PREFACE

In 1975 Wilfred Bion and I were invited by Professor

Virginia Bicudo to spend the month of April in Brasilia.
During that time Bion worked with individuals and groups,
gave three lectures at the university, and took part in
three panel discussions at the Buriti Palace to mark the
fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the city. Panel
members, representing the arts and sciences, dealt with
aspects of the character of the city and the problems
involved in forming and developing a new community. I
have included his contributions to these discussions.
In April 1978 we spent two weeks in S'ao Paulo -
our third visit. Bion held fifty clinical seminars,
daily consultations, and ten evening meetings (published
in Bion in New York and Sao Paulo). Such a volume of work
demonstrates his remarkable vigour and stamina at the age
of eighty.

These clinical seminars, at which Bion preferred the

number of analysts present not to exceed six, were all
recorded. I am grateful to those responsible for having
made possible this printed version.
Owing to the variable quality of the recordings, I
have been unable to piece together some of the clinical
material, and after a lapse of so many years it has
proved impossible to retrieve what has been lost. The
necessity for translation (in both directions) signific-
antly reduced the amount of ground that could be covered
in each hour.
I have chosen to publish only those seminars that
are sufficiently complete to form a coherent whole. The
necessary editing in transferring the spoken word to the
printed page has not in any way altered the content of
Bion's contributions or his style of expression. I have
adopted the same methods as those I used in the past with
his approval.
He had no prior view of the material presented; the
patients under discussion were being `seen' by him for
the first time. His responses were, therefore, spontan-
eous and give a clear indication of how he worked as one
of the psycho-analytic pair.

The four papers at the end of the book have not

previously been published in a book of Bion's work. The
first two, `Emotional Turbulence' and `On a Quotation
from Freud', were included in Borderline Personality Dis-
orders, a collection of papers given at an international
conference in Topeka in March 1976, and published by
International Universities Press, New York. The other two
papers, `Evidence' and `Making the Best of a Bad Job' (the
last paper Bion wrote),originally appeared in The Bulletin
of the British Psychoanalytical Society. I am grateful to
I.U.P. and to the Editor of the Bulletin for their per-
mission to reprint.

Francesca Bion
Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
August 1987

BRASILIA
1975

Presenter I would like to discuss a session I had today

with a thirty-year-old woman. She came into the consulting
room and sat down; she never lies on the couch. She
smiled and said, "Today I won't be able to stay sitting
here." I asked her what that meant; she said she was very
agitated. I asked her what she considered as being very
agitated. She smiled and said, "My head is dizzy." She
said her thoughts were running away, running over one
another. I suggested that when she felt like that she also
felt that she was losing control of her body. She smiled
and said, "Perhaps; it looks as if that were true." When
I continued, suggesting that when her mind was running
away like that, her body had to follow her mind's move-
ments, she interrupted me saying, "Now, don't you try to
make me stand still."
Bion Why should this patient think that the analyst would
do anything? You cannot stop her coming or send her away;
she is a grown woman and presumably therefore free to come
and see you if she wants to; if she doesn't want to, she
is free to go away. Why does she say that you would try to
stop her doing something? I am not really asking for an
answer to that question - although I would be very glad
to hear any answer that you have - but simply giving an
example of what my reaction is to this story.
P I was interested to know why she had said "Don't try
to keep me still". She said she didn't know the answer to
the question, so I suggested that she was preoccupied by
my being quiet, still. She said that she did not regard me
as being still, but as dominating my movements, my mind
controlling my body.
B As you have been seeing this patient for some time, you
both know a certain amount about one another. From the
point of view of the group here, I wonder what any of us
thinks so far. Do you get a feeling that you want to know
more? Or do you feel that you would not want to see this
patient again? In fact I would like to hear what she

had to say without my asking questions - were it not for

the fact that that is such an extraordinary way to behave.
We tend to forget that we may be much more used to analysis
than the patient is. It would be quite natural to me to
sit there silently and hear what the patient has to say,
but the patient might not be able to stand that. A patient
coming to me for the first time might be so frightened at
such peculiar behaviour that he would get up and walk
straight out. So as usual we come back to this point: in
theory we can read what we like in all these great books
on analysis; in practice we have to have a feeling about
what the patient can stand. One's behaviour has to be a
compromise; one has to have some concern and make allow-
ances for the patient to whom this is such a frightening
experience. I think this is an argument in favour of our
behaving in a fairly conventional manner to make it easier
for patients, who are under a strain anyway, to say what-
ever they want to say.
I would like to make a guess here as to what I would
say to this patient - not in the first session but later
on. `We have here these chairs, this couch, because you
might want to use any of them; you might want to sit in
that chair, or you might want to lie on that couch in
case you feel that you couldn't bear sitting there - as
you say today. That is why this couch was here when you
first came. I wonder what has made you discover this to-
day. Why is it that only today you have found that you
may not be able to sit in that chair; that you may have
to lie down or go away?" All that would be much more
appropriate if she had discovered it at the first session.
But she was too afraid to discover it.
P. In earlier sessions this question of sitting in the
chair and lying on the couch had already arisen. But I
am considering the idea of this being the first session.
B. Every session is really a first session. Today isn't
yesterday; what the patient is saying today is because it
is another day. Of course it is true that it is also
because the patient happens to be that particular person.
P. You mentioned making a compromise when the patient
first comes for analysis. If every session is a first
session, why would there be a reason for changing atti-
tudes afterwards?
B. Because time is passing and the patient is changing.
If it were possible for the patient to make no change at

all, there would still be a change because the world is

going on; it doesn't stop because we refuse to grow up.
It is made a bit easier if the analytic pair remains re-
cognizably the same; it gives a certain familiarity.
Similarly, the mother needs to be recognizably the same
person every time she comes to the baby; the baby needs
to feel it is the same mother. In the analytic situation
it is more difficult because the patient is not a baby
and the analyst is not the mother. So once more the
analyst makes allowances for the patient by being recog-
nizably the same person. But that doesn't mean that one
has agreed that the situation should remain static,frozen.
Indeed in this respect one is really putting pressure on
the patient to grow up,not to remain a baby or a patient
or a neurotic or a psychotic for ever. The analyst ex-
pects something from the patient besides just punctuality,
fees and so on; he expects some improvement.
P. Your suggestion of what to say to the patient seemed
much simpler than what is usually said by an analyst.
B. In a way psycho-analysis is extremely simple, but
like every simple thing, for some reason it is awfully
difficult to carry out. Similarly, while we always talk -
and I think rightly - about sexual problems, it appears
that physiologically and anatomically nothing could be
easier than having a baby. The objects concerned only have
to wait until they are fourteen, fifteen, maybe much
earlier, and then they can have a baby. What could be
simpler? But the trouble is that we, rightly or wrongly,
believe that there is such a thing as a character or
personality - the whole of psycho-analysis is based on
that somewhat all-pervading theory. So this very simple
activity is complicated if the person concerned knows
that to have a baby there has to be long preparation be-
forehand - thirteen or fourteen years of it anyway - and
a long time afterwards. Birth is nothing at all - it is a
sort of milestone - but there is a long period of develop-
ment both before and after it. When it comes to the mind
or personality, we still don't know how long it takes to
create that.
As the analyst, one hopes to go on improving - as
well as the patient. That is why I think it is a good
thing to leave oneself a chance of learning something and
not to allow the patient, or anyone else, to insist that
one is some sort of god who knows all the answers. If I

knew all the answers I would have nothing to learn, no

chance of learning anything. So while the mother or the
father must be able to bring up the child even after birth,
it is also necessary to leave room for the person to be
able to behave like an ordinary human being. It is hope-
less if one feels condemned to be, as it were, the great
father, or great mother, or great psycho-analyst, or
great anything. What one wants is to have room to live as
a human being who makes mistakes.
To come back to this patient: if I make allowances
and say, "All right, sit in the chair if you want to", or
"Lie on the couch if you want to", will the patient make
good use of that? Or will she feel that if I have allowed
that much freedom, then she will take a bit more? For
example, the patient can then say, "Well, all right; if I
can lie down here, I'm going to lie down and go to sleep.
I'm going to have a never-ending analysis. I'm going to
spend the rest of my life coming to you for analysis. I'll
camp out in your house."
P. I felt that the patient was trying to feel free to
talk with me, but that the liberty to talk with me was at
variance with the terms she wanted to impose. I asked her
what she would think if I behaved like she did - my mind
not controlling my body. She said it would be excellent.
B. I don't think I would want to ask that question be-
cause I would be afraid she would give me an answer which
might not be the correct one.
P. When she said it would be excellent, I suggested that
she was telling me that she saw a chance of us both being
connected, married. She said she didn't like the word,
`married'. She remembered then - although she insisted on
not using the word, `married' - that she had had a dream
that night in which she saw our faces and mouths close
together. The sensation was a very exciting one although
there was no orgasm involved.
B. She can say, "I'd like that", but this depends on the
belief that you wouldn't do anything; she is sure - or
thinks she is sure - that you would not marry her. In
other words, she wouldn't mind saying how much she would
like to have sexual intercourse, or how much she would
like to be all alone with you, or her father, or her
mother, provided she didn't have to do what fathers and
mothers do. So far it's not so bad; she may have been
very close to you, but it was only a dream so it doesn't

BRASILIA - 1975 5

matter. But we, as analysts, think dreams do matter, and

so would this patient at some time in her life before she
made a distinction between a fact when wide awake, and a
fact when fast alseep.
I would begin to be a bit suspicious about this
patient; I would wonder whether she really knows the dif-
ference between a dream and waking life, or whether she
knows the difference between courtship - a love affair -
and a psycho-analysis. However, the immediate point is,
what shall we say to the patient? It is time, as it were,
that we gave her an interpretation. There are millions of
interpretations, but there is only one experience, and
that is the experience which the analyst here had with
this patient - while none of us had it. We can discuss
the matter, but that is not analysis; that is about analy-
sis. The feeling the analyst has that something is taking
place, can only be known if the patient comes to him and
gives him a chance to experience it.

P. The patient is a woman, about fifty years old. In the

session I am presenting she arrived, kept silent, and then
in a demonstrative way yawned and showed that she was
sleepy. Then she said, "Why did I come here if I am sleepy?
I should stay at home to sleep. I don't come here to sleep."
Between each phrase she was silent. I said nothing. After
a longer silence she asked, "Why do I come here?" I asked
her, "Yes, why do you come? What does coming here mean to
you?" She answered, "This means that; this is that." I
pointed out to her that this didn't tell me anything. She
continued, "Well-, I come here to get to know myself better.
I think that with your help perhaps things will be clearer
to me." But she said this in a very unrealistic way.
B. One could say that if that is the answer, then what is
the trouble? She is hardly likely to come to ask a quest-
ion to which she thinks she knows the answer. If you ask
her, "Why did you come here?", then she can say that is
what she is asking you. So I think I should simply leave
it and say to her, "You have posed the question; perhaps
later on you will be able to say what the answer is", or
simply say, "You have posed the question". I would rather
leave her the chance of saying what the answer is when
she has found it. It is as well to bear in mind also that
there are two people in the room and that this question
can apply to one or the other, or to both of them.
P. Suddenly she interrupted herself as if remembering
something I had told her before. She lay down on the couch
and turned her head towards me saying, "Didn't I say any-
thing? Well, you said it doesn't mean anyihing." She
stared at me and then said, `1You said I didn't say any-
thing - perhaps I didn't say anything." I said, "You look
at me as if I know the right answer and that you are
supposed to guess it but you can't." Then she said, "You
could help me, but you keep saying that I have to do every-
thing by myself here." I said' she was attributing me with
the ability to help her.

BRASILIA - 1975 7

B. I would have thought that you were working too much.

My own feeling about this - as far as I can tell, not
having been there - is that I would prefer to remain
silent and leave the patient to tell me the answer to this
question. If I wanted to say anything at all I would leave
it iII abeyance. She has asked a question and nobody has
answered. The only thing I have heard is a silence; there
is apparently no answer to it. I wonder in what way she
knows that she has to do all the work. Who has told her
thj�s, and what is she hearing in this silence? I don't
object to the silence because there are in fact some forms
of communication in which people remain silent. There are
`rests' in music - the instruments don't play. So I think
I would still leave it at that, or I might - depending on
how familiar I think she is with this situation - draw her
attention to the fact that she must have some way of hear-
ing what has been said when nothing has been said. Either
that, or it is not true. As far as I am concerned I would
expect somebody to tell me if I have to do all the work.
Otherwise you may get into a situation where you are sup-
posed to help her without any assistance yourself. You
haven't gone to see her; she has come to see you.
P. She says she doesn't know why she comes.
B. My reply to that would be, "I think that is very un-
likely - if you don't know, certainly nobody else does."
It sounds much more likely to be true that she doesn't
know why you, the analyst, have come. But she may be
puzzled as to why both these people have come; there are
two people in this room alone, but she doesn't know why
they are there, or what they are there for.
In this situation her explanation of finding out
about herself is more or less plausible; it is a reason-
able explanation; it may even be a psycho-analytic explan-
ation. It sounds to me as if she has come into this room
where there are two people and has started asking questions
about what they are doing. It would be much easier if one
could say that there is a little girl watching what these
two people are up to.
Let's leave the matter and let her go on talking if
she wants to, so that we can then listen to what she is
saying to that man who is in the room with her. So far,
apparently, neither the man nor the woman has said any-
thing except something which sounds like a very unconvinc-
ing psycho-analytic interpretation. In short, the mystery

8 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 2
is unsolved.
P. I brought this case because I am very uneasy about it.
B. Yes, and so is she. She doesn't know why those two
people are there. You have to attach great importance to
what she does say - all these `whys'. The patient who
asks a question and sees to it that you can't give an
answer because there is already an answer there, leaves
no chance either for you to be curious, or for her to be
curious. She can ask a question and she can get an answer
which tells her nothing. The same thing applies to you;
you are asked the question, but you are told nothing. If
you try to give an interpretation, the patient retreats
further on the basis that, `If you are so very clever,you
tell me'. You shouldn't give in to that,but make it clear
that if she wants answers to these questions she will
have to keep you properly informed. Analysis isn't a game -
not as far as the analyst is concerned - in which you are
asked to give an answer with nothing to go on. You give
an answer and she gives you another question; in the end
you find yourself trying to give help with no way whatever
of giving it. Alternatively, if you don't give her any
interpretation, if you maintain silence, she can say,
"There you are - I am supposed to come here and do all the
work." That is really a sort of blackmail. She will prove
that the analyst is wrong anyway; either he is so ignorant
that he doesn't give any help, or else so clever that he
can do the job without any assistance.
Member In talking about impressions you have, you suggest
what the analyst might have said to the patient. You also
mention interpretations that occur to you but that you
would not say to the patient. Listening to these two kinds
of interpretations I feel that any of them could be given
to the patient.
B. In the practice of analysis the analyst has to make up
his own mind what the situation is; there is nobody to
tell him this - only his senses, what he hears and sees
for himself in the room. It is the fallacy of training
that one is told the interpretations to give. The only
place where you have a chance of knowing what the inter-
pretation is, is in your own consulting room. Nobody can
tell you more about it than you know yourself. With
different people, different situations arise; even with
the same person - today isn't the same as yesterday. It
is a dynamic situation; analysis is not static. Analytic

BRASILIA - 1975 9
theories are quite useful for about three sessions - you
know nothing about the patient and therefore have to
fall back on theory. After that the answers are on the
couch or in the chair, and in what you can see and hear
for yourself.
P. I told her that when she says I have the power to
help but don't want to, and that I say she must do every-
thing for herself, she means that she is completely de-
pendent on me, addicted to me. But as she knows that I
have this power, she can go to sleep till I make up my
mind to help her. The only thing she said was, "I am not
addicted."
B. In that case she must know what she is. Why doesn't
she tell you what she is if she knows that she is not
something? Psycho-analysis is not a way of telling
people things we don't know; it is much more a question
of finding out something. The analyst hopes that he will
know a little bit more about the patient each time they
meet. We are not trying to teach patients that we know
all the answers, but that if they do the work they may
find the answer. Nobody is going to do the work for them
because no one can.
P. She came back to the point about what she gets from
the analysis - knowledge about herself and so on. She
said, "How difficult it must be for you to stick it with
me." She told me that although it is terribly difficult
here with me, she knows that she is improving. Then she
said something absolutely unintelligible as if she was
eating the words. I told her I didn't understand what
she said. She replied, "I mean the confusion in my mind."
I told her that even when she wanted to get closer to me
it was very difficult for her because as soon as she
started to say that she was improving, she felt unable
to talk freely and had to cause confusion.
B. If she was being fed, she could fairly soon discover
that the food had something to do with what came out of
the other end of her body. But you are not feeding her,
so one has to think up something else. I could say, "You
are feeling that you take in my good analysis and turn
it into a lot of confused stuff, and then you have to
have some more." If we were talking about the alimentary
canal, we know that it takes a long time before a child
connects what it eats with what it evacuates.By the time
it is old enough to know the answer, it has forgotten the

10 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 2
problem, it has forgotten the question. All this is much
more difficult if you are talking about the mind - which
is what we purport to do. Patients can feel as if they
get good, clear analysis, but that it is turned into a
lot of rubbi'sh.
What is one to say to the patient? This is where you
come into it; you are there and you know by this time
something about the language that this patient understands.
It is not simply a question of what you understand, but
`�jhether this patient could understand an interpretation
that you could give. To take a ridiculous example, you
can't launch out into a great explanation of the biology
of the alimentary canal to a baby. It may be true, it may
be the correct interpretation, but it is a nonsensical
waste of time.

P. The patient is a twenty-four-year-old man, a hospital

physician. He arrived ten minutes late for the session.
He started by saying, "I was downstairs. I hesitated to
come up to the consulting room. I went to buy some cigar-
ettes. I came to the consulting room but I stopped. I
couldn't stay here. I took the elevator, not feeling well.
I thought it would be too difficult for me to come to the
session. I thought that if I stayed here I would die. I
almost went away. I really thought�it was going to be too
hard for me." He kept on talking but changed the `subject.
"As I told you on Thursday" (the previous session - this
session was on Saturday) "I was afraid of being on duty
on Friday - it was a twelve-hour job. When I finally went
on duty it was too hard for me." This was the first duty
he had been on for four months - it was impossible for
him owing to his anxiety.
B. Was he physically ill?
P. He thought so but in fact he was suffering an anxiety
crisis. He said that while he was talking with the other
doctors he had the feeling that he was going to be ill.
M. Would it not be interesting to interrupt the patient
at this point? I feel there is too much material.
B. Yes, you often get a patient who, in contrast to say-
ing nothing at all, floods you with information. I gather
that this is happening here. Ordinarily one expects there
to be some kind of structure to which the total communi-
cation conforms. But if the patient is always changing
the subject he isn't really conversing; he is flooding
you with free associations, not assisting you, not keep-
iZ]g you informed so much as keeping you unable to give an
interpretation. But I don't think I would be inclined to
stop him until I got a clearer idea of what he was up to.
I suspect - I don't know of course; it's just a suspicion
working in my mind - that this patient is one of those
people who take up medicine because they are so fright-
ened of some catastrophe or disaster. He can then con-

12 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 3
verse with other doctors and thereby hear about all the
diseases there are. Then he won't die, or disasters won't
happen, because he is the doctor, not the patient.
M. Is this suspicion of yours one of those things the
analyst should keep to himself, or could he tell the
patient?
B. I think I would keep it to myself because one does
not want to flood him with interpretations. He is already
being greedy, wanting more and more, but instead of its
helping him he gets flooded with it, he gets more medicine
than he needs. A common manifestation of this sort of
thing happens when medical students go to the dissecting
room to learn anatomy. They break down; they can't go on
with it because it causes such an upheaval in all their
views and attitudes if they dissect the human body.
P. I have the feeling that the patient didn't change the
subject - he only apparently changed it.
B. This feeling of yours is where the interpretation
comes from. Otherwise, if you interpret all these various
changes of subject, you miss the point, you miss the sub-
ject which hasn't changed. When you begin to feel that all
these different free associations are not really different
ones, because they have the same pattern, then it becomes
important to wait until you know what that pattern is.
P. In a seminar with a training analyst, the analyst told
me that every good interpretation should contain three
elements: a description of the behaviour of the patient;
the function of the behaviour; and the theory which is
behind that behaviour.
B. In a sense these theories, such as this one you men-
tion, have a use for the particular person who mentions
them. Some of them will also mean something to you. While
you are trying to learn, all these things are very con-
fusing. This is why I think you can go on too long with
training and seminars. It is only after you have quali-
fied that you have a chance of becoming an analyst. The
analyst you become is you and you alone; you have to
respect the uniqueness of your own personality - that
is what you use, not all these interpretations. If you
can feel, like your feeling just now, that the subject
hadn't changed, that is important. Then after a time you
may have a chance during that session, or next week, or
next year for all I know, of finding out what this pattern
is.

