems to be a condensation of my worry about my mommy and his worry, in the moment, about his distressed analyst/father. If he had been solely focused on my emotional state, he might have conjured a story about bringing back to life a dying mother. I thought he was doing just that when I heard mommy, but then he made it clear that he referred to a mummy, which is a masculine figure. I believe that Billys description of the ragged mummy must have conveyed his unconscious perception of me as his somewhat emotionally disheveled father/ analyst. It is uncanny that Billys attunement was so refined as to pick up the signals of being anxious about ones mother. Is there a designated unconscious wavelength along which concerns about ones mother are transmitted? Or, to use another metaphor, are there specific pheromones that are emitted by ones mind when that psyche is disquieted by possible maternal loss? Though he did not specifically address these questions, Bion (1997) suggested that the analyst ought to pay attention to a

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L. J. Brown sensations, unexpected tunes or rhythms of unbidden subjective intuitions. However, the analyst should exercise caution against too quickly attempting to discipline these visitors because analysts and patients lie to themselves, as well as to each other, to escape doubt and unbearable situations. It is through tolerated doubt (Bion, 1962/1977) that growth in the patient and the analyst occurs. The patient is always our best ally, as Bion has noted, and I believe that Billy was my comrade in helping me tolerate the doubt of not knowing the content of the telephone message. His mummy play was partly aimed at restoring his analysts emotional equilibrium, but also expressive of his being a small boy burdened by very big feelings without the parental support he required to contain and transform his emotions. Finally, I want to comment on Bions concept of transformations, which I believe to be his most far reaching contribution to our clinical understanding. Our extensive literature on countertransference has explored the many ways in which the minds of the patient and analyst influence each other. Klein, of course, was skeptical about using projective identification to explain the analysts experiences (Spillius, 2007); however, later writers have addressed how the analysands projections affect the analysts state of mind (e.g. Feldman, 1997) by establishing a link between what has been projected and analogous conflicts in the analyst. Thus, the act of what Mitrani (2001) calls taking the transference necessitates an identification with the patients projection, feeling it and even temporarily becoming (Bion, 1970/1977) the projected object. These advances in our understanding of the countertransference have been made possible by Bions (1958/1967) description of the communicative aspect of projective identification. However, his theory of transformations adds another dimension to the analysts mental functioning that is entirely original. The analysts mind is also taking in and processing raw emotional experience that the patient is unable to assimilate on his own, and through that process of assimilation the unrefined emotions are given psychological meaning. Furthermore, Bion asserts that the patient and analyst perform this service for each other as they collectively and procreatively spin a narrative. Billys invention of the mummy character was such a narrative creation, born out of a field of emotion which we both shared that involved painful feelings about parental loss and wishes to restore valued objects.

panoply of wild thoughts that include rhythmic and other apparently extraneous experiences that actually may be carriers of vital meaning. It is also likely that Billys well-honed attunement was a necessary adaptation (Hartman, 1958) developed to keep aware of his mothers overwhelmed states in order to help regulate his emotional world. In this regard, Billy was probably well acquainted with the signals associated with worry about ones mother, and his unconscious quickly identified such signals emanating from me. Thus, the mummy was a highly condensed character that was born out of the something fascinating about the analytic intercourse of the transmitting and receptive unconscious work we were doing together. Owing to the unique adaptations that Billy had to make to his fathers depression and his mothers tendency to be overcome with emotion, he brought to the analytic encounter a finely sharpened sensitivity to my emotional states. Regardless of the means by which he sensed my anxiety of maternal loss, he transformed this affect into something less scary for me: a masculine mummy rather than a feminine mommy. Simultaneously, the mummy appeared to represent Billys perception of my tattered emotional state, which was linked with his experience of his father. At this point in the hour, I was feeling somewhat disoriented and grew concerned that the sadness in the room was too much to bear for Billy (probably my projection) when he said he was going to bury the mummy. However, my interpretation that dead mummies are buried in the grave just like he was showing me and thats very scary and sad was clearly off because he responded with this mummy wasnt really dead; it was an alive mummy that used to be dead. I felt relieved at hearing this or, put another way, Billys reverie transformed my pain into something more hopeful. Additionally, on another level, he had restored his transferential fathers mood while simultaneously diminishing his mother/analysts overwhelmed state. However, all this magical alchemy of transforming his analyst/father/mother, and rescuing himself from a fate of being without any parental figures to regulate his emotional world, appeared to have triggered an excited manic state. Thus, he took out the scotch tape and asked me to wrap him up, that is, it was now my turn, having been restored by Billy to my analytic competence, to contain him. Bions work has inspired me in many ways, both theoretical and clinical. In the clinical realm, he has taught me the immeasurable value of having a receptive mind that is open to any and all experiences that emanate either from the patient or from myself. One should be open to the arrival via many possible channels stray thoughts, sudden bodily

References
Bion, W.R. (1967) On arrogance. In Second thoughts: Selected papers on psychoanalysis (pp. 8692). New York: Jason Aronson. (Original work published 1958)

From disciplined subjectivity to taming wild, wild thoughts

Bion, W.R. (1977). Learning from experience. In Seven servants (pp. 1111). New York: Jason Aronson. (Original work published 1962) Bion, W.R. (1977). Transformations. In Seven servants (pp. 1183). New York: Jason Aronson. (Original work published 1965) Bion, W.R. (1977). Attention and interpretation. In Seven servants (pp. 1136). New York: Jason Aronson. (Original work published 1970) Bion, W.R. (1997). Taming wild thoughts. London: Karnac. Bion, W.R. (2005). The Tavistock seminars. London: Karnac. Brown, L. J. (2009). The ego psychology of Wilfred Bion: Implications for an intersubjective view of psychic structure. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, in press. Erikson, E. (1964). Insight and responsibility. New York: W.W. Norton. Feldman, M. (1997). Projective identication: the analysts involvement. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 78, 22741. Ferro, A. (2002). In the analysts consulting room. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Ferro, A. (2005). Seeds of illness, seeds of recovery. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practicing psycho-analysis. SE 12: 10920. Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation. New York: International Universities Press.

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Mitrani, J. (2001). Taking the transference: Some technical implications in three papers by Bion. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82, 10851104. Spillius, E. (2007). Encounters with Melanie Klein. London: Routledge.

Author Lawrence J. Brown, PhD, is a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute in child and adult psychoanalysis and a supervising analyst in child analysis. He is on the faculty there as well as at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he is also a supervising analyst. Dr Brown is clinical instructor in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and has published many articles on a variety of subjects including the Oedipal situation, trauma, countertransference dreams, and supervision. He is the co-chair (with Howard Levine, MD) of the Bion in Boston 2009 international conference, to be held July 2326, 2009.