Intuition, memory and desire

Abstract

Bion held that the analyst must maintain the discipline of suspending memory, desire and understanding. Coupled with the “act of faith”, the negative capability’s intrinsic abstinence creates the “conditions of possibility” for intuition to come into contact with the events that are evolutions of O. The analytic couple deals with numerous competing “configurations”, some of them, deeply steeped in pleasure or pain, are liable to impose themselves more quickly than others. Such facts would appear to bring us to the subject of hallucinosis, a mental state colonized by the sensuous dimension, by protosensations and by protoemotions that have yet to undergo an alphabetization. The mental event turns into sensuous impressions producing pleasure or pain; meaning is lost and is no longer available for exploration. It could happen that a memory becomes so possessed by a “desire” belonging to a constellation of thought associated with feelings of “grievance, regret, or remorse” such that mental growth is precluded. This chapter examines some instances of this kind of possession as they occurred in a clinical case.