BRASILIA - 1975 13
Take the session as far- as it has gone: some idea
could come to you and you could feel, "Now I can give the
interpretation." But by the time the interpretation is
ready to be given, the problem is solved. Every interpret-
ation means that a change takes place - if it is a correct
interpretation. The puzzling situation which has been made
clear by the interpretation at once disappears; it is once
again an entirely new situation in which there are new
problems.
It may take a long time to deduce what the unchanging
element is. In physical medicine we can find out all kinds
of things about the patient - temperature, pulse, blood
pressure and so on - and then add them all together. We
may have to say, "I don't know what this is", or we may
have to tell the relatives, "I think it may turn out to
be an ordinary cold, but we'll watch him; keep him in bed
and I'll come and see him again." A good doctor has to be
able to dare to say to the anxious relatives who ask,
"Doctor, what's the matter?", "I don't know yet - I'd like
to know some more", or, "I don't know yet, but I think it
may be turning into - " whatever the complaint is. In
analysis-the analyst has to be satisfied, otherwise he-is
under constant pressure to give an interpretation. With
this patient you can feel that he wants, or ought, to get
back to work, and that it is a serious business that he
is absent. But---the-analyst-has to---be-ruthless; he-has to
r-esist---"�the pressure because his business-is not whether
somebody gets back to work or not, but that somebody be
giv�en the correct analysis. You are always under pressure.
While you try to listen to the patient, he keeps on try-
ing to shove you - "But doctor, I've got to go back to
work", "I've got to do this", or, "I've got to do the
other". All that has something to do with his life, but
nothing to do with the analysis. If a surgeon is operating
he cannot tolerate a great noise in the theatre; he can-
not have people talking; there has to be a discipline so
that he can concentrate on the particular job.
In this case you have to try to get the conditions
in which you can give an interpretation. The patient-will
push you, give you so much material that you feel, "If I
go on listening to this I shall never know what inter-
pretation to give because there are so many associations."
You have to try to resist that, to insist to yourself
that you are going to go on listening to what he has to

14 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 3
say until you are convinced that you want to say something.
Otherwise you can find yourself in the horrible situation
of spending your life giving what you think is an inter-
pretation that somebody else would give, instead of giving
the interpretation you want to give. I don't think you can
ever do good analysis if you are not satisfied with what
you say.
While the analysis is going on you may remember some-
-thing that someone has said - like the statement of the
training analyst. It is like remembering something that
you saw in a ward while you were a medical student. There
is a lot to be said for hearing the way different people
do analysis, but it must never make you lose sight of the
-fact that the only thing thaT matters is the way that you
do it.
Let us go on with this case now. Perhaps we shall get
some idea of this unchanging subject you have mentioned.
P. The patient had the impression that if he remained on
-duty he was going to feel ill. He was not feeling ill -
he had the impression that this was going to happen.
B. In other words, he wasn't going to get cured - he
would get these illnesses. It sounds possible that he has
never really considered that he has to be very tough in-
deed to be a doctor at all. In this profession you are
always dealing with people at their worst; they are
frightened; they are anxious. It is no good taking up
that occupation if he is going to end up by being anxious,
depressed and frightened too.
P. So he left the room to lie down. At this moment he was
called to the emergency ward. He went; he worked perfectly.
He thought it very curious that he could work well with-
out any difficulty.
B. There is a saying, `Every fat man has a thin man in-
side trying to get out.' Could one say, `Every hypo- -
chondriac has a doctor trying to get free!? Or, `Every
neurotic has an analyst trying to get free'? The answer
is, of course, no. But to the surprise of this patient he
discovers that there is a doctor trying to get free. He
goes off to this emergency, and instead of having a heart
attack or whatever, he finds that he can be a doctor.
Using this not only for this incident but for many others,
you can begin to feel that the patient may after all be a
doctor or a potential analyst if, when it comes to a
crisis, the doctor emerges. But why in a crisis? If it is
 BRASILIA - 1975 15
really true that he may after all be a doctor, not just by
title but the thing itself, why hasn't he discovered that
till now? Why is it that he had to be neurotic or hypo-
chondriac, or go to an analyst before finding out this
point? Of course we believe, as analysts - rightly or
wrongly - that analysis is helpful. But that belief is
liable to hj�de from us the extraordinary nature, the mys-
tery of psycho-analysis. Such a lot of analysts seem to be
bored with their subject; they have lost ,the capacity for
wonder.
P. Later on in the same session he asked himself this
question and said, "If I had known that analysis could do
this for me I wouldn't have waited for a crisis before
coming."
B. One of the peculiarities of progress is that it al-
ways makes you feel depressed or regretful that you didn't
discover it sooner.
P. He also talked about what an effort analysis was for
him.
B. What he is not noticing is that he is actually ex-
pressing appreciation of the analysis. That might seem to
be a very slight point, and as a matter of fact it is, but
it is like the tip of the iceberg showing when most of it
is out of sight. The patient does not notice that he is
capable of putting up with his jealousy, envy, rivalry,
and is then able to express appreciation or gratitude to
the analyst. In all this mass of material which almost
suggests that he has no faith in analysis and doesn't ex-
pect it to do any good, he is in fact saying that in his
opinion analysis has done some good - or rather the analyst
has done s,ome good. That point frequently escapes attention
partly because of this belief that analysts are concerned
with finding fault - crime detection as it were. But we
aren't; we are trying to find the patient, whoever or what-
ever the patient is. It is important, if you get the chance,
to draw his attention to these expressions* of admiration
or affection or sympathy, because they are felt - particu-
larly by a patient like this - to be such feeble things
that they are not worth mentioning. He is dominated, I
think, by the need to make reparation, to cure people.
Behind that lies his dread of being destructive, or of be-
ing a person who is much more likely to make people ill
than to cure them. It is very difficult to be condemned
to be a doctor who cures people; it is a different thing

16 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 3
to want to cure people. You are an analyst, or a father or
a mother, because you believe you are capable of the affec-
tion or understanding which is so necessary but which is
felt to be so unimportant. On a larger scale, it is felt
to be much more marvellous to be a Hitler than simply
someone who is concerned with the welfare of his fellow
men., It is liable to be lost sight of that what we, as
doctors and psycho-analysts, are concerned with is help-
ing human beings, not making them miserable or upsetting
them. We may have to upset them in the course of the
analysis, but that is not what we are trying to do. With
this patient it may be very important to show him, when
the time comes, that there exists some capacity for
affection, sympathy, understanding - not just diagnoses
and surgery, not just analytic jargon, but interest in the
person. You can't make doctors or analysts - `they have to
be born.

P. The patient came on time, looked very anxious, lay

down on the couch, and was silent for a long time. Then
she started to talk, saying that she couldn't come last
Friday; she was cut off by the rain when she was leaving
her job, so she couldn't take the car or get a telephone
message to me. She was silent for a short while and then
said, "Today I notice that I am afraid of you." She said
she became aware of this fear when she heard there was a
very famous psycho-analyst in Brasilia. She wondered if,
being a psychologist, she could attend some meetings.
People came to ask her how they should go about getting a
place at the talks this analyst was giving. She didn't
know the answer so she thought she would ask me about it.
She said she was carrying on an inner dialogue with the
following argument: "If I ask her, I know she won't give
me the answer; if I don't ask her, I shan't know where
the meetings are going to take place.'' So she decided to
speak out and to explain the situation to me. I pointed
out that the conversation with herself was a way of avoid-
ing speaking directly to me.
B. Why did she say she knew she wouldn't get an answer?
P. Later on I raised this question. Her answer `was that
this arose from the kind of relationship she had with me.
B. How often does she come?
P. Four times a week. I have the impression that some-
times she feels in contact with me, and I myself feel in
contact with her, but only occasionally. She has been in
analysis for over a year. She has a baby girl, eighteen
months old. A month ago she got a job as a psychologist,
but not in the clinical field. Since she started working
full time, her sessions are at the end of the day after
she has finished work. Before this she never missed
sessions or forgot to pay the account or came late; now
she arrives late and sometimes misses one session a week.
B. What about this point that when she does come you
feel that she puts distance between you and herself? How

l8 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 4

does she do that?

P. I get this impression when she starts explaining why
she is late, as if she were giving an explanation to a
teacher or a mother.
B. Were you able to make that clear to her?
P. I have tried. Her attitude was one of, `Well, I know
I am going to make excuses', and so whenever she arrives
late she says, "I know I am going to begin to make excuses."
I feel that she conveys something of an inner dialogue with
herself, but that she never expresses fully what she wants
to say to me.
B. There must be some reason why, knowing that she won't
be able to make a contact with you, she bothers to come.
Perhaps she thinks that famous analysts are people who
are too famous to get near.
P. She uses the informal `you' when speaking to me. She
said, "I am going to put a question to you. I know you
won't answer it, but I need to have an answer." I said,
"You speak with yourself before speaking with me, and yet
when you speak to me you don't actually do so because you
already know the answer I am going to give." I got the
impression that this both annoyed and saddened her. I told
her that she seemed to be under constraint, not at ease.
From past experience I have observed that whenever I men-
tion something that I notice in her behaviour, she seems
to wake up, to become livelier. She seems to be closer to
me because of the vividness of her expression, happy when
I make such an observation. And yet I do not feel I ever
get near to her, even though she may express this kind of
happiness.
B. What kind of happiness do you think it is?
P. I feel that when she suffers during the session, she
uses distance to alleviate, expiate her feelings of guilt.
When I point out that she is suffering she says, "No, not
me, I'm not suffering."
B. It seems to me that she feels guilty and frightened
because she is having an experience which doesn't accord
with the psycho-analytic rules - as she knows them. I
think that the `famous analyst' is a person she doesn't
feel able to talk to, and that famous analysts are not
people who talk to her either. How does she know that the
`famous analyst' wouldn't have anything to do with her?
P. She usually feels that she is being criticized: she
could have done better, she could have done more -

BRASILIA - 1975 19
B. But I think something has happened to make her dis-
cover that she is near a `famous analyst',and that there-
fore she must not talk to famous analysts or even know
where they are. I suspect that she is feeling that a
`famous analyst' is disguised in the person to whom she
comes for analysis. Leaving aside for the moment what one
would say to this patient, let us discuss why it is that
the `famous analyst' is too famous to be spoken to.
P. Perhaps this is related to the fact that she has a
sister who is very successful in her profession of clin-
ical psychologist, whereas the patient only managed after
a year to get a job. So even though she is a psychologist
she has to keep to her schedules and be bound by the re-
quirements of a job. Whenever she wants to mention some-
thing of importance to me, she puts her sister first and
says, ``My sister thinks. . . , My sister mentioned.
B. I suspect very strongly that she is discovering that
her baby is a person. Something has happened which makes
her think that the baby is something to be afraid of: if
it were older, perhaps it might be much cleverer than she
is; it would know if she deserted it and came to see you.
She is afraid of this object which is felt to be a danger-
ous personality who knows a great deal more about infant-
ile psychology than she does. She feels that if she could
be as clever as her baby, if she could go back to that
state herself, then she could know a very great deal
about people. We give all kinds of interpretations like,
"You felt this", or, "You felt the other", including
those which are appropriate to something like being at
the breast. But I think the baby knows a lot more about
being at the breast than just ordinary psychologists and
psycho-analysts.
Trying to put that into more `reasonable' language,
I suspect that this girl is very surprised at what she
has produced, and is filled with admiration of that baby.
Your interpretations may remind her of something she has
forgotten from childhood or even infancy - the baby cer-
tainly will. The baby isn't her analyst, but the emotional
situation between her and her baby is nevertheless one
which stirs up feelings more powerfully than any analytic
relationship does. She has been having verbal intercourse
with you for some time; therefore there is always `the
chance that she might be pregnant. So in a way she is
really talking about feelings which she apparently did not

20 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 4
work through before the baby was born, that is the fear
of pregnancy, what the mother has inside her - even though
she is now the mother. It is as if she has learnt all
about psychology, but is afraid that psycho-analysis is
either just `the same old thing', or that it is some-
thing different. Then she will be rebelling against the
psychologist - she being both the psychologist and the
rebelling person. I think she fears knowing, not just
hearing, that you have a relationship with a `famous
analyst' - whatever that is. So in this respect, if she
comes to you she is very close indeed to a sexual parent -
husband or wife. The same thing applies the other way
round: if you are a good psychologist or psycho-analyst,
you will know that she is pregnant, or you will know that
she is going to give rise to a baby. We know of no symp-
toms in the mind like those of pregnancy, but this patient
as a child could have known when her mother was pregnant
even before the mother was aware of it. So there is anx-
iety about this `famous analyst' who is sometimes her
analyst, sometimes herself, sometimes her baby, and some-
times something which will emerge.
This brings us back to her statement that she is
afraid of you; you have been hostile and envious either
because she has this `famous analyst', or because she is
able to realize that her baby has a character and a
personality. Nothing is likely to produce so much mental
growth as being pregnant and having babies.
M. What about the man?
B. The man, instead of being the enviable, superior
person who has a penis, is the envious, unlucky person
who can't have babies. So whether you, the analyst, are
a man or whether you are a woman, it is dangerous for this
patient to have anything to do with you, or to come near
you, because she doesn't know what you will do to her baby.
If she behaves as if she has a famous baby, as if she
loves and admires the baby, then sooner or later this will
show in the analysis. So far it has been safe: so far she
has not got near to her analyst; she has only spoken to
her analyst if there is a long `telephone' line between
the two of them. But she can feel a conflict between
treating the baby as if it were a doll or a chunk of
psycho-analytic jargon, and treating the baby as if it
were a person. In a sense, one could say that a mother is
being born; so there is some fear of allowing herself to

BRASILIA - 1975 21

say or show how pleased and how proud she is of her baby,
because she doesn't know how jealous or envious her
`father' analyst or her `mother' analyst will be of this
situation, or how angry the baby will be if it is left
while she goes off and sees the father or the mother
analyst.
I have talked a lot about that, but we haven't touch-
ed the real problem: what is to be said to this patient?
You can't say what I have been saying to you - the patient
would either go to sleep or walk out before you had fin-
ished talking. You have to consider which interpretation
feels like the one you would like to give. The very close
relationship between the mother and the infant is where
you have a chance to find out something about yourself
and something about the baby; that is a very superior sort
of analysis. Psycho-analysis is simply -`playing at' know-
ing about mothers and fathers and babies - not the thing
itself. What is at stake here is whether this girl would
dare to allow herself to use her intuition and to be a
real person talking to this child, and whether she will
allow the real child to be a real child, and not get
angry or frightened when she finds that the real child
knows a great deal - or seems to. In other words, mothers
and daughters and female babies are all things which are
felt to be likely to cause a great deal of jealousy or
envy.
I would hope to bring up to the surface this thing
which is making it difficult for the patient to come to
her analysis. It doesn't do the baby any good if the
mother remains stuck with it. If you ever deal with a
patient who has succeeded in preventing the father or
mother from doing what they wished - being so disturbed
or crying so much that the mother couldn't leave it -
then later on in life that person will be unable to leave
others.

P. The patient is a thirty-five-year-old woman who has

been in analysis for seven years and is in her second
year with me. We agreed at the start on two sessions a
week because it would be impossible for her otherwise.
In the second year this was increased to three sessions a
week. Last year I considered ending work with her, but I
changed my mind. This year I have had the impression that
we are beginning to talk to each other.
B. What made you feel that it was hardly worth your while
to go on?
P. I felt that there was some kind of obstacle prevent-
ing us from communicating so that we could not talk ef fec-
tively to each other.
B. What is this impression which grows up? I ask because
it can happen with any patient; the analyst feels that it
is too unrewarding a relationship to continue. The sense
of an obstacle can crop up in anything, but sometimes it
presents a challenge, a stimulation which makes one want
to go on. I remember,when I was a student, having a
patient who seemed to be so boring that it was dif ficult
to keep awake. And then I began to feel that it was so
boring that it made me wonder how he did it. So you may
begin to be fascinated by the obstacle, and then it is
possible to go on. But when you feel that it is so un-
rewarding that it is not worth continuing, that is a
matter to which we need to pay attention.
M. Do you agree that there are some patients who are un-
analysable?
B. I think that is true. It is sometimes forgotten that
analysis is in its infancy, and to assume that it can
cope with all kinds of patients may be quite fallacious.
It may not be the fault of the analyst or of the patient,
but simply that we just don't know enough. In physical
medicine tuberculosis was not so long ago regarded as a
fatal illness. Today many tubercle experts are without
a practice; the specialists have become redundant be-

BRASILIA - 1975 23
cause of the advance in medicine. There may be things
which will be treatable analytically fifty or a hundred
years hence, but that doesn't alter the fact that they
may not be treatable now. One could ask about this case:
what led you to feel that it was time to terminate? And
conversely, what led you to feel disposed to go on?
P. I was never sure if the difficulty of establishing
contact lay with me or with the patient.
B. That is always worth considering. But here again I
think there is a fallacious argument because analysts
think that they can use a counter-transference. That is
an inaccurate way of thinking. You can use a feeling you
have, but counter-transference you cannot use. By defin-
ition I cannot do anything about my counter-transference;
there is nothing to be done with it except to go to an
analyst and get analysed. But most of us have to put up
with the fact that there is no analyst to whom we can go.
One can feel one is bored with a patient, or the
work is unrewarding, or the relationship doesn't progress.
It may be both the fault of the patient and the fault of
the analyst - who is to blame doesn't really matter.There
is nothing that can be done about the analyst's fault ex-
cept to make allowances for it. The only question that
remains is, can anything be done with the part of it that
the analysand contributes? In a way the progress of ana-
lysis depends on just that - it seems to be possible to
help one's analysand to be a better analyst than one is
oneself.
P. At the same time that I was aware of these feelings I
also noticed that the patient never missed a session. But
I had the impression that the language I used did not
touch her and that she could never understand it.
B. Who pays the patient's fees?
P. She herself.
B. Does she pay the right amount regularly?
P. Yes - she is never late with her payments.
B. This is something which is very characteristic: the
absolute regularity of attendance and of payment. You can
tell the time by her coming; she can tell the time by the
analyst's coming. Financially it always looks as if one
knows exactly what one is being paid - you can count the
dollars or cruzeiros or whatever the currency it. So
there are two things that appear to be comprehensible. I
have known this regularity of payment and keeping of

24 cLINICAL SEMINARS - 5

sessions with a patient who had been certified and yet

was able to keep the appointments - whether wet or fine,
a strike in progress, it made no difference. How can such
an ill person do something that seems to ignore all kinds
of facts, and go on operating as if they didn't exist?
That is the sort of thing we have yet to learn. You may
find some clue to it as you go on with your patient.
P. She was married three years ago and is now seven
months pregnant. She showed a series of reactions to
pregnancy: at first she wanted very much to become preg-
nant, but whenever her menstrual period was late she got
into a state of panic; when she in fact became pregnant
she was very af raid; she was afraid of having a deformed
child; she thought she was too old to have a baby.
B. Two points occur to me. Why didn't she feel these
anxieties much earlier? And how sensible of her to feel
them now. She seems to be showing signs which I think are
very reasonable. If I were a woman and had to give birth
to a child, I would be scared out of my wits. There are
a few classes of people, like doctors and airmen and
sailors and coal miners, who face the issues of life and
death all the time. It is often difficult for patients
to realize that they are dealing with these fundamental
issues when they say they want babies or don't want
babies. When I say, `life and death', I don't mean
`death', but life and death; it is the birth of the indi-
vidual that is also the continuation of the race itself.
From what you have said, I would think that this
patient is making remarkable progress and is very well
adjusted to be having fears and anxieties that are so
often denied. But what is to be said to the patient who
pushes it forward to you as a sort of neurotic symptom?
I pose the question, but let us leave it alone for the
time being and continue with the story.
P. I could never understand why she sporadically men-
tioned that she felt better. I am not sure that getting
pregnant is something I could consider as a form of
progress, in spite of the anxiety and fears she was ex-
pressing.
B. It might be helpful to consider the possibility that
this bother about the periods, pregnancy, and so on, can
all be a sort of unconscious sarcasm. It is as if she
didn't want to triumph over the analyst, but if she did

BRA SIL IA - 1975 25

she could feel that of course she's better, she's fitter

and fitter. She is able to do this wonderful thing, but
naturally a poor feeble creature like a male would be
upset if the woman was pregnant, if her periods stopped,
or if she had some sort of physical development, because
that is the way men are - stupid, silly creatures who
can't understand that a woman could do this thing. It is
complicated because she is also frightened. She can be
feeling well and be feeling that it is a dangerous situ-
ation. The man may not be able to tolerate the fact that
the woman can be pregnant, or he may have a breakdown
because he is so anxious and frightened about the
pregnancy. We need to have more analytic understanding
about the pregnant woman; we also need to know more
about the mental reactions of the pregnant male. The
generating unit of the human race is a couple, so when a
couple are having a baby, the male may be tempted to get
as far away as possible from the sexual pair as he can -
even though he is one of them - or he may stay it out.
In analysis you get only one side of the picture present-
ed to you. This patient is feeling as if you were the
husband; she is also feeling that you are the analytic
husband in the sense that you may not be able to believe
in the possibility of psycho-analytic pregnancy, that
there can be such an outcome of the psycho-analytic
intercourse that one could legitimately talk about'a
psycho-analytic baby'.She can be afraid that her analyst
will disappear because she is pregnant, saying, "Oh well,
if you are pregnant, if you're cured, if you've got a
husband, good-bye, I'm going"; or that the analyst might
get frightened and say, "You must be psychotic, you must
be seriously disturbed to think you are pregnant. You
had better go into hospital and have surgical interven-
tion." I'm exaggerating it for the sake of clarity, but
it does arouse a certain degree of anxiety in her, and
she is afraid of what it arouses in you in the way of
envy and hostility and fear - especially if you are able
to achieve a successful analysis.
P. She was anxious only during the first three months
of pregnancy. Then she showed signs of miscarrying and
had to stay in bed for several days. After that she began
to feel very attractive and calm, and told me that she
even forgot about being pregnant. I got the impression
that this was actually so.

26 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 5

B. All one can do is to go on analysing. But I think

that she does produce this complex relationship; she
does in fact dare to tell you that she is pregnant and
even that she has various anxieties. And since you have
not got rid of her,she is encouraged to come again and
to go on coming.
Do you know anything about her husband?
P. The impression she conveys about him is that he is
as ill as she is, and that they live in a state of rival-
ry, one trying to control the other. She masturbates a
lot and therefore they have less sexual intercourse.
B. The adolescent patient can remember very well what
it is like to be a child because he still is, and he can
know a good deal about what it is like to be grown-up
because he is. So at that stage we are dealing with two
peculiar objects. Much the same thing happens over and
over again at different stages; it can happen with the
couple because the two may never have individually been
married before. They both think they know all about sex,
but in fact they don't; they only know what they used to
know - masturbation and all kinds of sexual activities
with which individuals of both sexes are quite familiar.
One could say that potentially a married couple is being
born, and a sexual pair is ceasing to exist.
P. I would like to tell you something of the last
session. She was already talking when she came into the
room - this is a very common occurrence because she
can't keep quiet, she keeps on talking about routine
things for the whole session and leaves smiling and
looking very happy. If I interrupt her she gets very
irritated. I asked her, "What are you wanting to tell
me when you speak about these things?" She replied that
she didn't know, but if I wished she could go away be-
cause she was very irritated with her husband with whom
she had had a quarrel that morning.
B. The test seems to be whether you can stand this
flood of domestic trivialities.
P. She gives the impression of being fascinated by
trivialities.
B. I think that perhaps you are felt to want something
grand like a domestic disaster, desertion, the break-up
of the family. The analyst, like the husband, cannot do
anything wonderful like producing a baby, so there is
every chance of his being so jealous or so envious that

BRASILIA - 1975 27

he would like, even if he cannot produce anything else,

to produce a disaster. So her reaction is, "Well, if
that's what you like I'll clear off and bust up my family -
then you can feel what a wonderful analyst you are."

