Abstract
This article considers my experience of reading Wilfred R. Bion’s book Learning from experience (1962) and how transference operates in and around his work. I argue that Bion’s work cannot simply be read but must be felt. I highlight the importance of Learning from experience for psychoanalytic practitioners becoming more self-reflexive about our theoretical and clinical practices, but also to bring attention to the process through which many of us come to Bion’s insights “first hand” if you like, which is through his writings, in our position as readers.
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Notes
I refer to Learning from experience numerous times in this article. For the sake of brevity, I will cite the book’s title and not the publication date unless I am quoting from the text.
There are many ways of defining the words “affect”, “feeling”, “emotion” and the relations, similarities and differences between them. I do not have the space to delve into such debates here, except to point to some of the ways in which certain writers have used the terms either interchangeably or in radically different ways in their writings. I provide a few instances of their uses within critical theory and, more specifically, within psychoanalysis as a preface to my own definitions of them. While the debates about nomenclature and its relation to meaning are the province of psychoanalysis, it is not the province of this article to engage in already ongoing complex debates about the words “affect”, “feeling”, “emotion”, except to locate them briefly within the discursive terrain under purview. In Transformations Bion (1965) mentions “impulses, emotions and instincts”, before adding in parentheses: “I do not distinguish these terms because no distinction is precise enough” (p. 67).
I do not differentiate between clinical and non-clinical treatments of affect, emotion and feeling here, which is not to say that I do not think there are important distinctions to be made; however, paucity of space precludes me from exploring them.
The English translation of Green’s book includes “the” before the word “affect” each time it is cited.
Though an experience of analysis is a prerequisite it seems for meaning to emerge from reading; an experience of performative utterances delivered through speech a requirement for understanding those presented through the medium of writing.
In the Acknowledgements to Learning from experience (1962), Bion thanks Elliott Jacques, Richard Money-Kyrle and Hanna Segal before stating: “Just what generosity of time and effort this means for practicing psycho-analysts can only be appreciated by another practicing analyst” (no page number).
In Elements of psychoanalysis Bion (1963) remarks: “The analyst must decide whether the idea that is expressed is intended to be an instrument whereby feelings are communicated or whether the feelings are secondary to the idea. Many subtle expressions of feeling can be missed if the ideas by which they are expressed are regarded, wrongly, to be the main burden of the communication” (p. 96).
While being informed by my experience of reading Bion, some of the ideas in this section have been worked through initially and in an earlier incarnation in an article (Giffney et al., 2009) that reflects upon my experience of reading the work of Bracha L. Ettinger. See the section entitled “An Invitation to Reading”, which is my contribution to a co-authored piece (pp. 4–6).
In reflecting upon his analysis with Melanie Klein, Bion writes: “I found it difficult to understand Klein’s theory and practice though—perhaps because—I was being analyzed by Melanie Klein herself. But after great difficulty I began to feel there was truth in the interpretations she gave and that they brought illumination to many experiences, mine and others, which had previously been incomprehensible, discrete and unrelated. Metaphorically, light began to dawn and then, with increasing momentum, all was clear” (Bion; quoted in Sandler, 2005, p. 388).
The enigmatic signifier has become associated with the work of Jean Laplanche. It is taken from Jacques Lacan’s “enigmatic signifier of the sexual trauma”, which, according to Laplanche’s editor John Fletcher (1999), “refers to the repressed term which is substituted for by a conscious representation in the metaphorical structure of the symptom” (p. 12, n. 13). Laplanche draws particularly on Sigmund Freud’s writings on seduction, the sexual theories of children and primal fantasies (p. 13). For his explanation as to why he chose the term “enigma” rather than “riddle” or “mystery”, see Laplanche (1999b, pp. 254–255).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Nicole Murray, Berna O’Brien and Mary Pyle for helping me to think through the ideas in this article.
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1Ph.D. (NUI), M.Sc. (Dubl), Professional affiliation: Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (IFPP). Academic affiliation: Humanities Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin, Ireland.
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Giffney, N. Desiring (With) Bion: An Experience in Reading. Am J Psychoanal 73, 288–304 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2013.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2013.16