P. I have a patient who behaves as if he depises me

deeply. This situation is very painful for me. I feel I
ought to have been able to show him my limitations.
B. Why do you want to show your limitations?The patient
should state what he thinks your limitations or capaci-
ties are. You are analysing the patient; therefore you
want to know what the patient thinks. I don't understand
the point about the analyst making his limitations known.
P. The patient acts as if I had no limitations at all.
B. When a patient comes to an analyst, he should learn
something about himself. The fact that an interpretation
is often given in terms of the relationship with the
analyst is not because the analyst is of any importance;
it is simply because the analyst is trying to draw atten-
tion to the character of that particular person who is
showing certain beliefs about the analyst. For example,
if the patient displays, or demonstrates in some way,
feelings of contempt or hostility for the analyst, the
important thing is that it tells you something about the
patient. If a patient says that he is very grateful,
that doesn't really tell you anything about the analysis
or the analyst. But it does tell you a lot about the
patient. It tells you that the patient is capable of
feeling grateful. Another patient, by contrast, may be
incapable of expressing any gratitude because he is so
jealous or envious that he never expresses gratitude at
all. One gives interpretations like, "You are feeling
that I am ...", not because the analyst is a person of
any importance, but because it gives the analysand a
chance of recognizing what sort of person he himself Is.
If he is capable of love and affection and gratitude, it
is important that he should know that - and so on through
the list of his capacities and incapacities. In analysis
it is possible to see the `kind of relationship that the
patient is able to have with somebody who is not himself.
P. So if the analyst makes a mistake, it is important

P-'

BRASILIA - 1975 29

to analyse not the mistake, but the patient's reaction

to the mistake?
B. That's right. We all know that we are human beings;
one thing that is absolutely certain is that we all
therefore make mistakes. If we didn't, it would be very
difficult to account for the chaotic mess in which the
world is today. It is run by human beings who are making
mistakes the whole time. Take this particular patient:
if he cannot have a relationship with people who make
[-`"l ` mistakes, he will have to give up having anything to do
with human beings. But if he does want to mix with human
beings, then he will have to learn holy to associate with
people who make mistakes and are always in trouble of
some sort. What one must draw attention to is, "You are
very upset because I ..." whatever the mistake was. "This
is again the same grievance -- yo�u are not able to for-
give the fact that, as far as you are aware, I appear to
have made a mistake."
P. But isn't it very comfortable for the analyst to takc
this approach - not to stop to think about our mistakes?
B. I don't think it is true that we don't stop to think
about our mistakes. Most of us agree that we ought to
know as much as possible about ourselves; if we have the
time and the money, we might be able to afford to go to
an analyst. But even suppose we are wealthy enough to do
that, the amount of time available in the short space of
 one life is very, very little. Although we try to be
aware of our weaknesses, it is extremely unlikely that
we ever would be, even if we were analysed all the time.
While an analysis is going on we are changing; it Is
very. doubtful that any analysis could keep pace with our
own characters. So we become people who are able to make
still further mistakes. I don't think we ever believe
that as we grow older we become wiser - we onLy hope so.
We can only hope that by and large the community becomes
wiser. Analysis has had a considerable effect on the
general attitude towards certain problems in the last
hundred years; people have a less exaggerated or rigid
view of themselves and other people.
To return to your problem: what mistake have you in
mind with regard to this patient?
P. I was paying too much attention to what the patient
was saying rather than what he was doing. His attitude -
showing no respect for me - worried me very much, and I

30 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 6

was curious about my own reaction.

B. That may be so, but it is the kind of thing you can
take up with your own analyst or in some other situation.
Suppose a trained nurse finds, when an accident or
disaster occurs, that she has to carry out some emerg-
ency procedure on the spot without any of the usual
equipment. Then suppose that same procedure is carried
out in a properly equipped operating theatre with
adequate nursing staff and a surgeon skilled at that
particular operation. Of course it would be done better.
But what is a nurse to do when she is confronted with a
man or woman who has just been shot? All that she can do
is something in accordance with what she knows about
medicine. It is no good her regretting that she didn't
take medical training - that is irrelevant. The only
relevant thing is to use her common sense and do what
she can to assist this particular casualty. In England
you cannot take legal action against a doctor because he
has failed to cure a patient; the failure to cure is not
a crime - even being an incompetent doctor isn't a crime.
What is a crime is to be negligent; you can bring an
action against a doctor on the grounds that he didn't
try. In psycho-analysis it is one's obligation to try to
help - you cannot be under an obligation to help. You
can try to draw the patient's attention to what you
think is the truth or a fact, but you cannot consider
that you are obliged to succeed. The mere fact that some-
body else might or could succeed is irrelevant. It is a
painful situation over and over again; we can be aware'
that we don't know enough, or that somebody else would
know better how to deal with a particular problem. But I
don't believe that we would be in any less difficult a
position in any other job. While it is dangerous to be
so complacent that you are completely satisfied with
whatever you do, it is equally dangerous to believe that
you are a bad analyst simply because the patient is hav-
ing a holiday enjoying attacking you. This is something
that cannot be completely dealt with in the course of
your own analysis, but can only be learnt after you have
become qualified and have finished your own analysis -
then you have a chance to find out who you really are.
This patient, if I understand you rightly, is be-
having as if he knew the right way to treat his analyst.
But on what grounds does he think that is the right way

,3'

BRASILIA 1975 31

to treat an analyst, or somebody who isn't very good at

his job? Even if I am an incompetent surgeon, for example,
to treat me with contempt or hostility is not necessarily
the best way to behave - in fact I think it is doubtful
if it is the right way to treat anybody. If possible, you
ought to draw attention to this fact: "You are feeling
that, compared with you, I am a very unsatisfactory per-
son. But you also seem to feel that if you are so super-
ior to me, the right thing to do is to show your super-
iority by being rude and contemptuous." That would give
him a chance of seeing how he feels about you. And if he
is contemptuous and hostile to you, he is probably very
much the same in other situations. It also gives him a
chance to compare that sort of attitude with any other
ideas he might have.
P. When I pointed this out to him he became very emo-
tional, covered his face with his hands, began to sob,
and said, ``I am lost.''
B. That is a very striking response. This attitude of
superiority and contempt is not felt to be good enough,
but then he is afraid that if he gives it up he is lost.
It is hardly a qualification for being superior because
it is obviously very vulnerable, very feeble. Of course
one s object is not to make the patient cry, but to give
him a chance of understanding what he has just said. This
is what makes analysis so very painful for the analysand.
If this patient co-operates, his facade may crumble; it
is very difficult for him to stand being seen for what he
is. There are patients who won't lie down on the couch
but want to sit facing the analyst. They don't realize
that the couch is there not in order to show how inferior
they are, but because it might be easier if they use it.
A patient who does that will often resort to wearing dark
glasses, or to turning away uneasily, or to finding some
method of avoiding being regarded - either physically or
mentally. The patient discovers that although it appears
easy to have an analysis, in fact it is very unpleasant
to be in a situation where there is another person who
has some respect for his personality and is prepared to
look at it.

P. The patient is a forty-year-old unmarried man, a

diplomat. He came for analysis six months ago, not know-
ing what he wanted. He presented some physical symptoms
and had the impression that he couldn't deal with his
problems. His physical symptoms were migraine and gastro-
intestinal disturbances like colic, constipation and
digestive disturbances. This material is from the most
recent session, last Saturday.
He lay down, started to talk, and told me he had
had a dream. He dreamed that he was in hospital having
an operation on his haemorrhoids, and was very worried
because he wanted an English anaesthetic used. After he
woke up lie tried to work out the meaning of the dream,
but came to the conclusion that he couldn't understand
it. It confused him because he had already had an opera-
tion for haemorrhoids last year. He had a friend (who
was also having an operation for haemorrhoids) who had
told him, "I hope they use the kind of English anaes-
thetic that makes it easier to evacuate afterwards."
Since he was confused about the dream, he decided to
leave it to be analysed together with me. He was afraid
to go on thinking about it because he felt he would be-
come more confused. I said, "You were afraid to go on
dreaming."
B. Were you intending to stop analysing him?
P. No.
B. How often were you seeing him?
P. Four times a week.
B. If this was the Saturday session, when would you see
him next?
P. Usually on Monday, but last Monday he was not well.
He had in fact asked me to change the Monday session to
anotlier day because he is often too busy on Mondays.
He agreed that he was afraid to go on dreaming be-
cause he knew he might understand the dream, and even if
his understanding was wrong, it would still be something

BRASILIA - 1975 33
that would have a meaning and 50 be analysable - he would
rather come to an understanding of the dream with me.
B. He seems to have some doubt that there would be any
free associations, but also some fear that there might
be. This point is of some impcrtance generally: a psych-
otic will very often have a dream that has no free asso-
ciations, so the dream is useless. This patient's dream
would be similarly useless if there were no free associ-
ations to it. But he is associating to it, and there is
consequently some anxiety about what might emerge. Of
course, a great deal depends upon what sort of job he
has. As a diplomat he is supposed to keep confidential
information to himself. So one of his problems is how to
have an analysis and keep you correctly informed, and at
the same time keep secret affairs secret.
M. Why did you ask about the termination of analysis
following the material about the operation for haemorrh-
oids?
B. Because he is indicating that he is going to lose
P""' something or have something taken away from him. He is
going to be operated on, and something is going to be
removed from one end of his anatomy.
P. Two things are linked with his anxiety: one is the
fear of being confused with things like dreams; the
other is the fact that he has already been operated on
 for removal of the appendix. He came for analysis just
after the doctors had recommended a laparotomy because
of his digestive problem. He was afraid and didn't agree
with the medical opinion.
B. He can't believe that it would be an operation that
would be of use to him or he would agree to it. I think
his fear is of losing something valuable. But a�good
deal depends on this `English anaesthetic' which enables
these removals to take place without his being aware of
it. He can't make up his mind whether he wants to be
aware of this loss, or whether he wants to remain un-
aware of it and just allow the loss to be sustained.
P. He said he thought his dream was related to some
thing in the analysis. I told him that he already knew
what kinds of anaesthetic there are for physical pain,
but he did not know what kinds of anaesthetic there are
for mental pain, or even if there are any.
B. I think the anxiety here is that his analyst may
really be on the side of some sort of dangerous organ-

34 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 7

ization, or of people who want to take something valuable

away from him.
P. He told me some time ago - and I knew it was a fact -
that he is very rich and owns a lot of real estate. His
job as a diplomat is not a very well-paid one; he only
holds it as a sort of security because he is afraid that
a revolution might cause the loss of all his other
possessions.
B. Even rationally it raises a serious question as to
whether people who are in positions of responsibility or
power should be allowed to have an analysis, because
they may part with information of great importance. It
seems to me that something has happened which makes him
afraid of associating both with his analyst and those
with whom his analyst associates. His analyst might be a
communist, or he might be a capitalist, or he might be
in the pay of a foreign government, or he might be in
contact with spies. For example, if the patient knew
that you were associating with me, then he might be
afraid of- what sort of information could be passed on to
a foreigner. There is a danger,from his point of view,
that he may either have to part with his job or part
with his analyst. It depends on what other people think
of his associating with a psycho-analyst. In this situ-
atlon I think you have to consider seriously this prob-
lem of the traitrous activities of certain people. How
is he to have an analysis without at the same time run-
ning the risk either of actually being associated with a
traitor, or of being accused of being associated with
one?
P. His object relationships are curious. Although rich,
he earns very little in his job; sometimes he has to
telephone his mother in New York to ask her for money;
or he asks for money from his chauffeur, an old family
retainer on whom he vents his hostility. If he wants to
invest in a building, he keeps postponing the business
with the lawyer until the very last moment. He finds no
pleasure in his work - he only works because it is nec-
essary for survival. But since he earns so little, owns
so much, and has no pleasure in working, he doesn't know
why he works at all.
B. One of the earliest noticeable forms of work is hav-
ing to urinate and defecate. The other sort of work - at
the breast for example - is very rapidly rewarding. If

BRA SIL IA - 1975 35

things go well the baby sucks at the breast because it

is so obvious that it gets an advantage out of doing so.
That doesn't apply to the workings of the alimentary
canal; it may not be at all obvious to the baby why it
should have to use the pot. For one thing, there can be
painful feelings about actually passing a motion, espe-
cially if the baby holds its faeces to a point where
they become hard. It is something very nearly like being
bitten at that end of the body.
Bringing that back to the present: the difficulty
is to know what is going on with this patient. One could
say that if he keeps all this money to himself, then he
fears having to part with any of it because he would ex-
pect it to be very painful mentally and physically.
P. I told him that he seemed to use his mind like an
alimentary canal, to absorb things and to expel them.
This made him very confused. He was silent for so long
that I asked him what was the matter. He said, "Lots of
things come to my mind, but since they are meaningless
I try to avoid speaking about them."
B. He is reserving the right to retain various thoughts
on the grounds that they are of no importance - a very
,common thing.
P. I suggested to him that he was keeping to himself
things he didn't want to evacuate.
B. I think that is right. He is retaining material. But
how does he know that it is insignificant and unimportant?
P. I said that because he didn't evacuate, he couldn't
get any help or relief.
B. In either case he cannot: if he tries to keep all
this confused stuff inside him, then he feels that he
has something very bad inside; on the other hand, if'he
talks, then the analyst can see how confused he is. So
he is anxious about what you would say or do if you knew
this. In a way it is simpler if he can make it clear
that it is your fault that he is confused - you can be
blamed for the confusion. Otherwise there has to be some
other explanation, and there is no knowing what your re-
action might be to confusion.
P. He tries to avoid this confusion by a belief he has
that he can stop thinking - he only has to follow the
thought of another person. He suggested that this person
would be me.
B. I have no doubt that he found a way of coping with

36 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 7
the early, primitive situatian; patients can either be-
come `constipated', and so avoid having the painful ex-
perience, or they can become, as it were, `.
Suppose he keeps what lie knows to himself: then he is
really puttin~, a stop to analysis. On the other hand, if
he co-operates and talks freely, then I think he is
afraid that it becomes a sort of verbal diarrhoea, he
is afraid of losing everything. Iii some ways it is felt
to be like not just parting with his confusion and other
rubbish, but also like losing part and parcel of his own
body. In primitive terms, there is a fear of either be-
ing constipated, or of losing everything including a
sort of penis. It is true that there can be the rational
fear of losing all his money - after all, money today is
supposed to have a kind of potency; we usually use it to
do something with.
P. I have a feeling - corresponding to what you describe
as `diarrhoea' - that he cannot use his mind to preserve
his money. At the same time he is very afraid of change.
For example, he travels all over the world to buy paint-
ings, but he never hangs them because he is afraid that
after all he might like to change them and then it would
cause him so much trouble to take them down and put them
somewhere else - he would rather leave them leaning
against the wall.
B. In this respect he is using the pictures as if they
were a form of currency.
P. When he returned from Italy he brought some Persian
rugs which were later stolen from his apartment. He did
nothing about the rcbbery - he didn't call the police or
notify anyone. He feels uncomfortable about his inability
to preserve these things.
B. These pictures are undoubtedly felt to be something
valuable. I think he also feels that his pictorial ideas
could be useful. But in fact he told you that he didn't
mention them because they are so unimportant. So all
these ideas, or potential ideas, present their anuses -
not their front views; those are facing the wall. So the
ideas he presents to you are felt to be unimportant be-
cause they are only like the products of the anus.
P. I would like you to explain the meaning of the `Eng-
lish anaesthetic' which is not to be used dur1ng the op-
eration to obliterate pain, but afterwards so that the
patient can evacuate without pain.

BRASILIA - 1975 37

B. The patient's concern is how to have a painless ana-

lysis. He feels that it is all right to talk about his
dreams because they are of no importance; free associ-
ations are equally all right because they are harmless
rubbish. In other words, if he told you something that
really mattered, then you might use it for your own pur-
poses. Even consciously there can be an anxiety of that
kind: people do make use of the information they are
given. !t is only in analysis that we are particular
about that; it is considered to be a serious matter that
the analyst should be scrupulous about the use to which
he puts information he gets in analysis, and not to take
advantage of the analytic situation to make use of such
information for his own private purposes. This patient's
difficulty is this: he knows that he comes for analysis
for his own private benefit - after all, what else could
he do?

P. This is a case which has already been discussed

(Seminar 4). I would like to mention the change that oc-
curred between that session and the most recent one. The
-patient began to move more freely after I mentioned envy
in the interpretations. She lay down on the couch, and
although she was silent as usual, I noticed that she was
moving. Instead of just lying still, she seemed to be
trying to find a comfortable position and was therefore
moving her whole body. I also had the impression that
she was mentally more mobile. After a silence of about
fifteen minutes - the usual length - she said, "I feel
untied. I recognize myself in these bad ,things I think
and feel, like envy which makes me feel destructive."
B. From the negative point of view of the patient, I
think she is describing a fear of the loosening of what-
ever it is that holds her together. So although there
can be the comfort or relief of feeling less rigid, more
mobile, there is also the anxiety that whatever binds
her together into one personality is disintegrating -
as if the personality was no longer held in any tense
structure. One of the advantages of the patient's being
able to feel better - it is very difficult to say what
is meant by that, but it usually means some nice feeling -
is that it gives a certain degree of confidence to go on
having more analysis if there appears, in spite of these
horrible feelings, a loosening of the fibres; it is a
compensation. It is also one of these situations in
which the presence of the analyst is very important -
one always assumes that, but sometimes it becomes more
apparent. In other words, while the patient is having a
horrible fifty minutes, it is helpful to have the ana-
lyst Present who is not feeling like that in the same
fifty minutes.
P. She experienced the feeling of being untied as some-
thing good, and she expressed the fear that she would
lose the ability to become less rigid.

BRASILIA - 1975 39

B. She can express fear in a number of different ways,

but fundamentally the fear is the same thing that is in
fact bringing her relief. I am sure she will show in
some way that she is anxious about this situation even
if she welcomes it.
P. She said she felt an intense hatred for herself be-
cause she was afraid of not being able to maintain this
change. I had the feeling that I was excluded.
B. Even if the analyst is able to maintain it, that
doesn't alter the fact that the patient is afraid that
she cannot. So there is a great anxiety about this feel-
ing that the analyst probably has something to do with
it, and about what would happen if there was no analyst
there. In what way did you feel excluded?
P. She said that although she was happy to feel untied,
at the same time she felt surrounded by a shield. She
said she was mobile inside her cast, but had this feel-
ing of enclosure, of being without air, living but
entirely bound in the cast. I thought she was talking
about things which concerned not only herself, but also
the relationship between us.
B. There is one way for the patient to deal with a
situation like this: to make the movements of the out-
side - whatever it is - conform to the movements of the
inside. And the same thing the other way round. If they
conform absolutely, then there is no way of being aware
of the uncomfortable conflict between the two. This
state of affairs repeats itself in much less primitive
situations in which the child is anxious to agree com-
letely with the father or mother, or to get a parent to
agree with what it wants. If it succeeded there would be
no awareness of the fact that they are two different
people. However, in view of what you have said about
this patient, I am suspicious that this is something ex-
tremely primitive. It is quite easy to imagine - I don't
mean therefore that it is true or correct - that the
baby in the womb tries to conform to the movements of
the mother, or that the mother tries to conform to the
movements of the foetus.
P. She rejected my interpretation that she was giving
the impression that she was being born.
B. In the course of analysis - and in the course of
life at large - people experience many `rebirths'. I
don't know if it makes it any clearer if you say there

40 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 8

seem to be situations in which the patient emerges from

one state of mind into another state of mind. In the ana-
lytic experience you have a chance of seeing something
which appears to be that kind of event - this upheaval
in which the patient's attitude or personality seems to
be changing.
M. Referring to what you said about the patient making
the movements of the outside conform to those of the in-
side, and vice versa: if the patient succeeded, the ana-
lyst would be deprived of working with the patient.
Would it be possible to express this to the patient?
B. It is a problem to know how that is to be expressed.
The individual has certain ideas which are brought into
harmony with the accepted conventions of contemporary
society. If, in that situation, the revolutionary commun-
ist is existing in a conservative society, then there is
friction. That disagreeable situation can appear to be
dealt with by making everybody communist - then all is
well, peace and quiet, no trouble, no difficulty, every-
body is happy and cured. Except that - as usual - there
are always some people who rebel. They may be capital-
ists rebelling against this smooth, satisfactory society.
Or some artist, painter or sculptor will rebel against
the accepted conventions. Once the representation of the
human form, as done by Praxiteles in the Hermes, is
accepted, someone like Rodin wants to display not the
classical, physical, external appearance of the human
being, but something like the character or spirit. The
situation repeats itself all the time: Rodin is the
revolutionary; then he becomes conventional, everybody
sculpts just like Rodin. Of course, they may sculpt just
like Rodin, but they are not Rodin. The same with paint-
ing: everybody agrees what a beautiful man or woman
looks like. Then there comes along a Picasso who draws
people he says are men and women, but who seem to have
no conformity with the anatomical structure with which
we are all familiar.Then it becomes the accepted style
to paint `just like' Picasso.
What is the material in which we must learn to work?
If we were teaching sculpture we could say, "You have to
learn to respect your marble." A good sculptor must look
with respect at his marble or clay, or whatever the
material may be; otherwise he will torture and mutilate
it into some unsuitable form.. This respect can be seen

BRASILIA - 1975 41

in Michelangelo's unfinished work in Florence; figures

are appearing out of the marble, still showing chisel
marks.
What material does a musician work in, or a math-
ematician? What are we working in? What are we trying to
make emerge? We hope that what will eventuate will be a
human being capable of using his own life. That is why
it is so important that the analyst should respect his
patient, or at any rate be capable of trying to respect
the person he is talking to. This is difficult when the
patient seems to have no respect for the analyst; pa-
tients often consider it a sign of great inferiority to
have to go to a psycho-analyst.
Somewhere in the analytic situation, buried in
masses of neuroses, psychoses and so on, there is a per-
son struggling to be born. It seems to me that the ana-
lyst's function is not to demonstrate all these neurotic
and psychotic mechanisms, excepting as an incidental in
the course of freeing the patient. It doesn't seem to be
fanciful to say that just as Michelangelo, Leonardo,
Picasso, Shakespeare and others have been able to liber-
ate this mass of material, actual forms which remind us
of real life, so the analyst is engaged in an analogous
occupation - an attempt to help the child to find the
grown-up who is latent there, and also to show that the
grown person is still a child. These two might very well
go together, not simply in order to make them indistin-
guishable, but in a creative or profitable manner. This
patient is potentially a mother, but it is all covered
up.

P. The patient is a doctor, a pathologist, who has been

in treatment with me for five years. During the first
month of treatment he had frequent migrain es which came
at the week-ends. After the first month hebecame free
of these headaches. Recently they appeared again.
B. Why did he come for analysis?
P. His chief complaint was difficulty in sexual rela-
tionships. He seemed to be very glad that his migraines
stopped, but he was never interested in exploring the
fact. He has occasionally mentioned it during the five
years, but has shown no signs of wanting to go deeper
into the matter. I get the impression that the headaches
returned because we were dealing with envy in recent
sessions. And I think envy also had something to do with
their disappearance.
I thought the following session was interesting. He
came in, lay down, and remained silent - which was not
typical of him. Then he started speaking about his bro-
ther who is in analytical training. He had had a phone
call from his brother who told him that he had just
bought an apartment - he is very wealthy. The patient
said he felt very envious and angry, but was neverthe-
less able to talk to his brother and even listen to him
and learn something from him. The patient said he knew
that envy was very destructive, and this time he had
managed to control it.
B. What did he expect to happen if he didn't control it?
P. I asked him what he meant by controlling his envy.
His reply was verbal silence accompanied by movements
which he usually makes when he is anxious. He usually
lies on his back; this time he lay on his side and kept
moving his body. After a while he said he felt very dis-
tressed and, "You are trying to confuse me because I
wasn't able to control my aggressiveness."
B. Well, somebody seems to have been controlling some-
body. He started off by saying that he was controlling

BRA SIL IA - 1975 43

the envy. Now it appears that one half of the conflict

at any rate is inside the analyst. If he wasn't control-
ling envy, what was he controlling? And now, who or what
is complaining about being controlled?
P. I wanted to find out by my question what was happen-
ing, what the patient actually did.
B. He controlled envy, and his envy is extremely annoy-
ed about it.
P. I was trying to clarify what he had experienced
while on the telephone.
B. What seems to me to be important here is that you
have a chance of knowing what evidence is available. If
I identify myself with the analysand, I have controlled
the envy; if I am the envy which is being controlled,
naturally I complain that `the other' - whoever it is -
is trying to control my mind. The patient says, "I con-
trol my envy." He also says, "The analyst is control-
ling my envy, trying to control my mind." Could anything
be more infuriating than having an analyst who tries to
control his envy? Is it any surprise that he is impotent
when he is not even allowed to be envious?
There appear to be at least three people in this
group: the controlling person who controls X's envy; X's
envy which is being controlled by him; and the analyst.
Are you reminded of any theories, interpretations - ana-
lytic or otherwise - which correspond to this peculiar
situation which is not unusual in the consulting room?
Is there any known theory in all these vast volumes on
psycho-analysis which appears to match this story?
M. The triangular situation reminds me of the Garden of
Eden.
B. Yes. Freud always seemed to insist that the hallmark
of analysis was that it illuminated, or brought out into
the open, the Oedipus situation. Can you match this clin-
ical event with the theory about the Oedipus story?
P. I now have the impression that the question I asked
the patient was inadequate.
B. If you had been practising analysis as long as I
have, you wouldn't bother aboutaninadequate interpret-
ation-- I have never given any other kind. That is real
life- - not psycho-analytic fiction-. The belief in the
existence of an analyst who gives correct and adequate
interpretations is part of the mythology of psycho-
analysis. I certainly would not be inclined to bother if

44 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 9
you felt your interpretation was inadequate. I would be
rather bothered if you felt it was adequate. The practice
of analysis is an extremely dif ficult occupation and one
which hardly provides space for dogmatic statements.
M. What remains for the analyst? Only feeling?
B. Practice - the inestimable advantage of having a pa-
tient who so far has continued to come. The analyst may
not know much, but he knows more than anybody else about
this patient; he knows what the facts are. When I talk
about this patient, I haven't the advantage that the
analyst has - I don't know the patient. But I can be-
lieve that if I were this patient's analyst I would have
no doubt about the hostility of this statement that I
was controlling his mind.
Another analytic theory which appears to me to be
reactivated by this story I have been hearing is that of
projection: I would be strongly suspicious that this pa-
tient was projecting onto me and - to introduce another
theory - into me, a part of his own personality and feel-
ings. I wouldn't want to engage in an argument with the
patient - "You projected your ideas into me', "No, you
projected your ideas into me", and so on ad infinitum.
In my experience anything like that is a waste of time.
But on the other hand I wouldn't want to let it be sup-
posed that the story that I was controlling his mind was
one to which I subscribed in the slightest degree. So
this theory about projection - although I think it is
applicable and relevant here - doesn't solve the problem
when I am engaged in practice. The analyst is in the un-
fortunate position of having to give a correct interpret-
ation, if he can, while being subjected to the patient's
hostility. It is an advantage if he can remain detached
from this situation in spite of being told that he is
controlling the patient's mind.
Note that I mentioned two theories: one, that the
patient was projecting onto me his own ideas and feel-
ings; the other, that the patient was projecting into me
his own ideas and feelings. The first is applicable to a
relatively simple situation; the second is related to
theories about the sort of patient we would call psych-
otic. I would want to put over to this patient that he
is projecting something into me, while still avoiding
the pointI mentioned about itbecoming a terrible waste
of time having to argue about who said what.

BRASILIA - 1975 45
I might say something of this sort: "These feelings
that you describe appear to me to have a very long his-
tory; I suspect that the relationship between you and
your brother goes back to when you first became aware of
a baby brother at all. You seems to feel as if I were
really a blood relation like an older or younger brother.
Sometimes you feel that you control your envy, sometimes
that you are the envy which has been controlled." I have'
no idea what the patient's response to such an interpret-
ation would be, but I could guess. The' advantage of ana--
lysing such a patient', if he keeps on coming, is that
you don't have to gu~55(J(i!J1~
P. The patient behaves as if he were the analyst; he
explains his feelings with his own theories and presents
them to me like an analyst. I try to ask the kind of
questions that might put things into their proper place.
M. So when the analyst stops him with a question he is
confused?
B. I think- he is confused, and his way of dealing with
that situation is by saying, "I'm not confused- I'm the
analyst-. I'm not confused.- he' (the analyst) is. He's
the younger brother - I'm the elder brother." Having the
experience of being treated like this by a patient is
indeed an unpleasant `and difficult one. But you have to
be able to go on thinking while having all these accus-
ations and projections thrown at you.- :` T' ""L
P. I get the impression that the patient wants me to
keep silent because he is trying to avoid my being able
to analyse him.
B. It is quite likely. But keep in mind the fact that
patients don't know more about the job than you do. It
would be ridiculous for a patient to maintain that he is
a better surgeon than the surgeon because he has broken
his leg, or because he has cancer of the c~o1ortn. But it
is common in analysis for people to think `that, because
they have neuroses or psychoses, they are therefore
better analysts than the analyst. It takes time to be-
come adjusted to the fact that in spite of learning a
terrible lot about our defects, we are nevertheless in
the position of being the analyst if patients come to us.
On no account, therefore, is any useful purpose served"
by agreeing that we know less about neurosis than a
neurotic patient `does, any more than a surgeon is en-
titled to give up operatingon�ithe grounds that a patient
with cancer knows more about cancer than he does.

10';I" J'j~~/ l ~" /)

~
l)1~~r ~LcYc~of -

P. The patient is ten years old, the third of four girls,

and has one brother. She came for analysis because the
family was worried by the fact that she was getting very
bad results at school. She was unable to remember the
alphabet or to learn numbers; she pressed her pencils too
hard and had poor ability in copying the letters of the
alphabet. She underwent a test which confirmed that her
spacial and temporal co-ordination was poor ; it also
revealed that she is very intelligent.
Her mother has twice had psychotic crises and was
in hospital on both occasions. She is in a psychotic
state almost all the time and pays little attention to
what the children are doing. She has always complained
`about this child, saying that the other children are
intelligent, but that this one is dull and stupid.
B. Did you think that the account of her test fitted in
with what you see of her?
P. Yes. She seems to have no conventional sense of time.
It is difficult to follow her because in her play every-
thing seems to happen at once.
B. So she tells you a very great deal in a short space
of time?
P. Yes, especially by her actions - carrying her dolls
from one place to another, going out of the room, coming
back, and so on. She often shows also that she doesn't
understand the limitations of space. She tries to go into
the other rooms; she can't stand the limitations of the
play-room. The main thing I noticed at the beginning of
the analysis, and now in this last month, is that she
loves- to pretend that we are at school and she is the
teacher. In this last year she has progressed slowly and
she can now read and write a little. She likes to test
me to see if I can write or if I know how to add. In the
last session she was trying to find out if I knew how to
multiply. She used to be very severe, always threatening
me, "You must do this", and "You must do that".

BRASILIA - 1975 47
B. I think that what you are describing is an experi-
ment to find out what happens if she isn't so strict;
she can try being your mother if you will be her baby.
P. She feels that if she could imitate the mother, that
would avoid further dangers?
B. I certainly think that she must be feeling that she
missed the chance of growing up, of being the young
mother. She hopes to have the chance of being the mother
with you.
P. Recently she was very sad and depressed. I said,
"Perhaps you could tell me why you are sad." She said
that she would be having her birthday party in two days'
time and she was sad because she had had a quarrel with
her boy-friend; I pointed out that she had not mention-
ed this before. She said she had had this boy-friend for
four months and two days. I continued to try to find out
why she was still sad and why she thought she would not
get back on good terms with her boy-friend. She said she
didn't want him to laugh at her; he had also said that
he wasn't in love with her any more.
B. What had made the boy fall out of love with her?
P. I don't know. This came up in the last session and
was something new.
B. So she didn't tell you how or why they had ceased to
be friends?
P. No. Here in summertime the children go to the beach
and have many parties and the opportunity to play and be
together all the time. They have a different life from
small children in Europe; little girls of eight or ten
years old go dancing and already have boy-friends.
Two things had happened which made the session im-
portant. One was that her eldest sister had been taken
by the father on a business trip to Germany for a week;
she was very jealous and upset about it. The other thing
concerned her brother - the only boy - who had had
special presents for Christmas (a tape rec�order,for ex-
ample) and she was very jealous. She usually complains
very little, but on these two occasions she was sad and
complained a great deal.
B. It seems as if she has never had the chance of work-
ing out her rivalry and envy - that is either her envy
of others or their envy of her. -It is quite likely that
the analysis gives her the-first chance she has ever had
to feel rivalry," jealousy and envy without it causing

48 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 10
some sort of catastrophic reaction. How does she come to
the analysis?
P. A chauffeur brings her - always the same one.
B. Does she ever refuse to come?
P. No, never. She likes to come; she never misses a
session. At the beginning of the analysis she couldn't
bear to see another child doing something shed wasn't
able to do or owning something she hadn't got; she want-
ed to do the same thing and have the same thing. When
she was playing with me she c1he,1ated almost all the time -
she couldn't bear to lose a game. In the last three
months she has stopped doing this.
B. What do you think has happened? Why is she not doing
it any more?
P. While she was constantly playing with dolls - being
the mother, having babies, feeding them - I tried to
show her how much she needed to do that 50 as not to be
envious of her mother and of me. Three months ago, after
a vacation, she stopped playing at being the mother, and
 she didn't try to cheat any more in our games.
B. You are dealing with a dynamic situation with this
child who seems to me to be prematurely and precociously
intuitive. She was able to `see' (in our sense of the
term) much more than she was able to stand at a very
early stage.
P. I would like to describe one of the last sessions of
last year. She brought me a doll and put it by my side.
She said, "Now, you cover yourself and stay there; we'll
call the doctor; you are going to have a baby."
B. In this dynamic situation she feels as if she were
growing up, as if a sort of analytic baby will result
from this game she is playing with you. There is also an
anxiety about what sort of baby this is going to be,what
sort of baby she herself is turning into. It is complic-
ated by her feeling as if she is turning into both a
baby and a mother - she is becoming a mother. But if she
allows herself to be a mother, there is the fear of what
sort of baby she will have. I would have thought from
what she has already said that her fear is that the
mother will slip round, as it were, and become her baby.
Will it be a good baby or a bad one? Putting it in other
terms, she fears that she might turn into a bad mother -
not a nicer person but* a worse one. This is part of the
problem of being a very intuiti've child; she fears the

"`~Jl~t'i1*; b'"'f,' (`k

l'~l&'),
d�\ P,
`1 �~ I~"1

BRASILIA - 1975 49
increase in her capacity to be intuitive because of what
she might do if she was in the position of the mother.
M. I get the impression that she uses the consulting
room rather than the analyst.
P. I agree. Last year she often played at taking trips,
going in and out of the room with her babies. Many times
she said the babies must go to sleep, and then she wanted
to lock the door and stay inside,, putting me outside for
a couple of minutes.
B. Outside for what reason? What was your impression?
P. I felt that she wanted to stay inside feeling like a
mother and maintaining that position with her babies.
B. One question is, are you to protect the mother and
her babies in this room, or are you a bad, hostile ob-
ject who will damage them?
P. Sometimes she experimented at hating me for a week
or ten days, but then she would give it up and I was ad-
mired again. The wish for me to have a baby came later.
At another time I had the impression that I was in the
position of a maid - she called me to look after the
baby or to give it medicine while she was shopping.
B. There has to be a good mother somewhere,' whoever it
is. But I think there is also�this problem of the danger-
ous father, the envious or hostile one who is excluded.
P. The father f,irst appeared in the analysis when he
travelled to Germany. For about three days she pretended
that she was the mother who was travelling abroad while
the father was here in Brazil; they had long-distance
telephone conversations. The only other time that the
father has come into the analysis was during almost a
whole week when she was pretending to be in the USA in
Disneyland. She pretended to be the mother,accompanied
by all the children, calling her husband long-distance
and saying, "Oh my dear, you should come; we miss you
very much; the children are so sad, you should come
quickly." Then she told me, "He can't come, - he's too
busy. He always comes at the end of the vacation."
B. The father is apparently a good one.
P. Yes, he is.
B. The telephone makes it possible to have a contact
with something she has forgotten or never really worked
through properly. There is-a `getting into contact' with
a love affair she hasn't had yet - with the father of
the family. She may be aware of something behind the

sO CLINICAL SEMINARS - lO

actual father and mother. It is the future casting i~~s

shadow before, as well as the past casting its shadow on
the present. From this point of view, going to school is'
for her a waste of time because it is not possible to'
see what the kind of thing she learns in school has to do
with having babies. It is striking that in the analysis
she seems to feel that that is what she wants, that sort
of game is really necessary.

P. The patient is an eight-year-old girl. She draws a,

great deal in the sessions. In the one I am reporting
she drew a house with a girl looking out of the window.
There was a road passing the house and two people stand-
ing there playing instruments. They were playing some
music that she had learnt at school, about a boy singing
a song to his girl-friend.
B. How does she bring in this music? Does she sing it?
P. No, she explains it.
B. A sort of running commentary on the drawing?
P. Yes. I said, "You are telling me about things you
like, such as having a boy-friend, but also something
you don't like that you cannot keep." She erased the
girl and the two boys, and then drew a girl sitting in a
hammock slung between two trees, and the sun drawn with
the face of a person.
B. What about the expression on the face of the sun?
P. It had no special expression. She erased the drawing
again and drew small fishes in the sea and a fishing
boat. Then a big arch at the bottom of the sea. She said
the arch was full of hidden treasure; a thief had stolen
it, had run away from the police, and had thrown it into
the sea. I said she was afraid of the hidden things in-
side her, and afraid that I would not understand. She
drew a shell and a necklace inside the arch, and a man
swimming close to the arch. I asked her about the
swimmer; she said he wouldn't find the arch because he
was swimming with his head turned the other way. I said
she was afraid that these hidden things might not please
me and then I would not like her any more. Then she
rubbed out the swimmer and redrew him facing in the
direction of the arch.
B. Has anyone any questions before we hear the inter-
pretation? Where do you feel are the biggest gaps in
your own knowledge?
M. I think we want to hear you.

52 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 11

B. Yes, I `,m sure you do. I would gladly give an opinion

but what do you think a supervision is? What is the ob-
ject of the exercise? If I were analysing this child I
would have no chance of discussing the matter with any-
body; I would have to think of an interpretation and
hope that it was on the right lines and related to the
facts she was putting at my disposal. There is a great
deal to be said for being an analyst, provided of course
that one can learn how to be a better one.- But is there
any point at all in supervision? I don't think it is any
worse than a scientific meeting which is hardly any use
whatsoever. I can give a number of reasons why I think
there is something to be said for them from my point of
view, but what you have to consider is this: when you
have very little spare time, can you really afford to
spend such time as you have on scientific meetings,
supervisions, or anything away from the actual practice
of the job? What use can we make of this meeting?
M. We can exchange points of view.
M. I would use the Xleinian point of view in the ses-
sion with this child; her relationship with her mother,
primary objects -
B. I think I would do the same if I were tired and had
no idea what was going on, and if this child wasn't tell-
ing me anything. If in fact the worst came to the worst
I might fall back on Kleinian theories, Freudian the-
ories, Abrahamian theories, any theories.
P. It seems to me that the patient's anxiety is re-
lated to the primal scene; the girl looking through the
window -
B. I do not disagree with you about that, but why music-
ally, why sound? Why in drawing?
P. It suggested itself to me because it was a love
scene.
B. I am not quarrelling with that at all. But what is
this child trying to say to the analyst? And why has she
to fall back on her capacity as an artist or a musician?
I think this idea of the love scene or serenade may be
important; and it may have been important to be able to
draw it.
P. The feeling of a love scene is vqry strong because
it has been in one drawing after another; she is main-
taining a conversation through the drawings.
B. If the child is sufficiently gifted she may be able
 BRASILIA - 1975 53

to make up for the difficulty in conveying to the ana-

lyst what it is she wants to communicate. That is why I
ask: what is this child's language? To some extent it is
complicated because she is obviously able to talk - she
describes what is happening in the pictures.
P. She has the capacity for expressing poetry.
B. She has to use every capacity she has if she is go-
ing to talk to the analyst. She has to be able to draw;
she has to be able to see; and she has to be able to
give a verbal description of what she is drawing. Using
all that, she still has a hard job to make clear her
problem. I sometimes feel that a patient's job is made
even more difficult because he or she has to get through
the analyst's preconceptions.
M. Do you mean that besides the theories the analyst
has, he also has preconceptions?
B. Of course.
M. Would you say something more about it?
B. If a young child came to me for analysis I would be
surprised if she stayed in the room for more than about
two minutes; I would expect her to feel that she didn't
want to talk to someone who looked like me. But that
might not be true; I might remind her of somebody she
knows, like a grandfather who listens to what she has to
say. So she might be prepared to tell me quite a long
story in the hope that I would listen. That problem
arises with every one of us. In fact one of the dif-
ficulties about undergoing analytic training is that we
tend to forget that the real puzzle, the real mystery,
is that anybody comes for analysis at all.
To return to this patient: she seems to feel that
it is worth while trying to draw in order to tell you
something. What vocabulary would you use if you are go-
ing to ask any questions? You certainly don't want to
give the impression that it is a bad drawing, but it
would be interesting to know what the sun is doing, or
what its expression means. I am pursuing this because we
can be reasonably sure that a child who talks so intelli-
gently almost certainly was the observer of what you de-
scribed as the `primal scene'; a child or infant very
early on gets suspicious about what is going on. If you
cast your mind back to any occasion when you have seen a
baby stare, you will recall the effect that it has - I
have known a mother get quite anxious on being stared at

54 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 11

by her own infant. Sometimes this stare seems to be

`what?'; sometimes it seems to be more `why?' That is
why I ask, what is the sun's expression? I am sure that
at some point it would be an expression of what her feel-
ings were on witnessing or being aware of the parental
relationship - although at present it seems to be more
an observation of her relationship with her analyst.
 What happened after she had drawn this picture with
the sun and a hammock slung between two trees? Do you
remember anything else about that picture?
P. In previous drawings there had always been a sign of
being unable to sleep. But in this one the figure was
asleep.
M. My phantasy is that she could go to sleep because
she has stolen the mother's place.
B. There is always the chance that if you can have a
phantasy it might turn into an interpretation.
M. I am doing a mental exercise for you.
B. `Mental exercise' is right. Isn't it surprising that
one might have to do a'mental exercise for a child? There
are so many people who assume that nothing could be
easier than to bring up a child.
M. I think the `mental exercise' is necessary because a
child has very little capacity for symbolization.
B. I often feel that the same remark applies to psycho-
analysts. I don't feel that a child is so lacking in
capacity as we very often want to believe. In fact I
think it is much more useful to consider the possibility
that one does not know a great deal about this subject,
and that even a child might teach us something if it
could be persuaded to tell us a bit more.
I have quoted before from a letter Keats wrote to
his brother in which he said it occurred to him what the
great strength of Shakespeare was - he could tolerate
mysteries and half-truths without an irritable reaching
for certainty. The important point about that is the
`irritable reaching for certainty'. Pressure is put on
us as analysts always to know what the problem is which
is so obscure, so difficult to grasp, and which is un'-
folding itself in front of our eyes. This child is co-
operative, friendly; she draws, talks, describes; one is
bound to feel that one ought to know the interp'retation.
But the really important thing is that we should be able
to watch this drawing, or join in the conversation, so

BRASiLIA - 1975 55

that the child can have a chance of saying what she is

able to see or feel or hear which we cannot. The `primal
scene' becomes extremely convincing when it is portrayed
for' you by a child; sometimes even the gifted grown-up
finds a phrase which is a short, concentrated descrip-
tion of exactly this scrutiny, this stare at the parent-
al pair, or, to make it more vague, the sexual pair.
This stare can either be at two parents engaged in some
sort of sexual activity, or it can be a parent scrutin-
izing two children similarly engaged. It is worth search-
ing your own experience to re-mobilize some of these
possible expressions of that scrutiny, that threesome
situation - the observer and the two observed objects.
The exercise can be increased still further by consider-
ing what is observed. Sound? Sight? Smell? What sense?
It would give you an enormous variety of what we call
`psycho-analytic interpretations'.
P. The patient is a twenty-six-year-old man who has
been in analysis with me for six years. He wanted to be
analysed by me - not by anybody else. He was worried
about his homosexuality.
His father owned a farm of thousands of acres, a
large house, and was a very powerful, wealthy man. His
mother was born in China, then went to Russia; from
there she came to Brazil before she was thirteen. His
father met her when she was about fifteen years old. She
was described by everyone who knew her as a beautiful
girl. She was always afraid that her son would be regard-
ed as Chinese or Russian, not Brazilian.
He said his mother had a very easy delivery when he
was born and he was breast-fed. His brother, who was
born seven years later, became very ill and could not
take the breast. The patient remembered being very
anxious about this. He also remembered once trying to
kiss his mother when he was eight or nine years old. He
kissed her mouth, and she said, "No, you mustn't kiss my
lips - that's not allowed."
He still feels like a father to his brother who
once almost fell from an eighth-floor window when trying
to cross from one window to another on the outside wall.
Five years later, when the patient was under the inf lu-
ence of marijuana, he had been tempted to jump from the
window of his home on the tenth floor.But he thought, "I
am in analysis - there is hope in my life."
He has a great friend, a woman, who is an inter-
nationally famous painter. His mother is very jealous of
this friendship. Once he invited this friend and her
husband to stay at his farmhouse. His mother said, "This
woman is very interested in you. I don't want you to
continue this friendship - it will lead to scandal - she
will leave her husband." He says his mother has always
been jealous of his friends.
When he was only ten years old he suspected his

BRASILIA - 1975 57

mother of having a sexual affair with a woman. He became

very anxious and started spying on his mother, even in
her bedroom.
At about the age of thirteen he started to take an
interest in men; he tried to have sexual intercourse
with the maid's brother. He continued to have sexual
relations with many young men until he met one whom he
described as a new type of beauty; he said he was like
Dorian Gray. This continued for two years, during the
analysis. Then he told this young man, "I feel that we
are becoming friends, and as your friend I won't have
any relations with you. I never want to see you again~~
He offered him a large sum of money, but the young man
refused, saying, "No, we are friends."
Next he had a sexual relationship with a young
woman who was a well-known expert in manipulating the
stock exchange. He gave her four hundred thousand shares
to deal with and lost them all. He said, "Oh well, in a
few months the shares we have will bring us in much more
than I lost."
He is an accomplished painter, but he only paints
ugly figures. For instance, a typist without hands; a
violinist without arms. Each one has ugly features. The
pictures are always black. Somebody asked him, "Why do
you paint these pictures?" He replied, "Because I am an
artist, and you know what `artist' means - it means
looking for beauty and looking for truth - and that is
the truth about humans."
B. What do you think he comes to you for? He insisted
on coming to you, whether you wanted him or not. Why
have you got to see him? From your account of him, he
has everything - brains, intelligence, money.
P. He came to me because he hates himself so much. He
once said, "It is better to be a leper than to be a
homosexual."
B. What does he mean by `homosexual'? You could draw
his attention to the fact that this is a technical term.
What is the evidence that he is homosexual? You could
ask him that. And how does he know that he is homosexual?
P. The evidence he has is that he prefers men to women
in sexual intercourse; when he was young he hated all
women. He says, "I want company only until I have had
intercourse - afterwards I don't want to see anyone."
B. Terms like `homosexual' are no longer employed as

58 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 12

technical terms - the are just part of the language

peopl�e use over and over again; unfortunately the whole
language we employ is debased. From one point of view
there is absolutely no difficulty about a sexual rela-
tionship - children, even infants, have sexual relation-
ships. So it is no particular surprise to me to hear
that this man can have sexual relationships. The sexual
relationship has become something which is easily done -
like everything else he does. He prefers men to women.
What of it? A great number of women prefer men to women.
A sexual relationship~~ is pushed into a position in which
it matters very much whether he has one or not - which
is simply not true; it is one of the few things which
any animal can do. He is behaving as if he cannot have
a sexual relationship, but his trouble is that he can.
So I would like to consider what it is that he cannot
have. Apparently he can have almost anything. What is it
then that is arousing a feeling of despair?
Freud said,in The Interpretation of Dreams, that
the symbols would change. Of course he was right. As a
matter of fact the symbols which are employed by any
particular individual are that individual's unique con-
tributio�n. So when he is using a symbol, one must con-
sider what that symbol symbolizes. In a sense he can
solved this problem by having a sexual relationship like
everybody else - `homosexual', `heterosexual'; these
words are now symbols which have lost their original
value and have new meanings.
This young man could have a sexual relationship at
the age of thirteen; long before that there was no dif-
ficulty about using his genitalia. But there can be a
realization that the sort of experience he had as a
thirteen-year-old was not `it'.
M. What is psycho-analysis for him?
B. Psycho-analysis is only another example of the sort
of thing he is familiar with. In so far as it is just a
conversation with somebody else, I think it is very un-
likely to have the slightest effect upon him; he is
unlikely to believe that psycho-analysis could do any-
thing to alleviate his feelings of despair. But this
peculiar fact that he picks on a particular analyst and
insists on coming to that analyst, seems to be differ-
erit from feeling that analysis is like everything else.
I think that this man has never been able to love

BRASILIA - 1975 59

and has never experienced being loved. But at the same

time - and here's the puzzle - he realizes that there is
something better than just fiddling around with men and
women, having these easy sexual relationships. Those
experiences are always expressions of hate, and always
lead to the emergence of hatred of the sexual experience
and of the partner. I don't know why the vocabulary con-
centrates on this matter of a sexual relationship with
the same sex, except that it gives a simple explanation
which is no explanation at all. Sometimes a sexual rela-
tionship is called `marriage' or `engagement'; one is
fooled into believing that the person is a mature indiv-
idual. Whenever we have to deal with a patient who says
that he or she is happily married, I think we always
need to see if we can bring out into the open this ele-
ment of hatred for the partner in the sexual experience.
This is one of the peculiarities of a `homosexual' rela-
tionship - it is unsatisfactory because the two always
hate each other. I say `always', but that is not right.
You may come across two men or two women who really love
each other deeply - for example, David and Jonathan. The
mature relationship of passionate love between a man and
a woman is something which comes very late, and it never
ends - there is always more to learn.
M. I would like to know your opinion about a loving
relationship between two people of tlie saine sex who also
have sexual intercourse.
B. I would have to see and meet those two people, and
then I could tell you what my opinion was. This is the
whole point about psycho-analysis. That is why I say, by
all means read all these books and everything else you
want to, but don't let it get in the way of your forming
your own opinion of the person with whom you are dealing.
P. A few weeks ago the patient said to me, "Doctor, why
aren't I interested in women as other men are?" I said,
"I think you are doing what you did with your man friend -
you recognize that women deserve respect, and you see in
each woman not the woman, but the man." He became very
nervous and said, "I can't understand such things. If I
see women as men, that's bad." He didn't come to the
next two sessions; then he came again but didn't refer
to the previous session. .Later on he said he was very
depressed.
B. This young man is told something about his sexual

60 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 12

life, and his immediate reaction is, "That is terribly

serious", as if he had heard some sort of bad news. In
short, he is expressing his hostility to the analyst for
telling him something. But if the analyst is telling him
something which is true, t'hat is no particular reason
for hostility. So even the analytic relationship is one
in which you can detect this same hostility even though
it is only verbal intercourse which takes place. The
seriousness of this condition is that sexual activity is
probably the most intimate method of expressing love and
affection. That is why it is so serious when it is de-
based, when it becomes the kind of thing that can be had
with anybody and everybody.

P. This patient originally came for five months and then

left on his own initiative because he was suffering from
a severe case of obsessive neurosis: it took him so long
to wash his hands - an hour - and to take a bath - four
hours - that when he arrived for his session there were
only five minutes left. A year later he returned and
started again. We agreed that if he didn't come for at
least half an hour of each session until the end of Jan-
uary, then I could not continue the treatment. He was
unable to meet these requirements, so the sessions ended
on January 31st. I told him that we could continue when
he thought he could manage to arrive in time to have at
least half an hour of the session.
The session I would like to present occurred two
months after the analysis was interrupted by me. It was
possible for me to see him because it was Easter week and
I had a free hour.
B. I would be doubtful about interrupting the analysis.
It seems to me easier to say right at the beginning, "If
I have a vacancy I shall want to see you X times a week,
and I would like you to conform to my holiday arrange-
ments." You can say you will expect the patient to pay
if he takes time off; you expect the time you make avail-
able to be paid for. What the patient does with that time
is another matter. This patient could say, "Well, I come
regularly; I do the best I can; I come so many times a
week - I do everything." You can agree to make your time
available for the time being, but you cannot tell the
patient what use to make of it.
M. Isn't there something implicit in the concept of
work that both people should work together - actually
work?
B. You would think it should be so, but it very often
isn't. Th~~ background of this could be that the child.
believes that the parents must look after it. But in
fact they don't - that is why there are children who�are
62 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 13

abandoned. So I don't think you want to appear to enter

into a contract which you cannot in fact keep. You can
try, if you get some help from the. patient, but you
don't want to get edged into a position in which you
have said that you will cure him or do something for him
no matter whether he helps or not. He may not come, or
he may be thirty minutes late, or he may come and say
nothing. But you cannot contract to help the patient
whatever he may do, any more than you can contract to
bring up a child however hostile or unhelpful it is.
M. Would. it be worth saying to the patient, "You are
sacrificing yourself", or, "You are sacrificing the
session"?
B. I wouldn't say that. I would say that he seems to
feel that he has so much time and money available that
he can afford to spend it in that way.
P. Another condition I had made was that he should
leave his parents' home because of his mother's hostil-
ity towards him. When he lived with other people he
managed to keep appointments. When he arrived for this
session (twenty-five minutes late) he was already living
away from home in a boarding house. The owner was a neu-
rotic woman who had many difficulties in bringing up her
own children. He was not allowed to use the telephone or
to occupy the bathroom for long periods. The time he
took to do things created a climate of tension between
him and the landlady. For example, he wanted to heat
some milk, but she wouldn't allow him to; they started
quarrelling because he insisted on heating the milk,say-
ing it would only take a minute. So she threw a plaster
statuette at him - which he avoided. Then she tried to
throw a chair at him. One of her children arrived and
made peace between them, but the landlady told him to
leave. So he went to his room and started packing. But
as usual it took him a long time. After packing, he went
downstairs and asked the landlady to give him back half
his month's rent deposit. She said she would only return
the money if his parents came to fetch it. Then she put
him out in the street. He kept protesting that this was
impossible because there was a contract between them and
he had paid his acco'unt.
B. What contract would there be in childhood or infancy?
How would he pay? It is all very well for him to say he
paid the deposit and so on, but what deposit did he pay

BRASILIA - 1975 63

his father and mother? What contract, in other words, is

there in which the parent is bound to bring up the child?
P. I told him that he was treating me like the landlady.
He now wanted me to pay a penalty for breaking the con-
tract.
B. What contract is there with the analyst when the ana-
lyst isn't even a father or mother? Yet he is expecting
you to do something which nobody has done so far.
P. After I gave this interpretation he said lie couldn't
understand, so I repeated it. I added that this situ-
ation is one already well known to him; he feels he is
owed something by others; they should have patience with
him and pay attention to him. He feels that these things
are owed him because he was ill-treated by his mother.
B. But they aren't; nobody owes anybody a happy life or
a proper up-bringing. The only place where he gets any-
where near it is with the analyst, and there he expects
from a complete stranger something which nobody else has
done.
P. I thought there was a connection between what he
said and the milk he wanted to heat; it was in two
plastic containers in the refrigerator. I suggested that
he felt he wasn't getting good milk, that the milk his
mother gave him was cold.
B. But suppose it was warm: who has warmed it? Whose
contract is it to warm it? Where has he got this idea
from? We hope to get some co-operation from a patient,
but we don't know why this is expected. The only con-
tract that the analyst enters into is that he will do
his best - not that he will be successful.
M. Is this not a case of infantile narcissism?
B. The point is, what does it look like in the session?
Where does his right to be loved come from? Why should
any mother love her baby? Why should any child think
the mother or father owes it an education, an up-bring-
ing? You could draw the patient's attention to this.
"You are talking as if somebody had entered into a con-
tract to give you a happy life., But we don't know where
you get that idea from." Patients will often say all
sorts of things about what bad fathers or mothers they
have. All right. But then, where does the idea that
there is a good father or mother come from? One can say
why the patient does not expect to get good analysis or
help. but it doesn't explain why the patient thinks he

64 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 13

will. I could go further: there is an idea here that

somebody will pay for the analyst to be properly analy-
sed and supervised and so on. But who provides an ana-
lyst with the knowledge which he has to have? It is hard
to say where this expectation comes from unless what the
patient wants is a `mother' who will look after him.
There must be some reason why he expects the analyst to
be properly equipped.
M. I am reminded of patients who say they didn't ask to
be born, but since they are in the world they expect it
to take care of them.
B. Quite. Even in the constitution of the United States
of America there is the statement that every man has the
right to be happy. However, when i~ comes to our job
here, where do patients get this idea that the analyst
will take the trouble to be analysed, educated, quali-
fied and so on? And where do they think the analyst gets
the money from? Analysts have to ask patients to pay not
because we are trying to take their money away from them,
but because somebody has to pay for all this training
and education. In the meantime, this idea that there is
a fate or god waiting to put right all the things that
go wrong, can be a dangerous one. This statement, "I
didn't ask to be born", is a complete repudiation of any
responsibility. Who or what is this patient defending
himself against?
M. Perhaps against the fear of what he will have to pay
in return for receiving analysis.
B. If he makes good use of the analytic experience,
then he is showing that his parents gave him something
he can make good use of, so they can't be absolutely bad.
M. I think he would tend to preserve the idea of feel-
ing hostile towards the parents.
B. It is quite possible; it would contribute to the
need to go on proving that he has a bad analysis; or, if
he has a good analysis, it shows how badly he was brought
up because he has to have an analysis. We could translate
this into technical terms such as, `This is the genesis
of repetition compulsion'. Your patient has to keep on
coming time after time after time, and still has to keep
on having a bad analysis. You can go to a lecture about
repetition compulsion, oY read about it, but it is very
difficult to recognize the animal when you see it in
analysis.

P. The patient is a woman of twenty-six, an only child.

She is a psychologist, has just graduated, and was sent
to me by the Institute of Psycho-analysis. She started
analysis, four times a week, about a month ago. Right at
the beginning she said that what had happened during the
last nine years of her life seemed to have happened only
yesterday, and that she didn't pay much attention to any-
thing before that. What had happened was this: nine
years ago her father got into trouble with the police
over an involvement with a fifteen-year-old girl. The
patient heard the news on the radio and read about it in
the newspaper. From that moment on she followed all the
activities of the police and the lawyers - her parents
never talked about it, but she knew everything that was
going on. The family moved from one town to another,
running from the police. Now the father is on bail await-
ing trial. The mother married against her family's
wishes; she was very wealthy, but the father was just a
janitor in a building downtown.
At the beginning of the session I am reporting, she
did something different from usual - before she lay down
she looked at me and smiled. Then she said, "Today I
just can't think about anything. Why is that? Yesterday
whenI left here I felt quite free."
B. It is as if she felt that nine years ago something
emotionally important happened with the result that she
has never been the same again. But with you just then,
she was afraid that the same thing had happened again,
namely, she smiled at you - and there is no knowing what
troubles may happen now. In other words, it is felt to
be typical of one of these incidents which are apparent-
ly of no importance, and yet it starts such a train of
events that you can never forget it. On the other hand,
if she isn't going to dare to smile at the analyst or
other people, that is also a desperately serious situ-
ation. One of the very early experiences that the infant

66 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 14
has is of smiling. That often triggers off most surpris-
ing results: the mother or father at once notices it.
"Look, the baby is smiling!" So in a sense this trigger
action is felt to have inconceivable consequences. I
would try to draw the patient's attention to that; "I
think something must have happened which reminds you of
that disastrous series of events. Perhaps it is because
you smiled at me." Or you could just say, "It would be
useful to know what it was that scared you so much. You
are frightened that it triggered off an imminent dis-
aster."A great deal of, experience makes me suspect that
this is something fundamental, as if the foetus was res-
ponsible for starting birth. I don't see any way of ever
proving that, but I certainly find it useful to bear in
mind as being the first instance, even before birth, of
a sort of catastrophic event. Then come these later
events after birth such as the smile - which,as you know,
is called everything from a smile to wind or indigestion.
There are other occasions - adolescence seems to me to
be typical - when the person is child enough to know
what it feels like to be a child, and is grown up enough
to feel very grown-up. There are many of these stages in
which people are accessible to feelings which may not be
quite so noticeable at other times.
To return to your patient: there is this event nine
years ago, and this event a moment ago when the patient
looked at you and smiled. All you can do is to hear and
see what happens next. In the course of your own analy-
tic work you not only have to manufacture your tools
with which you carry out the analysis, but you also con-
tribute to what is already known and appears to confirm
psycho-analytic theory, or may indeed cause psycho-
analytic theory to change, to become more expressive. In
other words, if the subject is growing, then the exist-
ing theory has to be flexible. We have to learn all
these theories, but it is a perfect pest in the end. We
suffer from `indigestion' of theories and facts, until
it is almost impossible to hear what the patient says.
The trouble today is not ignorance of psycho-analytic
theories;the trouble is so many theories that you cannot
see the patient for them.
The advantage of having parents who are happily
married is that so many fears and anxieties don't matter
very much. If things go wrong, then there may develop an

BRASILIA - 1975 67
individual who appears to be able to laugh but never
smiles; unless the stimulus is very great he can't over-
come the inhibition to do something which is just a
smile. Patients over and over again are able to laugh
but not to smile, or if they smile, their eyes are al-
ways unsmiling. As a matter of fact I think analysis
frequently makes it worse - it shouldn't, but psycho-
analysts themselves sometimes appear to be unable to
enjoy life or to do the equivalent of smiling. It is al-
most impossible to describe this kind of thing, but the
advantage of psycho-analysis is that you get a chance of
seeing real people.
Most people don't mind whether their children smile
or not - there is no point in talking about it. But with
this patient it strikes you: that is important. It is
not a matter of the slightest importance whether this is
mentioned in analytic text books; what does matter is
that this patient smiles and you notice it. That can be
the beginning of a train of thought, a chain reaction
with you.
This patient can be afraid that you will kiss her
or start making love to her - or that you won't. If you
don't, perhaps it is because you don't love her, or be-
cause you are angry with her for smiling at you. The
whole trivial business assumes great proportions. But
had that event not happened nine years ago, or had it
been properly dealt with at the time, it wouldn't today
be of such tremendous importance and she would not be
living in expectation of an imminent disaster. I would
be prepared to bet that almost certainly something else
contributed to the problem before that event nine years
ago, probably during infancy.

P. The patient, who had been absent for a few sessions

before this one, came into the consulting room and sat
in the chair. She remained silent and appeared to be
suffering some sort of anxiety. I told her that I sensed
her anxiety and that she was consequently experiencing
some difficulty.
B. Why did you say that to her?
P. I sensed an atmosphere of tension and anxiety, al-
most physically.
B. I was wondering why you felt it was necessary to
mention it to the patient. I am not suggesting that you
should or should not; I am merely wondering why you did.
P. It came to my mind and I felt it was interesting to
show it to her.
B. But why? I am not suggesting for a single moment
that I am asking you some simple question.
P. I don't know how to answer it.
B. I think you are quite right, but it is a matter of
some consequence because otherwise one gets into a habit
of thinking that the important thing is to say something
to the patient. But you were there and you saw her. I am
therefore interested to know why you thought it import-
ant to tell her what you did. However, let's leave it
aside and see what happened.
P. She smiled and said, "Yes, it has been difficult to
come. It isn't agreeable here, and it's boring."
B. She doesn't have to come, so what is the problem? If
that is all that is troubling her, she only has to stay
away and do something else.
P. In fact I asked her, "Why do you come?" She replied,
"It is less difficult now than it was at the beginning,
but I thought that this was the time of day to be relax-
ing. I want to give up analysis and take a painting
course where I would be more gratified."
B. Why not? It only intensifies the mystery as to why
she had turned up at all.

BRASILIA - 1975 69
P. She said it was a long time since she had done any
painting; a course would provide her with the company of
highly qualified people.
B. All this seems to me to be a very good reason for
going to a painting class, but nothing whatever to do
with her presence in your consulting room. In fact the
only thing I gather she has said so far explains why she
should not be there - not why she is.
P. I said I thought it was hard for her to come to the
sessions because she did not want to admit her difficult-
ies in the relationship with me, and because she did not
like her own behaviour.
B. Why do you think she would like to be any different?
In any case, what is stopping her - if she wants to be
different, why shouldn't she?
P. It seemed to me that she could not tolerate feeling
anxiety in front of me, that she was perhaps ashamed.
B. But I imagine there is a door to the room and she
can walk out if she wants to. If she doesn't like your
company she can find others in the way she has already
said. It still doesn't explain what she is doing in your
consulting room. It seems to me that you are trying to
find an excuse for her, but I don't see why you should,
and I don't see why you shouldn't expect her to say why
she has come.
P. She thought about what I said, and then she replied,
"I have always been like that; I have always liked to be
the best. When I was a child in school, I was friendly
with the headmaster's daughter. We were both supposed to
recite a poem at a concert, but when the time came I
couldn't say the poem because I was afraid of not doing
well in front of the audience. And then I cried because
I felt the teacher had trusted me and that she was dis-
appointed in me." I told her that it seemed that she
wanted to be my best analysand, that she wanted to have
no difficulty with the analysis, no anxiety.
B. But she hasn't said that you are her favourite ana-
lyst. And you have said that in many respects her com-
pany is somewhat deficient. For one thing, she hasn't
turned up for a number of sessions; I would like to know
why. I would also like to know why she has turned up,
who she thinks the analyst is, and who she thinks she is.
I might say to her, "You are very frank - you have told
me that you find me boring. Do you tell most people this?

70 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 15
Or is it the sort of comment you reserve for a psycho-
analyst? " I am not saying this because I think it is
very important with regard to this particular patient,
but because you are liable to lose sight of this fact.
A patient might come and use a flood of bad language, or
draw a lot of funny pictures if he was a good artist,
or bring a powerful musical instrument. Then it is some-
times useful to say to the patient, "You have just ...",
whatever it is. "Do you do this with everybody, or do
you come and behave in this way only with me? If so,
why?" You don't want to scare the patient, nor do you
want to give the impression that you consider youself to
be a doormat should anybody want to wipe their shoes on
you. After all, I take it that you intend to be an ana-
lyst all your life. So it is a matter of importance how
you propose to spend, your professional life. Most of us
have undergone a prolonged, expensive and tiresome
discipline. Was that simply for the purpose of being re-
garded as boring, or of being treated as people of no
consequence and riot worthy of respect?
If you say what I suggest, it introduces an element
by which it can be made clear to the patient that you
are aware of the way in which she is behaving. I am not
sure that your interpretations really give her a chance
of understanding that you expect something of her - this
is a matter about which you have to make up your own
mind. We all spend a lot of time analysing unconscious
motives, but this is another matter - this is a problem
which arises when you make it knovin that you are avail-
able for consultation. Saying that you are available for
analysis in fact says nothing, but it is a convenient
way of making it possible for patients to express what
they think you are. For example, does this girl think it
is useful to have an analyst in case she might want to
see one, or in case she is feeling like being rude to
somebody? We don't know, but at least you can have an
idea of how you want to spend your time.
We are liable to drift into analysis for no better
reason than that we happen to be good at it. Most of us
are good at something or another, but do we therefore
want to spend the rest of our lives doing it? And can we
really expect our husbands and wives to share such an
occupation with us? The question is a far-reaching one.
It has nothing whatever to do with analysis, but it has

BRASILIA - 1975 71
a great deal to do with real life. It is a sad and de-
pressing fact that the analytic world is littered with
people who set up as analysts for all sorts of reasons,
and patients who are in serious states of mind because
of that simple fact.
It sounds as if this girl wasn't at all sure that
either she or her friend wanted to be in the delightful
position of being the teacher's favourite. I suspect
that she is afraid that you don't really want to analyse
her - whatever that is - but that you want her for some
private purposes of your own; that you want either to be
her favourite analyst, or her to be your favourite ana-
lysand. She may not be particularly keen on either idea.
She may indeed know already what it is like to be ex-
pected to do or to be certain things which she herself
has not chosen, but which have been chosen for her by
somebody else - like a parent, uncle, aunt, teacher and
so on - who treats human personalities as if they were
available for any purposes whatsoever. Most of us are
familiar with being victims of precisely that attitude;
our fathers or mothers have a phantasy of wanting us to
be great men or great women. Sometimes they dress up
little boys like girls with curly hair; and little girls
like boys with page-boy haircuts - you can continue the
list for yourselves. So patients,without knowing it, are
really hoping that we are different, that we have some
respect for their personalities. Although they may treat
us as if they have no respect for our personalities, I
don't think I would be over-impressed by that.Some kinds
of behaviour are intended to be evocative or provocative
so as to stir us up and then to wait and see what we do
about it. Your reaction to that situation (I am not
bothering about your interpretations) seems to have been
sufficiently reassuring to make her feel it worthwhile
telling you something which she may never have dared to
tell her teachers or whoever was favouritizing her and
her girl friend. Everything the patient says - especial-
ly in the early stages - is a statement which may tell
her something about the analyst and, if she is lucky,
may lead to her learning something about herself.
What the interpretation of this story is I don't
know and don't care. But I would care and would concern
myself with explaining to her why she has told this par-
ticular story to me, and what lies behind it. My guess

72 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 15
is that a patient who hasn't turned up - and wh0~ has
turned up in this way - is suffering from a very con-
siderable misfortune. I don't know what misfortune, but
she wouldn't be coming and spending all that time and
money for nothing. So far she puts over what she does
not want: she doesn't simply want some person who is go-
ing to produce the same boring old stuff; nor does she
want somebody who treats her as a favourite. That is
vague enough in all conscience. But if this patient goes
on coming to you, then it may become a bit clearer be-
cause material accumulates. At first it is vague and you
have to fall back on theories, but each time the patient
comes you will have more to go on. This story about her
and her girl friend will form the basis of an interpret-
ation which you will give six sessions later, six months
later, six years later. That is why it is so important
to have your senses open to what is going on in your
consulting room in front of your own eyes.
 111

P. The patient has been in analysis with me for six

months, four times a week. When she started treatment
she had some psycho-somatic problems - haemorrhage and
diarrhoea - and she was getting thinner.
B. Who gave it the name, `psycho-somatic'?
P.' I did.
B. What did she call it?
P. She said that she was physically ill. She felt that
the problems were related to various occurrences during
her life.
B. She was simply complaining of a whole series of
things? Anything from being anxious to having a haemor-
rhage?
P. Yes. She was anxious because she had had a year's
treatment with a psychiatrist who had once kissed and
embraced her.
B. Do you know the psychiatrist?
P. Yes.
B. This is a great disadvantage. One would like to dis-
cuss a `particular patient, and yet one can get involved
in the professional behaviour of a colleague. It's a
nuisance, a real problem. At the same time there is no-
thing to stop stories being told about you.
There is a great deal to be said for conforming to
a certain discipline. In England it used to be accepted
that a male doctor `never saw a woman patient without
having a nurse present. That is quite impossible in ana-
lysis; it has to be a private relationship. You have to
establish the sort of rule you propose to follow in your
own professional life, what sort of relationship to have
with the people who come to see you professionally.People
who are already known to you, or have met with you soci-
ally, often want to come to you for analysis. How that
is going to work out I don't know. But if someone wants
to have an analysis with me, I would like them to con-
form to certain standards; and I myself would like to

74 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16(i)

conform to a certain discipline, certain rules off con-
duct. For this reason I would not like to encourage the
idea that I was available for kissing or any other activ-
ity which might be perfectly harmless, and even proper
in a social relationship. The analytic relationship is a
different one; the job is different. In some respects I
think it is fair to consider that an analysis is as
serious as a surgical operation; the operating surgeon
preserves a certain discipline. I have only known one
case in which a surgeon seemed to be allowing himself a
freedom of action and behaviour with catastrophic re-
sults. Not that the surgeon was doing anything improper
at all, but he seemed to be allowing a certain frivolity
in the course of the operation - conversation, people
joking. I think they were terribly misled by thinking
that it was a very simple operation. So it was. But the
patient, a child, equally simply died. Suddenly, in the
middle of this somewhat easy atmosphere in the operating
theatre, tragedy occurred. Emergency measures were
immediately thrown into action, the whole atmosphere
changed - all of it too late.
That is why I cannot admit that there is such a
thing as a `simple' psycho-analytic case. I have heard
this sort of statement: `Students ought to be given only
easy cases.' It is sheer nonsense -I have never come
across or heard of a simple case - never. Take the case
you are presenting: the last thing I would dare to think
is that it would be simple. In some respects I would far
rather you had a complicated and horrible supervision
than that you had a horrible and complicated analysis.
So by all means let us get the worst of it into this
situation, not into the thing itself.
P. The patient said that when the psychiatrist kissed
her she felt that something exploded inside her like an
atomic bomb.
B. Shall we go direct to the most recent session now?
P. This session took place the day before yesterday.
She came in and sat down - she doesn't lie on the couch.
She lay on the psychiatrist's couch but now she prefers
to sit. She appeared very anxious and said, "Why don't
you speak to me?" I said, "What makes you think I am
here to talk to you?"
B. You might say, "You seem to feel dissatisfied with
the language that I `do talk. You sound as if you felt

]j
 BRASILIA - 1975 75
that you wanted me to kiss you, to talk that language;
but it seems to me that you are also very anxious that I
should do nothing of the sort. You don't even take the
risk of lying on the couch in case I were to start using
a language which you do not want me to talk." I don't
think that it would in fact be a good thing to say this
to her because I would like her to say a bit more so
that I could get clearer what it is she is complaining
about.
P. As she lives in another town she comes by car with a
chauffeur, and another woman comes with her as companion.
She said, "The woman who comes with me asked me if my
husband had known you for a long time, and I said he had.
She said it is good to know the person with whom one has
analysis; it avoids problems. Then I began to wonder
what she knows that makes her ask me these questions. I
don't want to tell my husband what happened with the
psychiatrist."
B. How old is the patient?
P. Thirty.
B. And the husband?
`P. I don't know. They have two daughters.
B. How long have they been married?
P. Almost ten years. She says she doesn't want her hus-
band to know the story because she doesn't want him to
feel afraid, as she is, that everybody will get to know
about it. "I don't want my husband to ask me who knows
and who doesn't." She was crying when she said this.
B. My impression is that she doesn't want you to tell
everybody what goes on in the consulting room - she
wants it absolutely hidden. I wouldn't give an inter-
pretation at the moment because I would like to have
some more evidence. It is like watching a television pic-
ture which takes shape in front of your eyes, but you
have come into the story in the middle. The patient was
sitting in the chair facing you, and crying?
P. Yes.
B. Able to see you?
P. Yes. She continued crying and said, "My sister-in-
law had a lover. My husband sai'd that if that happened
to him he would kill his wife, the lover, and then would
commit suicide. Once he picked up a revolver only be-
cause a man spoke to me. Once you told me that perhaps
my husband couldn't stand knowing these things and that

76 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16(i)

perhaps this could destroy our life together."
B. It sounds as if the important thing here is Lhe
threat of violence; it becomes dangerous for her to have
a conversation with anybody who is not her husband. Even
her conversation with him was at some stage with some-
body who was not her husband - when they were not a
married couple. That would mean that it was dangerous
for her to look for a boy-friend. It is quite bad enough
looking for one anyway - you never know what sort of
potential husband or wife you might be talking to. The
trouble about `this whole business of finding a possible
mate is that neither of the two people knows who the
other one is - they don t usually know themselves either.
To get back to the middle of this story: an analyst,
and sitting opposite in conditions of privacy a woman of
thirty, anxious, weeping. Supposing we come into that
room: how would we burst in on this scene? Carrying a
revolver in our hands? From the point of view of this
patient she can be feeling that someone might do just
that. You could say something of this sort: "I think you
can be feeling as if you were a little sister of mine
and I were a little brother of yours; as if you and I
were playing some game which caused a violent and hos-
tile intervention by some kind of father or mother with
a dangerous weapon." Would that be helpful or not? Let's
try another one: "You are feeling as if you are a young
girl who is carrying on some sort of game with me like
kissing, and that a father comes in and is extremely
angry." Which story is one to tell? Which interpret-
ation? Freud said that it is not simply a matter of
interpretations of words, but `constructions'. This is
where the analyst has to be an artist - he has to make
constructions of what is going on.
P. When the patient said that I had once told her that
her husband couldn't stand knowing a story like that, I
asked her, ``Did you hear me say this?'' She said, ``Yes.
You told me that some people could stand it. And I think
that my husband couldn't. Once I came home late after a
session with the psychiatrist, and my husband asked,
"Wasn't your session only for an hour?"
B. Is her husband ill?
P. According to her he is mentally ill.
B. Capable of violence?
P. She says so.

BRASILIA - 1975 77
B. We all know that crimes of violence are often associ-
ated with sexual events, and this can indeed make psycho-
analysis a dangerous occupation. It is obviously danger-
ous to ignore sexual elements in the patient - that
would not be analysis. On the other hand, to take up
these sexual elements is itself a sexual act because
there are two people, in private conditions, talking and
using words like, `breast and `penis'. The pair are in
fact in danger of being attacked on the grounds of behav-
ing in a sexual manner. So the analyst can either be
criticized for not doing analysis, or attacked on the
grounds of having sexual talks with a married woman. I
mention this not as a matter of anxiety - we have to
face these things whatever job we do - but to sharpen up
the problem of what interpretation to give this patient.
P. I remembered that I had started her session five
minutes early because the previous patient had been ab-
sent. It came to my mind because she had said on another
occasion that sometimes the psychiatrist didn't stop a
session after fifty minutes and continued without noting
the time. This made her feel very guilty because she
talked so much.
B. There are some patients who would always object if
you were two minutes late. But they will also object if
you are twenty seconds early. You almost need a computer
to be right. This is why it is important to establish
your own discipline and stick to it. Of course you can
always take up the point with the patient: "You are feel-
ing that I have started late (or early, or gone on too
long). You are disturbed by the fact that I haven't kept
exactly to the schedule." How did it go on after that?
P. I said, "Perhaps you are wondering why I saw you
five minutes early." She replied, "I didn't notice any-
body coming out of your consulting room. I asked my
friend what time it was. I didn't notice you saw me five
minutes early." I said, "I think you noticed something,
otherwise you would not have asked your friend what time
it was."
B. I think you can only say, "Well, you don't agree
with my interpretation. I still' think it is right, al-
though it may be wrong. Perhaps we could leave it to see
how it turns out."
P. One other point I would like to mention is this: she
had said earlier, "I feel that what happened with the

78 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16(i)

psychiatrist can't be undone."
B. One could say, "Knowing the facts which you know, and
knowing what sort of person you are, you feel that a mis-
take cannot be corrected or modified." If it is simply a
question of sticking from that day onwards to a mistake
which has been made, then she can feel very frightened
of making any mistakes, or even of the analyst making
mistakes. Under these circumstances it is hard to see
how two ordinary human beings could possibly make a suc-
cess of it.
M. Do you mean that the analyst should have the disci-
pline to treat a fact that is felt by the patient to be
a catastrophe, as something normal?
B. No. I think he simply has to have a discipline which
he preserves inside his own consulting room. For example,
you cannot stop a patient, if she chooses, from throw-
ing her arms round you and kissing you. The only thing
you can do is to be in a sufficiently disciplined frame
of mind for the patient to have a chance of recognizing
that she is having no respect for you, that she is treat-
ing you as an object on which to exercise her lips. If
she feels entitled to do this, where is it going to end?
M. Would she be trying to frighten the analyst?
B. It is quite possible. He is, after all, supposed to
be sensitive to what is happening. But the patient can
behave in a manner which makes it very difficult for him
to remain aware of the situation, open to these sens-
ations and at the same time able to think clearly.

P. This is material from the second session on the same

day. She had a very tense expression, more anguished
than sad. She said, "When I got here this morning for my
first session I felt very distressed. I went to visit a
friend who told me that she had had a sexual affair with
a teacher and as a result was pregnant. She had told two
other people about it and soon everybody in the town
knew about it. Her husband knows about it too, but they
are making a show of living happily together for every-
body to see. It reminded me of what happened with that
psychiatrist; I felt that what had happened to my friend
had happened to me*. I was so upset I could hardly dis-
guise my feelings from my friend. What confuses me so
much is the fact that when I went to the psychiatrist I
didn't want any such thing to happen." The psychiatrist
had told her that she should work it through with him.
Sometimes he held her hand and said that it would help
them to feel close and would also give her the feeling
that she had a body. I told her that I thought she had
difficulty in recognizing facts, and that therefore she
felt as if she was her friend, living her friend's life.
B. Did you draw attention to what she was afraid you
might do?
P. Yes. She said, "What I am afraid of is that you
won't understand my feelings." I asked her what her feel-
ings were. She said, "I would like you to embrace me but
that nothing should happen."
B. She may want to have a physical contact with you,
but at the same time she is afraid that you would tell
the whole town about it. She also feels that if you em-
braced her, then she would tell the whole town about it.
So while she may want an analysis, she is afraid of its
being a situation of frustration, danger and publicity
in which everybody knows what is supposed to be secret.
P. She is afraid that people in the town where she
lives know about what happened between her and her psy-

80 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16(ii)

chiatrist.
B. And there is also the anxiety that you know what
happened - especially when she is telling you. The prob-
lem is how to have an analysis and keep you correctly
informed without at the same time telling tales about
herself and you. It is felt to be very difficult indeed
to have an analysis and a private life, especially if
she tells tales about herself. On the other hand, if she
doesn't say anything about herself, how is she going to
get any analysis? This brings out the real difficulty:
it is felt to be important that analysis should be pri-
vate, and at the same time that somebody should be help-
ful, that there should be somebody to whom patients can
talk about their troubles. I know from experience how
difficult it is to bring home to analysts that they
should keep things private; it is absolutely vital that
they should be discreet. How are we to have supervisions,
scientific meetings and so on, and at the same time have
respect for the privacy of the patient?
i" P. I said, "You would like to be held in my arms and
caressed like a baby, but you are afraid that I won't
understand that you only want to be treat'ed like a baby."
B. The time to want that was when she was a baby, not
 k'today when it is too late.
P. I had a feeling that something very important had
happened to her during her first year of life, something
connected with being abandoned. In fact her mother had
left her with the grandmother and had stayed away for
l"')" four months. When she came back the baby didn't want her.
B. These facts are important, but what is especially
important is this which is taking place today. We often
talk of past situations - it is quite useful - but the
f'i'past is past and there is nothing any of us can do about
it. What we can do something about is the present. So,
what has happened that has made this patient talk like
this to you today? She is no longer a baby.
l!' P. I wondered if she knew that I was coming to Brasilia
and felt abandoned.
B. She certainly doesn t want to be abandoned or for-
gotten, but on the other hand she doesn't want to be
talked about either. And she can feel that you don't
want to be talked about, that you don't want the whole
world to be told that you are seeing her. Will you tell
other people that you `have a hysterical patient who

BRASILIA - 1975 81
wants to kiss you? Or is she afraid that she will say
that her analyst behaves like that? It is felt to be ex-
tremely difficult to find out anything abou't a sexual
life. If you want help, then it is considered that you
must be hysterical. If you want a private life, then it
can be said that you are paranoid. This patient will
have been familiar in childhood with the feeling that it
is impossible to have a private life; there were always
people to tell tales, and parents to listen and watch.
Coming back to the present: she is looking for a civil-
ized adult, a responsible person.to whom she can talk
about things that she has never before been able to ex-
press to anybody.
P. She continued, "It was only after that thing happen-
ed between me and the psychiatrist that I discovered
that I didn't want it to happen. Perhaps something I did
induced him' to act in the way he did. I always felt I
was an unprincipled person; I think he must have real-
ized that. When I was a young girl I went into the
cathedral in th�e town where we used to live. I looked at
a statue of Our Lady; she had a wound on her breast. And
I looked at the crucified Christ and I started imagin-
ing things." I asked her what things. She said, "You can
well imagine what the things were." I said, "Do you sup-
pose I can see into your mind?"
B. She might be quite glad to know what you have in
mind - it is so much nicer to know what is in your mind
than to tell anybody what is in hers.
P. She said, "I was imagining tearing away the clothes
of Our Lady and sucking her breast.''
B. What ought she to be thinking in a cathedral? What
ought she to think in an analyst's consulting room? One
way to answer that is to find out what the analyst
allows. If she says you can imagine what she would feel,
then she invites you to say what you imagine. If you
give an interpretation, then she can find out if you are
struck dead or what happens to you. But if you survive,
then she might dare to say whatever she thinks. So it is
felt to be very important not to be the first one to tell.
One might expect that a woman of thirty would have
worked through all this in the course of finding boy-
friends, or of finding a husband. But she seems to feel
that she would never dare to take the initiative, would
never dare to say things - especially sexual things - to

82 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16(ii)

the analyst. If the analyst had a crucifix or an image
of Our Lady in the room, then she would know what was or
was not allowed. But even then she can be shocked at the
way in which the Virgin Mary behaves.
P. One of her phantasies appeared in an association
when she said that she could have been a prostitute.
B. Supposing the prostitute, the sexual `person in her-
self, wants to be free, wants to be liberated. You might
know this, and might or might not allow it. Suppose you
say or do anything which suggests that you don't mind
her being sexual; or suppose you behave in a way which
suggests that you think the Virgin Mary is really a
prostitute. Then there would be trouble. She is afraid
that if you do say it, she will go away and say, "Look
what a' blasphemous person this analyst is." But on the
other hand she can still feel that she is also a person
of some integrity and honesty.
You might find a way into this problem by drawing
her attention to the fact that there is an honest woman
wanting to be free, but that she feels it is frightening
to want to be honest. The difficulty is how to be honest,
how to be God-fearing, how to be sexually mature, how to
have children in the environment in which she lives. All
these are felt to be problems which haven't been solved;
some of them are felt to be problems which will never be
solved until she tries them. But by the time she has
kissed her psychiatrist it is too late. Before that she
doesn't know what she would feel; afterwards the damage
has been done.
No child can run the risk of asking questions about
sex without being told, "What! Don't you know that?" Or,
"However do you know about things like that?" This point
also applies to religion: if a child goes into a church
l'and sees a figure of the crucified Christ, it is felt to
be very difficult to ask, ``What is that?'' It is difficult
to learn anything because you dare not ask questions. If
you do, you always know too much or not enough; you are
ignorant, or you are religious, or you are an aetheist.
This woman of thirty has to come to an analyst and hopes
l' that she can ask questions without getting into trouble.
But of course one analyst is felt to be very much like
any other, one small child very much like any other, one
parent or grown-up very like all others. It is difficult
to get the kind.of mental food that makes the mind grow
up.
P. The patient is a man of thirty-four who has been in
analysis for about a year. He was born into a very poor
family in a small town outside Sao Paulo. When he was
about twenty he went to the city; he had no money and
was starving. He met a girl whom he married six years
later. He says he didn't want to get married but did so
because of social conventions. He complains of being un-
happy and says he has had a stomach ache for about three
years. He has a theory that this ache is due to his un-
happy marriage. They have no children. During the past
seven years he has become extremely wealthy but has not
told his wife. A month ago he left home.
I would like to present one recent session. He ar-
rived, said "Good morning", shook hands with me as he
always does, and lay on the couch. He said, "This* week I
had no dreams. Today I was supposed to phone my wife at
one o'clock but I didn't. I have no telephone so every
day at lunch time I go to a friend's office. At ten past
one my wife called me - I don't know how she discovered
that I was there."
B. I am puzzled.He is describing a situation in which
his wife doesn't know he has the use of a telephone. So
that's all right - there is no mechanical communication.
The next thing you hear is that he doesn't know how she
guesses where he is. What apparatus is she using to find
out where he is? I am not asking the question to suggest
anything about an interpretation, but to draw attention
to the fact that this seems an extraordinary story. He
becomes very wealthy; his wife doesn't know anything
about it. What is this apparatus which is being used by
which he doesn't let anybody know his whereabouts or
whether he is rich or poor, and this same apparatus by
which this is found out?
I would remain quiet about this, but I would like
to' know what is the clue to this system of communication
which is also non-communication but which seems to

84 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 17
work.
P. He continued, "I went to the bank to talk to a girl
who works there. I noticed she had been sunbathing, so I
asked her, `Do you go sunbathing every week?' And she
said, `Yes, every week.' I asked her if she was going to
do so this week-end, and she said she was. I asked her
where she sunbathed. She said at home. I asked her if
she had a swimming pool at home and she said, `Oh,no. I
live in a flat, but the sun shines in the whole day.' I
suppose she doesn't know I'm a millionaire and that I
have a swimming pool. Then I told her that I was betting
in the sports lottery in order to get rich. She said,
`If I won in the lottery I would try to see the whole
world.' I said, `Oh, the rest of the world is the same
as it is here. It isn't worth while being rich because
then we get preoccupied with not growing old and not dy-
ing.' She said, `Oh yes, Onassis would know all about
that.'" Then he said, "I think I am getting a cold again.
I'm convinced that my illness has nothing to do with my
wife. She is not guilty. I am trying a test: I'll stay
 at home until the end of the year; if my illness isn't
cured by then I will definitely leave." I,asked him, "Why
do you think you have a chance of being cured?" He said,
I don't know. But I do know that my wife isn't guilty,
and besides that, I can try Positive Thinking.'' This is
a kind of church run by a Japanese.
B. I find myself wondering about his visit to the bank.
People usually go there for financial reasons, but he
had a most interesting conversation - which is not what
is ordinarily arranged by a bank. He is apparently sure
`Ilthat it is only one-way traffic: the girl who goes to
Il' the bank, theoretically to make a living, couldn't pos-
~lJsibly know anything about finance or about who has any
!J'money. I can see that employees of a bank might know
very little about the bank's business, but on the other
`lhand I should be extremely surprised if they don't occas-
ionally talk together about the clients who come to the
bank. Why does he suppose that whatever he uses to in-
!i'vestigate the girl - whether she is available at week-
ends for example - couldn't equally well be used by the
girl to investigate a possible boy-friend? Does he be-
lieve that analysts never meet, that they couldn't have
a sort of central bank of information about patients? I
I am not particularly interested in the answers to these

BRASILIA - 1975 85
questions, but I am interested to know what this one-way
system is that he relies on.
M. He was hiding his wealth again - the situation at
home was repeated in the bank.
B. It gives some idea of the use to which he puts his
home, the use he makes of his office, the use he makes
of the bank. One wonders why he is coming for analysis.
M. Perhaps he wants to know how his system functions in
analysis.
P. I have formed the opinion that he is emotionally
very poor .
B. Yes, right. How would you make that clear to him?
Theoretically you give an interpretation, but of course
when you do that there has to be a receiving end to it.
So there is the problem of what he would hear you say.
Could you go a bit further in expanding this idea of his
being emotionally poor'?
P. He wears bad clothes, he can't eat without having an
ache, he doesn't know how to use his money.
B. That doesn't surprise me because money is only valu-
able as something which is usually exchangeable for some-
thing else. But if he doesn't know what to do with the
money, it hasn't any value. Let us go on with the mater-
ial now.
P. He says that he knows his wife is not guilty because
after he left home his pains persisted.
B. This makes it seem as if he was afraid that she was
trying to poison him. It might be anything from physi-
cally poisoning his food, to some other kind of poison.
This is an illuminating comment of his. What concerns us
is what he thought she was guilty of.
P. I said to him, "Does this make any difference to
your difficulty in living together with a woman, sharing
your inner feelings, trusting her?"
B. It might perhaps be wiser to say, "You don't seem to
feel that you could trust anybody - or at any rate, any
woman. Although you seem to have relationships with
these creatures we call women - a wife, a bank employee -
I think you are very suspicious of them." The next point
is more controversial: I would like to say, "I think you
are also very suspicious that you have a sort of woman
inside you. When you talk about a stomach ache, you are
really talking about a bad thing inside, and you are
frightened of it. Sometimes it is as if it were outside

86 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 17
you, like your wife or the girl in the bank. I think you
feel that I am really a dangerous woman whether-I am
outside you or inside you." I am hesitant about that be-
cause he may not have got far enough to understand such
an interpretation. I haven't the slightest doubt that he
would reject it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
he wouldn't be able to understand it. However, I am
simply talking about my impression and what I feel I
would be inclined to say to the patient. Although this
interpretation is probably correct, in practice there is
this difficult question of whether it is the right
moment to give it.
P. He said, "I think I'm going to change. My new house
where I am living alone has a fault in the water system
and I have to replace it. I have another flat that is
not ready yet, so I think I shall return home to my wife.
Besides that, living alone is beginning to interfere
with my business." I asked, "Why is that?" He answered,
"Well, I need someone to take care of my clothes and to
prepare my food."
B. All this seems to me to be making excuses, giving
"Jr,, explanations which cover rather than illuminate why he
goes back to his wife. It might be more productive to
say, "You seem to feel as afraid of this home to which
you are returning as you felt about it when you left.
Indeed I think that you fear that if you go on talking
to me it will be like getting back to the state of mind
`?i~which you have forgotten, getting back to what we call
your `unconscious'. And you feel much the same thing
about the woman's inside, your own inside, and mine."
He is afraid that he would never escape from it.
P. I said, "Since you have no financial problems you
could employ a laundress, or a cook, or a maid. I don't
l';,think you realize that in returning home and setting a
l',
fixed period in which to get cured, you are playing with
other people's feelings.'' He said, ``You are clearly say-
ling that I shouldn't return home."
B. I think the objection to your interpretation is that
it had a certain moral quality. It is important to avoid
appearing to be either his conscience, advisor, parent,
or authority of any sort because he would be anxious for
1you to take over these functions. If hc really feels he
is co-operating with you, then he is returning to a
 frame of mind which might be appropriate to his being a

BRASILIA - 1975 87
child. But a state of mind suitable to being a child is
not much good to the grown man. So there is a fear that
he is getting back into a state of mind in which he is
dependent on a woman - originally presumably the mother.
Of course the final version of that would be going right
back into the woman's inside, into the womb itself;
there would be fear of having anything in the nature of
genital intercourse with a woman either because of the
point you mentioned - his mental poverty - or on account
of his physical equipment, the danger of going back into
the woman's inside penis first.
It occurs to me that there is a feeling that he
started his trouble by deserting his mother. But the
next `mother', that is the father, is also a source of
anxiety. So there is the impulse to go back to the
mother again. I think it is also related to the feeling
of having robbed the mother of something if he leaves
her, and of using the father's penis with which to get
back into the mother. Potentially he has bot!i parents
against him - the deserted mother and the robbed father.
The internal object - the thing he calls a stomach
ache - is in fact a frightening conscience. Indeed he
fears the analyst as a reincarnation of the `ghost' of
the mother. One could say, "When you talk about going to
the bank, what you are really meaning is going back to
the mother's insides; but in the motiier's insides you
find still another mother, and you are afraid that these
mothers have more and more mothers inside them." It de-
pends on whether the patient can understand that. Here
we can discuss any interpretation whatever; in the con-
sulting room we can't. There is only one person with
whom to discuss it, namely the analysand - and that is
not supervision. There is always pressure to give the
right interpretation - even when we don't know what it
is. But the right interpretation must be within reach of
the patient's comprehension.
M. It seems to me that he had made some progress when he
said, "I know that my wife is not guilty."
B. I am not sure about that. It is difficult to say
what constitutes progress. I think this is the nearest
he has come to admitting a paranoid anxiety. From our
point of view it certainly is a sign of progress if the
patient is able to say something so clearly that we can
at least try to interpret it. We can always argue that

88 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 17
this is a sign of analytic progress: we hope that `ana-
lytic progress' is the same thing as ~progress~,) but we
don't know. I wish somebody would draw up a map of the
human mind showing various directions analogous to north,
south, east and west, but marked `progress', `regression'
and so forth. You could mark the different kinds, like
different instruments on an orchestral score - infantile,
adult, or adolescent. So according to which one of those
 aspects of the score you were talking about, you could
mark whether that was progress or not. The total picture
would be one in which there would be arrows showing pro-
gress in one direction, and progress in the opposite
direction elsewhere - minus progress.
P. When I said, "If your problem is a place to sleep, a
laundry woman and a cook, you can get all that with
money", he replied, "But I feel lonely." I said, "I think
that too could be managed with money."
B. Why did you say that?
P. Because I felt that he wanted an object to serve him.
B. I think it would be served with money if it were
simply a question of looking like having company. But
"1'1" that doesn't solve the problem he has confessed to, name-
ly of being alone. Would it be possible to draw his
attention to the fact that he isn't quite alone because
he always has his stomach ache? In a sense the loneli-
ness is the desert which he feels he has created with
his greed. Whatever it was that has been eaten up and
l;destroyed leaving nothing, has turned into a bad stomach
ache. If that is true, it suggests that it is extremely
l, primitive, probably going back to the earliest meals of
l',all. He may even have a kind of reminiscence of being so
1*1',,(greedy that he finished up with having a stomach ache.
The thing he has eaten has travelled right down to wher-
ever his stomach ache is, and there it is felt to be
operating as a kind of conscience. This loneliness is
`l, sure to crop up more than once. That seems to me to be
progress - a confession that he has been able to get
Il everything except love or affection; even in a crowd he
l',,ll"is lonely.
He talked about the girl in the bank having mention-
ed Onassis. Did he say anything about what Onassis means
to him?
P. The day after Onassis died he told me this: "I read
l''
about Onassis' fortune in the newpaper. I calculated

BRASILIA - 1975 89
that his fortune was three hundred times greater than
mine." For the last two weeks he has been very preoccu-
pied with getting old - a rich man who gets old and dies.
This is something new.
B. What is Onassis' wealth? Three hundred times as much
as the patient's bank account? Or the fact that Onassis
is dead? This is a matter of importance if the patient
is expressing suicidal despair. In spite of these move-
ments from one place to another, I think he can be
afraid that the best fortune of all would be to be dead.
P. When I said he could use his �money to get company,
he said, ``Oh yes, a female companion. I think it's pos-
sible that I don't really want to go back home because I
never take my suitcase out of the car." This was a ref-
erence to the fact that he went to the flat three times
to return to his wife, but left his suitcase in the car
each time. He said, "Just now when I was running down
the street I saw a couple. He looked about forty-five
and she was a very pretty slim girl of about twenty-
three. At first sight I felt envious; I would have liked
to be in that man's place. But then I began to think
about death and old age. I must give up running after
women - it is really absurd - there is something ridicu-
lous about it that doesn't satisfy me." I said, "I get
the impression that what frightens you so much is the
idea of having a sincere relationship with a woman in
whom you could put your trust." He said, "I don't think
I would ever tell a woman my business. It wouldn't be
worthwhile and would complicate things." I said, "I
don't think you are aware to what extent you are suf fo-
cated by money. It is as if you were in a room, filling
it with coins." He said, "I feel I must take advantage
of my good fortune because I can now earn in one day
more than I used to be able to earn in one year. At the
end of this year I shall make a* large profit and then I
shall feel calmer." I said, "It seems to me that you
feel you have to earn money endlessly. What will be the
result of that?1, He said, "Then I shall be safer." I
asked, "In what way?" He said, "Nothing will trap me -
not war, no crises, nothing."
B. If that were true, what is his problem? He has al-
ready spoken about his fear of the attractive girl. He
seems to feel that there is no danger at all that he
would ever be so foolish as to tell a mere woman that he

90 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 17
is a rich man; he knows that the real danger is~,that he
might easily appear to be an attractive prize for some-
body, either because he has money or because he is cap-
able of making money. He feels that there is no shortage
of people who would want to marry him. His difficulty is
how to combine this situation with the feeling that he
needs a companion.
It seems as if his little excursion away from the
womb leads him back to his wife who, according to him,
l is a most unsatisfactory mate. What is he daring to ex-
pose to you in analysis? You mentioned his emotional
poverty, but he can be afraid of being emotionally rich
as well. Whether it is his poverty or his riches, nei-
L, ther problem has been solved. If he shows his emotional
potential, his emotional wealth, his gifts, he feels
that everybody will want them. Therefore he wears appro-
priately shabby clothes and an appropriately mean state
of mind, so that there can be no worthwhile motive for
anybody to want to get hold of him. It can be said that
`"Ii if a man is poor enough in every way, it is understand-
able that he will have a problem because nobody will
love him. But this seems to be a rather different prob-
lem: that of the person who is not poverty-stricken,
and of how he is to find a mate who would actually love
him. The fundamental point here is that the person who
lives alone in the desert is sure to be greedily impel-
�ti led to satisfaction, greedily impelled to get some sub-
stitute for love or affection.This would apply to either
l.l"' of the potential pair: how is the potentially wealthy
l, man to find an appropriate wife, or the potentially
ii'. appropriate woman to find an appropriate husband?
l!,i'A~ M. Patients frequently tell us they want to be loved
not because they are rich or good, but because they have
`It faults and are bad. They feel there is no advantage in
l"'" being loved for their good characteristics.
B. Who is likely to want to fall in love with bad
"`l people? On the other hand, if the person in question has
everything, why on earth should he want to marry? Can
psycho-analysis find some kind of `solution to this pro-
found problem of why the human unit is a couple? This
11 teasing question runs through the whole of philosophical
l: history; analysis is only a relatively recent approach
to it.
This is the problem the patient is presenting to

BRASILIA - 1975 91
you: how are two people to come together in a way which
is an adequate solution both of the wealth of each of
them, and of the poverty of each of them? To put all
that simply and primitively: how are the penis and the
female genital ever to get together? People behave all
the time as if it were the simplest thing on earth; there
is hardly ,a boy or a girl who isn't convinced that they
know all about it - or at least they think it s a good
thing to pretend they do. It is over-simplifying things
to say it is a `sexual' problem. We need to consider the
possibility that there is something which is not so sim-
ple as that; it might be useful to call it `passionate
love' - you have to find your own way of describing some-
thing which goes on extending long after adolescence. In
certain rare cases a person is not satisfied with making
money or having sexual intercourse, and hopes that there
is somebody - perhaps a psycho-analyst - who will know
the answer. I am sure there is an answer that nobody has
yet found, so it is quite an adventure in which we are
involved.

P. When this patient, a man of fifty, comes into the

room he has a ritual way of doing it. He takes off his
coat and hangs it on the chair.
B. How long has he been seeing you?
P. Less than a month.
B. Did you know anything about him before he came to
you?
P. No.
B. So he is really a stranger.
P. Yes. When giving his reasons for coming to analysis,
he said, "There is a part of my character that I must
tell you about. When I am away from home I am happy and
I like to joke with people, but when I get home I change.
I lose my authority, I complain to my wife about every-
thing; if something is moved from the place where I put
it, I get angry. I blame myself because my wife is a nice
person.
B. He seems to feel that he can express these various
unlikeable qualities to an analyst. So both at home and
in the consulting room he tends to behave in a way which
is not typical of the way he behaves in the street or in
public. One could say,"Well, what of it? It's a usual
sort of story" - except for one very important point.Why
is he mentioning it? Why is a man of fifty bothered by
it? And why is he coming to see you? That is unusual.
There is no reason to suppose that, if this story
of his is true, he will behave any differently in the
consulting room with the analyst from the way he would
behave with anybody else. Of course his description of
his behaviour may not be accurate. But I don't think I
would ask him; I would assume that what I could see and
hear for myself in the consulting room would almost cer-
tainly either bear out this summary he has given, or he
would have to alter his views about that summary. If he
says his behaviour with you is different, you could say,
"Why do you reserve this special behaviour for me?" But

BRASILIA - 1975 93
I would rather leave the matter alone; I would rather
have the evidence of my own senses.
P. He said that he had the feeling that he was begin-
ning to control himself, even at home; he was being less
aggressive with his wife. I said that he was talking
about this change in himself since starting analysis as
if I was supposed to expect it. He said, "Yes, the last
session was very useful because it showed me my eoistic
side which I was not aware of. Before I started analysis
I was always in a hurry: when the time came to stop work
at the office I left in a hurry; when it was time to go
to work I left home in a hurry. Now I'm not in such a
hurry. And I can sleep without taking pills, although I
have to leave them on the bedside table. " I said, "Per-
haps you are talking about capacities that you have been
unable to use before - to sleep without drugs and to be
able to think about them."
B. What strikes me is that although all his statements
seem to refer to fairly blameless activities, he is
speaking of `them with hostility and with a certain de-
greeof alarm. What is he complaining about? It is hard-
ly likely to be any of the things he has mentioned. And
yet he is probably complaining about something which is
available for scrutiny in the consulting room.
M. I have the feeling that he is talking about some-
thing he hasn't experienced, as if he were a journalist
who writes about the facts but hasn't lived them in real-
ity. So he speaks about himself as if he were in the
theatre, looking at something but not living it.
B. All right. What is this spectacle? I think it is one
of these times when precise interpretations don't really
meet the situation. Perhaps one would need to give an
even more vague interpretation than the statements he is
making.
P. I feel that he complains about things as if he knows
there is a right way of doing them. So perhaps it would
be useful to ask him how he thinks these things should
be done.
B. The activity which is prominent could be summarized
as a sort of ritual - coming to see the analyst, putting
the coat in the right place - which is usually directed
towards controlling an internal event. I don't think
this point is part of psycho-analytic doctrine, but you
may find it illuminating to make this kind of division -

94 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 18

privately anyway. The contrast to it would be ceremonial

which is over and again intended to control some ex-
ternal event. There's nothing hard and fast about it,
but one could say that military ceremonials are devoted
to controlling some external source; private rituals are
nearly always directed towards an internal condition. In
this instance I would say that the patient is objecting
to change. I would go further and suggest that he is not
so much objecting to changes in the environment, as to
changes which he feels are occurring within himself and
which are out of control unless he employs some sort of
ritual. He hates any change in himself and therefore
feels it is important to preserve the status quo, to
run the home as it has always - apparently in his ex-
perience - been run.
P. One of the things he complained about was that he
felt he was behaving like the widening circles seen in
water when we throw in a stone - but in an inverse way,
as if he were going from the outside in.
B. I think the change in him is related in his mind to
a deterioration, to a state in which there is not an ex-
panding universe, but a contracting one. You could say,
"You have given me a number of instances which all have
one characteristic: you seem to object to the fact that
there is evidence of change in you. ` If you think he can
understand that, you can leave it at that point and see
what his reaction is.
There is another interpretation which is of con-
sequence: if he co-operates, he feels that his state of
mind is nearer to that of a small boy; at the same time
he can feel that he is mourning for his lost youth. Next
I would want to point out to him that even if he were
nought or five years old he could be mourning for his
lost
youth both to what
other people can do - probably the parents - and his dis-
satisfaction with what he has been able to do so far.
The feelings of discontent have been there for a very
long time, even from the beginning of his life, and are
still there today. Whether it be now at the latter part
of his life, or then at the beginning of his life, there
is an objection to change.
I wouldn't want to say that until he had had a
chance of expressing a great deal more because it very
easily turns into reassurance; it is like introducing a

BRASILIA - 1975 95

cure before he has been able to express his anxiety. I

strongly suspect that he has never really been able to
express his feelings of despair, depression, inadequacy
and dissatisfaction. People dismiss a small child's
depression as if it were of no consequence. That doesn't
give the child a chance to have a real, good depression
which does no harm, particularly at times when it is
appropriate. But people of fifty years old are liable to
resort to drastic methods of expressing dissatisfaction,
depression and resentment. There is a danger that this
patient might take the law into his own hands and pro-
ceed to deal with the situation in a very unsatisfactory
and inadequate manner. After all, there is something
most unsatisfactory about a man of fifty who goes about
behaving as if he were the `life and soul of the party'.
It is still more unsatisfactory if he gets fed up with
the whole lot, and murders himself. These pills he keeps
by his bedside are useful, but it does depend on who
uses them and what for. I think he should be given plen-
ty of time to have a thorough complaint about his in-
adequacy and resentment, including of course the hope-
lessness of analysis and analysts. Let him do all that,
but don't let it obscure the fact that this is nothing
new. As I say, he might have been mourning for his lost
youth as a five-year-old or younger. We don't know what
the drugs were then; there are plenty of things, like
masturbation, which children are able to use as a method
of overcoming feelings of depression or despair. The
snag is that they work for the moment and then there is
further depression and despair about the cure. So we
should not be too precocious or too premature in giving
an interpretation which the patient will use and regard
as just one of these same old reassurances.
We always have to consider how we are to describe
to the patient the situation he is telling us about. For
example, why bother about his wife being ill-treated?
The point that is of importance to the analyst is that
the patient is bothering. When he is aware of the pres-
sure to have and to love a home of his own and the in-
habitants of that home, then it is important to draw his
attention to the fact that he hasn't previously express-
ed so overtly his fear that he might be loving or affec-
tionate or sympathetic - all of which are felt to be in-
ferior, not at all grand states of mind.

l,'

l'P. The patient is a twenty-seven-year-old married woman.

I have been seeing her for six months. She has a great
deal of difficulty in speaking during the sessions; she
is silent for long periods. When she lies down on the
couch she becomes very anxious.
B. Whose idea was it that she should lie on the couch?
P. She chose to do so. When she arrives she has a radi-
ant expression and looks at me in a penetrating way with
`lbrilliant eyes; then she lies down. Every session since
the beginning of the analysis has consisted of long
periods of silence and signs of fear and anxiety'; she
described the fear as `undefined' and cannot explain it.
I would like t' recount one of the most recent sessions
in which I got the impression that she was more com-
municative. There was the usual long silence at the be-
 ginning of the session. Then, while she was still twist-
ing her head, wringing her hands and pushing at the
sleeves of her blouse, I asked her what was going on in
her mind.
B. There are two people in the room, but the patient
knows something that we can't know - that there is also
a silence in the room. That silence isn't just nothing;
therefore if she is afraid of the silence, she is not
afraid of `nothing'. The silence must be, as it were,the
place where some person or thing is. I could put it like
this: there are three people, three things present - the
analyst, the patient and the silence. And it seems that
the silence is the frightening one - at the moment.
P. The question I asked myself was, why is it so dif-
ficult for her to speak? Why does she think it is safer
to keep quiet about what is going on in her mind rather
than tell me?
B. If this object is silent, she would feel frightened
of doing anything different from that.
P. After this long silence something very strange

~`1d happened. I got the impression that there was an Egypt-

BRASILIA - 1975 97

ian mummy lying there and that there was a resistance in

the relationship between us. I was surprised when the
patient began to speak and said, "You talk about the
things that I can't express. It is very difficult for me
to talk at all, but harder still to think. When I try to
think and can't, I feel very frightened and paralysed
like a dead thing."
B. It becomes clearer that the dead mummy is very danger-
ous: if the dead mummy won't talk, then it is felt to be
dangerous to be alive and to talk. If you listen to the
silences as well as to what is said, then it becomes
easier to understand what the silence is saying. If you
talk, or she talks, it is impossible to hear the silence.
Putting it in pictorial terms, it is a very lively ghost.
P. She said that when she managed to think and found
the proper expression for it, she felt the tension ebb-
ing away and was more relaxed.
B. The relaxation may be a nice experience, but it may
not. One has to consider how she is lying on the couch;
is she relaxed because she is on a couch? Is she more
relaxed than the analyst who isn t on a couch?
P. At first it was very difficult for me to relate to
the silence, and I couldn't listen to it with ease. But
after a time I began to feel more comfortable when I
thought about what was happening during the silence. I
also caught myself thinking about things other than
those happening in the session. The patient says she is
very afraid that she won't last out the analysis.
B. It sounds as if she means until she is dead, as if
she felt she had no right to a life.
P. When she said she couldn't speak I pointed out that
she was in fact speaking.
B. I think you also need to point out that she has dis-
covered that you can't speak if you don't know anything,
if you aren't kept informed. So her silence makes you
silent too: one of the two people in the room can't be
an analyst, and the other can't be an analysand - nei-
ther of them can be satisfied. This object is a very
hostile one; if she is not allowed to talk, then analy-
sis is impossible. You might try drawing her attention
to the fact that if she talks she is afraid of starting
something; she is afraid of the opposite of the silence,
afraid of talking so much that you cannot hear yourself
think.

98 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 19

P. When I asked her what was going on in her mind and

explained that I asked this because I couldn't go `on
working with no naterial, she replied that the only
things she could remember were those from the past.
B. But she didn't mention them?
P. She mentioned that she remembered her father who was
very severe and was always criticizing her. I asked her,
"Do you feel that I am criticizing you?" She didn't
answer.
B. I think there is great fear of the opposition and
hostility of the dead father or dead mother to the
person who goes on living. So it provides a sort of de-
fence to say, "I may still be living, but it isn't a life
wort'h living." What she seems to lose sight of is that
if the analysis is not allowed to proceed, then there is
no analysis. How did she come to believe that somebody
or something would save her from that disastrous state?
11P. She said she was afraid that I would send her away
because she didn't say anything. I said that we should
"l" both try to forget that for the moment.
B. But should she forget it? Should she forget that the
,1''!analyst might expect something?
P. I have tried to show her that collaboration is nec-
essary.
B. The difficulty is how this is to be put to her. It
isn't you who are stopping the analysis, going away. If
there is no analysis, there is no analysis. In fact she
is inviting you to say, "Oh no, I won't desert you."
Then she will be able to show that you give her permis-
1f11sion, as it were, to avoid having an analysis. But it
1leaves out the point that if you want to do analysis it
is no good going on if you are not allowed to do it.
P. She was referred to me by her obstetrician because
although she wanted babies she frequently miscarried. So
she came for analytic treatment in the hope that it
Mwould help her overcome this problem.
B. Yes, but she is also wanting to be assured that if
she gets pregnant she will have a good baby, or a good
11cure. But you haven't told her that a good analytic baby
will be born. There can be a feeling that there is such
a thing as a successful analysis, like a successful preg-
nancy, but what is born is another matter; she has to
l'!put up with the baby, whatever it is. It doesn't seem
11,'that she has ever worked out this point. I would be in-
l"1
~,l

BRASILIA - 1975 99
clined to draw her attention to the fact that she feels
able to come for analysis if she is sure that it has no
effect. In physical terms, if she is sure that she won't
become pregnant she can do what she likes sexually. In
`the mean�time she is not prepared to risk having a sexual
conversation with you. But if sexual matters are never
dealt with it is a strange sort of analysis. On the
other hand, if it is the kind of analysis in which sex-
ual things are talked about, there is also the fear that
it will bring about some sort of pregnancy. Even ration-
ally she can feel that if she changes in this respect
her husband would be more prepared to have a relation-
ship with her.
Almost anything you say to this patient is wrong;
whatever you say gives the idea that she can go on be-
having in that way and that you can still go on doing
analysis. You are trapped into agreeing that she can
come for the rest of her life even if there is no result
at all. Analysis is practically the only contractual
arrangement between two people in which you feel you can
keep on for ever - or anyway for as long as you like -
without anything ever happening. It is difficult to know
what to do because you need to give an interpretation
which isn't, as it were, an accusation.
P. Sometimes I feel like letting the silence continue
to enable me to know what is going to happen.
B. It is worth trying. But there again you have to be
careful. The analyst can be silent, can give the patient
plenty of time, and yet it can be an expression of hosti-
lity. The patient must think that there is some reason
for spending so much time and money; and we know that
there is no advantage in having a useless analysis.
M. There may be masochistic impulses present - a form
of punishment and guilt.
B. It is true that one suspects that there must be some
pleasure or satisfaction obtained from it. For example,
if as a child she refuses to pass motions or urine, that
would be a very effective way of upsetting the mother.
She can get pleasure out of thinking that you mind what
`happens to her; alternatively, she can get the satis-
faction of feeling that you don t care. It can also be a
sort of mental masturbation; she can get sexual gratifi-
cation out of the feeling that she gets nothing out of
the analysis.

P. The patient is an eighteen-year-old who has been in

analysis with me for two years. He had to wait for two
months after the initial interview before I had a vac-
ancy; he wouldn1t consider going to another analyst. His
father, a doctor, died a year ago.
Id," He always arrives in a great hurry, looking scared
\Iiand anxious, his hair uncombed, his clothes untidy. He
complains of pains and says he has to fight with himself
 to come to the sessions.
He arrived late for the session I am reporting, say-
,`j~ing that his car had run out of petrol. He was even more
anxious than usual. He lay on the couch but couldn't
lspeak. After a while he said, "I'm very frightened be-
cause I can see something but don't know how to describe
1~'~it - I can't find the words. There are scenes, like a
movie, passing so fast on the wall at the end of the
lcouch that I can't connect with any word in time."
B. If you lay on that couch, what would you see on the
wall?
P. Just a bare white wall.
B. He can see something. I think he can see your words
going right over his head and hitting the wall.
P. He said he would like a special machine to collect
his thoughts. Then I could translate the thoughts and
understand what he was seeing.
B. He is reasonably sure that you, like most other
people, cannot see anything on that wall.
P. He said he was able to control pain. I asked him
what sort of pain. He said, "It is too complicated a
process to explain to you. If my father were alive he
would understand and explain because he was a very good
man.''
B. This statement that his father was a good man is in-
tended to be heard by the father. But this father is a
dead father - and that is a different matter. The dead
father is sure to be very angry, very hostile to the son

"l

Ill'

BRASILIA - 1975 101

who goes on living. And the cituation would be made much
worse if the son did anything which made his own life
worth living. The dead father becomes a very bad, envi-
ous, hostile and lively ghost.
I don't think this is a matter of much importance
at the moment; these feelings go back a long time before
adolescence - they would certainly be the earliest feel-
ings of all. In a somewhat technical way one could say
that when the baby is born it kills off the father and
takes possession of the mother's breast which is the
father'�s property. Those feelings are ordinarily made
more bearable if the father and mother are happily mar-
ried and the atmosphere in the family is flatly contra-
dictory to this frightful story. But suppose there are
no reassuring father and mother visible - only a blank,
white wall. It is possible to see anything on that wall,
however terrifying and however intolerable. If there is
a good, real father who is able to have a good, real
loving relationship with the mother, then that wall will
not be so blank.
This blank is brilliantly described by Milton in
Paradise Lost where he talks about not having sight; he
is surrounded by `ever-during dark1. `And for the book
of nature fair1 he is presented with `a universal blank'.
This 1universal blank' means `nothing', but it also
means `white'.
Ordinarily we do not reassure patients; we do not
tell them about our private lj�ves or anything of that
sort.So we do present them with a universal blank. `And
wisdom at one entrance quite shut out'; says Milton. I'f��
we' obey the ordinary classical rules ��of psycho-analysis,
we seem to be doing exactly what the' patient is afraid
of - giving him no good `sight'.
P. He often complains that if he knew something about
me and my life he would feel much calmer.
B. One can only assume that so far he feels that you
are a friendly human bing, not a horrifying and danger-
ous ghost. But I can see a difficulty: if you try to
draw his attention to these terrifying ideas, then you
are becoming a hostile person who tells him terrible and
frightening things.I think he has enough sense of reality
to feel that you are a very important person. In so far
as he is able to `push out' towards the analyst, he meets
a different `thing', something which is `not him'. And

102 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 20

50 far he feels that it is something helpful, that you

are a bit more good than bad.I don't know how muc'h more;
probably very,very little.I might try to say, "You think
that if I told you I was a goo'd father, you would find
it easier to come here. As it is, we don't know how you
have managed to get here again today."
jl~P. He says he only comes to the sessions because he is
unable to sleep at night when he is lonely and sees
frightening things.He is very angry about having to come
to analysis; when he does come he cannot tell me what he
4feels. When he understands something I tell him, he gets
even angrier.
B. If he goes to sleep he is afraid he will never wake
up again. That has already been described by Shakespeare
in Hamlet: `but in that sleep of death what dreams may
come?' So far he has probably been saved from killing
himself because he is afraid that things would be even
worse if he were dead amongst all these ghosts and hor-
rible things which come when he is asleep. You give him
a chance to believe that there might be one good person.
He knows he wants to believe that, yet there is no reason
to believe that you are any better than anybody else, no
reason to believe that you are a good father or a good
mother.
P. He quarrels with his mother at home. She often weeps
and says she wants to kill herself because she cannot
bear her loneliness. He tells her, "My analyst doesn't
cry.1,
B. From a very early stage the baby can press out and
get in contact with - we hope - a good breast, a good
mother. But the father is a `mother' who doesn't put the
baby to his breast, so this is one of the first ways of
telling a difference between a father and a mother. One
could say that, in a sense, the father is a bad `mother';
and the mother isn't really a good mother because she
doesn't produce good milk from her eyes. A baby may not
be in contact with the breast, but quite soon it can
follow the mother about with its eyes. In this way it is
possible to have a good relationship with the mother who
isn't even in contact with the baby. But the mother this
patient can see with his eyes, can take into himself
with his eyes, doesn't produce milk but tears.
You could try saying something of this sort: "You
are afraid that if you try to get good health from me,I

BRASILIA - 1975 103

shall not produce good milk but bad tears." The baby can
feel that it wants or tries to get good milk; or good
analysis in the case of this patient. But what he pro-
duces isn't good milk - it is urine.
This patient has continued trying for two years to
behave as if you are a good analyst. He is still alive,
so it may be that he is right. You could say, `It doesn't
prove it, but I think it is sure to be making you feel
that I might be helpful - even though you are very
frightened of my being extremely hostile."

P. The patient is a thirty-nine-year-old woman who

i,started analysis four years ago. She complained of feel-
ing very strange; she didn't know who she was any more,
she only knew that she was not herself and was afraid
she would never come back again. She thought a `head
shrink' would be able to bring her back.
I am reporting a session that took place four
months ago. She said she wanted to tell me something
that happened the previous day. "We were on our way' to a
party but couldn't find the number of the house where it
was to be held. I began to feel bad, as if I was going
to disappear. I quickly got into the car and felt more
secure. My husband backed the car and we found the right
house. The moment I was under a roof. I felt secure - it
seems that the roof and walls give me a great feeling of
security. In the living room I felt very well, but the
moment my husband asked me if I was feeling well,remark-
ing that generally I don't feel well in unfamiliar
places, I started shaking and feeling bad. I was talking
to some friends and looking at the food - I couldn't
wait to start grabbing it."
B. She seems to be telling two different stories: one
is about the feeling of security; the other is the
answer to her husband. I don't know to whom the first
one is the answer, but it is probably what she feels
able to tell the analyst, and even to some extent her-
self. But the moment the analyst becomes somebody who
wants to know, "Are you feeling well?" - like the hus-
band - then the language she speaks is suddenly quite
different. Why are there these two different stories? Is
the one she tells her husband told in that particular
language in order to make it easier for him to under-
stand, or to make it more difficult? What she told her
husband or anyone else is, in my opinion, of very little
importance. What is important is what sort of language
this patient is likely to speak to the analyst. I would

BRASILIA - 1975 105

ask myself whether I would' be able to do analysis if the
patient speaks these two different languages to me.
It is quite likely that she describes these pecu-
liar feelings if she thinks it safe to talk to a parti-
cular person. But she may be afraid of what will happen
if the analyst turns into a sort of husband, the sort of
person who could see her as often as a husband.She might
speak what seemed to be fairly ordinary conversational
language - unless she was going to continue seeing the
analyst. In that case she is almost sure to speak this
other language.
P. It is very difficult for me to understand with whom
she is talking. I feel as if she is talking with herself.
B. That is an important point: people do talk to them-
selves. So even though the analyst is there, the patient
may be talking to herself - and the analyst can hear
that conversation. I think I would try to show her what
seems to be going on while she is in the room with you.
For example, I might say, "I don't think you are talking
to me; I think you are behaving as if I weren't here."
I would try to draw her attention to the fact that she
seems to be busy making noises so that she can feel some-
body is in the room with her. If a mother leaves her
baby alone, it may start making noises, `talking', to
help it to believe that somebody else is in the room.
Sometimes the baby makes angry noises in order to feel
that if someone in the house is being angry, that at
least proves it is not alone.
It seems clear, from what we have heard, that this
patient is afraid that if she comes to the analyst often
enough - and certainly if she is married and lives very
close to a person who is not her - then the analyst or
husband will be bound to find out all sorts of things
about her. Some of them she wouldn't mind: it .is usually
felt to be quite respectable to be ill, to have these
feelings she has when her husband asks her a question.
But suppose she is at a party where there are a lot of
nice things to eat and she proceeds to eat as many of
those things as possible, that would not be respectable.
Similarly she can feel that she has been well brought up,
has a home, an income, a husband, and now she wants an-
alysis as well. That also may not seem so respectable;
it may seem to be very greedy. That is not a nice idea,
either about herself or about the analyst who may equal-

106 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 21

ly be very comfortably off and yet be glad to have a

particular patient as well.
The analytic situation is a dynamic one and the
analyst has to be able to see that dynamic situation
which is always changing. Consider even the little we
have heard about this patient so far; you can see what
an enormous number of stories can be worked out in a
short space of time. What the analyst has to know is,
which story at which time and, if possible, why. What
leads this patient to be afraid that she might be
accused, if the truth were known, of being very greedy?
Another time she might be very afraid that the analyst
will say, "You are so ill, you are trembling and shaking
so much, that you will have to go into hospital." Indeed,
in this respect the patient may feel that it is diffi-
cult to know what language to speak, or whether to make
clear what she is talking about, because there is no
knowing what the analyst, or even her husband, would do
if he knew the truth.
It is this dynamic situation which is very badly
served by trying to impose upon it a rigid system of
psycho-analytic dogma or theory. There is no substitute
for what patients and analysts can see and hear for them-
selves. For a patient to go by hearsay about any parti-
cular analyst is dangerous and contrary to genuine ana-
lytic theory or philosophy. Similarly it is dangerous
for an analyst to try to substitute some dogmatic auth-
ority or person who has told them how the patient should
be treated. That, you can be reasonably sure, is how not
to treat the patient.

P. When I started with this patient four and a half

years ago, it was my first analytic case. I saw him five
times a week for four years; since I came to live here I
have been seeing him twice a day on two days a week. Dur-
ing the whole of the time I have been treating him I
have been doubtful whether I would ever be able to be-
come an analyst - he always made me feel very insignifi-
cant, and besides my own problems his behaviour confirm-
ed my fears. I want to raise this question: why does
this patient make me feel like that?
The motives that brought him to analysis were two-
fold: he was going to work as a publicity agent - he
said he usually destroyed everything he most loved, and
this agency was something he had always dreamt of doing
all his life; and he had a bad relationship with women.
B. How did this patient come to you?
P. Through the Institute of Psycho-analysis.
B. We don't know what he had heard about analysis be-
forehand, but patients frequently feel that the analyst
knows very little about it. You yourself may know that
you don't know much about it - it would be very extra-
ordinary if you ever thought that you did. If you ever
think that you know much about analysis, you can be
reasonably sure that you are deteriorating.
P. Then I am happy!
B. It is often helpful to go to the very thing which
obtrudes: if you feel that the patient is able to make
you feel guilty or frightened or anxious, that is what
you need to investigate.
P. Should I cope with it in my own analysis, or with my
patient?
B. There is no reason why you shouldn't take up the
point with your own analyst, but I think it is a differ-
ent matter with the patient. Wanting to be analysed is a
different state of mind from analysing somebody else.The
two states may look the same, and�if somebody was able

108 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 22

to record it, it would sound the same, but they aren't.
There are many people who regard doctors and sur-
geons as inferior creatures. After all, it is a situ-
ation which has a long history; in England barbers were
the earliest form of surgeon. You must always be ready
to find that patients secretly think they are socially
-lsuperior to you. There are many different varieties of
this; it is only in the analysis that you have a chance
of becoming interested in how patients manage to make
you feel inferior. One could say that surgeons and doc-
tors are relatively respectable; but who are psycho-
analysts? Nothing at all. They are the most inferior of
all.
P. The patient appears to value psycho-analysts highly:
his wife is a psychologist and she is training to be a
psycho-analyst; in his publicity agency he uses advert-
ising with a psychological background, and he is very
successful with it. Nevertheless none of this appears in
Ii the analysis.
B. For whom is he being a publicity agent in the analy-
sis?
P. I don't seem to fulfil any useful function for him.
He never gets into real contact with me; he only talks
about his publicity agency and how wonderful it is, how
well it works. He has a sister who is psychotic and is
regularly committed to mental hospitals - she has recent-
ly been committed again. At these times he finds I can be
helpful - I acquire some function.
B. He can be anxious that you will not be interested in
him unless he is a serious case, unless you could say
that you have cured a psychotic patient.He can be afraid
that you want to use him to show what a good analyst you
are. I think this changes all the time: sometimes it
will be you wanting to be publicized; sometimes it will
be his wife; sometimes it will be himself.
P. Before I moved here I noticed that although he never
missed a session he was very punctual in his unpunctual-
ity - he was always twenty minutes late. I tried every
way to analyse this but he continued to come twenty min-
utes late. But since I started a different schedule here
he has never been late. At the same time he went into a
depression - for the first time.
B. Who does he pay?
P. He pays me directly.

BRASILIA - 1975 109

B Does he pay a reduced fee?
P. He did at first, and I have made adjustments in line
with the rate of inflation. Nevertheless he still pays
less than any of my other patients. I like him very much;
I don't know whether this disturbs the relationship.
M. Perhaps he doesn't feel entitled to use the whole
session because he pays a low fee.
B. I think that is right. It is one way of paying for
the session: ``I may not pay the full fee, but then I
don't have a full session, so it's all right." I think
he feels guilty about this.
P. He was breast-fed until he was five years old, not
because the mother had enough milk for him alone, but
because the two sisters born after him were not breast-
fed - the first died and the second is the psychotic I
mentioned before. There is a third sister, the youngest,
who was breast-fed.
B. The other members of the family are not getting any
analysis, `so he is the only one who is favoured. I think
he can be afraid of what he will have to pay for this
favoured treatment. There are two possibilities: one is
to be a good publicity agent for you; the other is to
knock off twenty minutes from the session or get de-
pressed. But there is another possibility; he might have
to go into a mental hospital like his sister.
P. He is the only successful member of the family. He
enjoys the situation but feels uncomfortable about it,
so he doesn't enter into any close personal relation-
ships with members of his family. He has an enormous
number of friends and is always together wit1i groups of
them.
B. It seems to me that there is anxiety here about be-
ing the favoured patient and the greediest patient who
takes everybody's fees, everybody's analysis. So he gets
the analysis - the good breast feeding - which the other
l;
siblings do not.
P. ` He is the first patient in the morning - the first
to be fed!
M. Superficially he gives things to others through the
publicity agency, but he doesn't actually give anything
to the family.
B. Yes, there is a great deal of greed and meanness
about it.
M. One of his reasons for coming to analysis was the

110 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 22

fact that he had difficulties in relationships with

women. I see a parallel between this and his relation-
ship with the analyst.
B. I think that when he says he can1t have a relation-
ship with women, it isn1t really true; the real truth is
that he cannot relate to anybody. It sounds more plaus-
ible to say his difficulty is with women. A patient who
says he is a homosexual isn't fond of men - he hates
them. The real difficulty with a patient of that kind is
that he hates people.
Anybody can be married - there is no difficulty
about that. Then he can say to the whole world, like a
publicity agent, "Look! I'm married; I'm just like a nor-
mal man; I'm just like a father who loves his wife and
children. Look at my family!" I certainly think he wants
the analyst to fall in with that and help show what a
good man and husband and father he is.
P. I feel that his relationship with himself is a publi-
cized one, not internalized. Therefore he can't have re-
lationships with other people.
B. Yes. He doesn't mind about his wife, children, psy-
chotic sister; what he minds about is that they can be
used for purposes of showing what a good man he is. In
other words, the wife and children are not loved - they
are simply used for purposes of loving himself.
P. At the beginning of the analysis he had a serious
problem with hypertension which improved later although
it had not responded to medical attention. I discovered
later that he was taking appetite depressant pills as a
stimulant.
B. I think that he feels he has a very hostile object
inside him which he covers up with all this publicity
and family affairs in order that he cannot look inside
himself and see what this very bad thing is which he
calls `hypertension .
M. Would the adipose tissue be a way of holding on to
the bad object?
B. It could be. In the meantime he attacks this bad
thing inside him: he throws amphetamines at it, he
throws food down his gullet so as to hit it, to kill it;
he tries to starve it out of existence. Whatever he does,
this bad thing which is felt to be a bad part of himself
might just as well be somebody else because he has no
control over it. He is only a sort of publicity agent:it

BRASILIA - 1975 111

is his business to look nice, to act as a disguise or

cover for this bad thing inside him which is greedy,
violent and hostile.
P. He says he is better. I notice that he is thinner.
B. That is what his physical appearance tells you. But
that is on the outside - like this adiposity. His fear
is of what you might tell him; indeed, there is always
the risk of what an intuitive wife, son or daughter
might tell him. Coming for analysis, or even having a
family, is taking a great risk - the risk of being found
out. I would be extremely suspicious about the nature of
the improvement, of its always being a part of the pub-
licity, of his wishing to get you to agree with it.

P. The patient is a man of thirty, a child psychotherap-

ist.When he came to me he had had four years of previous
analysis. At the age of fifteen he had experienced a
religious crisis. At that time he had eight months psy-
chotherapy with a Jungian priest. He is the oldest of
six children - four boys and two girls. When he was
eleven he seduced his nine-year-old sister; he appears
to link that experience with one of a homosexual nature
with a cousin of seventeen when he was fourteen, and a
second experience with an employee of his father's, aged
twenty. During his medical training he had a three-year
homosexual relationship which ended violently.He chooses
handsome men of good education, and psychiatrists like
himself, with whom to have homosexual relationships.
Apparently these relationships consist of oral and phy-
sical contact, but are without orgasm. It is not clear
whether he has engaged in fellatio. The partner has to
be young and married; he tries to seduce the young hus-
band by behaving in an intellectual way.
In every session he says, "I had a dream. `
B. Whose idea was it that he should tell you these
dreams?
P. He is psycho-analytically oriented; he makes inter-
pretations and wants to control me.
B. Such a patient as this thinks he knows what the ana-
lyst would like, and since analysts like dreams he will
give the analyst dreams. It is one thing to be told
dreams if that is the quickest and easiest way in which
the patient can talk to the analyst - dreams are very
useful if there is nothing better - but does he tell you
these dreams because it is such a useful way of inform-
ing you of something you cannot know, or does he tell
them because he thinks you would like to' be told dreams?
What is his motive? Is he mentioning them in order to
seduce you, or because it is the best way of talking?
P. He has difficulty in relating to me - except homo-

BRASILIA - 1975 113

sexually. It seems that the dreams are used to communi-
cate something he cannot contain because when material
comes into the session that he cannot contain he weeps.
B. One of the striking things about this is that he is
in fact very frightened of sex; he is frightened that
you might have some sexual relationship with him, and he
is frightened therefore of having any relationship with
you, whether you are a man or a woman.
P. This is one of the dreams he told me: "I was with a
group of people who were soccer players. I was a press
reporter and found myself with Pele. He was in front of
me and I crouched down close to him and had oral sex
with him. I fought against the relationship. I had an
ejaculation in the dream. When I woke up I remembered
that my little brother had a great admiration for Pele."
His brother, whom he admired very much, was a good
soccer player but the patient was never able to emulate
him. On the other hand, he had a poor opinion of his
father who had been an immigrant, worked as a pastry
cook, and was alcoholic. The patient suffered greatly
during boyhood because he was never sure who would take
care of him. They had no money to pay the rent or buy
food; they had to ask for help from the mother's family.
My interpretation of the dream was that he was trying to
establish the same relationship with me that he had with
Pele, trying to absorb something valuable from me. He
assumes the role of the wife of the one he loves.
B. I think the trouble is that as soon as he wants the
feminine role, he becomes afraid of it and wants the
masculine role; when he has the masculine role, he is
afraid of that and wants the feminine role - and so it
goes on. In short, he wants some assistance from you but
doesn't know how to get it; he is afraid of you, what-
ever you are. In so far as you are the mother, there is
the fear of needing to have a relationship with you, or
you as the mother's breast. But then he is anxious about
the intercourse in which the breast would penetrate his
mouth. As the baby he is anxious to be able to walk; he
wants to get about by himself; he would like to have
feet like Pele because then he could be a wonderful ath-
lete, but it's no good - he can't be Pele the Athlete.
There is yet another difficulty: in so far as he
wants to do what his mother wishes, he also has to do
something. One of the earliest things he has to do is to

114 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 23

evacuate [`is bowels. That is made easier if he finds he
gets sexual pleasure out of passing faeces through his
anus so that he has a sexual feeling with this black ob-
ject which is inside him. For a while that solves the
problem of the sexual relationship which is partly with
his mother who wants him to evacuate his bowels, but
lpartly with this bad thing inside him of which he is
frightened. So this is another failure.
In the next phase he tries to have a sexual re-
lationship with his sister; he tries to be just like the
father and mother. There's nothing particularly danger-
ous about having sexual relationships with a sister. Why
it is discouraged and why it is not thought to be'normal'
is because children who try to do that are sure to fail,
and the form that the failure takes is that they find
there is no pleasure in it. All they learn is that they
can't have sexual intercourse, and that since there is
no pleasure in it there is nothing to look forward to.
The boy also probably learns that something frighten-
ing has happened to the girl's penis. So the lesson that
is learnt from this premature sexual marriage is learnt
at an impressionable age and is very difficult to un-
learn. As a result the boy doesn't want to see the
girl's genital if he can help it - it is too frightening,
it is not pleasurable, it is not sexually exciting, there
is no advantage in having such a relationship. So he is
as far away as ever from a happy sexual life.
P. I forgot to mention earlier that he despises women
because they don't have penises.
B. He can also despise himself because he has no
breasts.
Next, he tries a brother. (I don't think it's one
after the other at all; all these things probably happen
in any order.)
P. He used to sleep with his brother. Because he
suffered from enuresis he had to wear a diaper in order
not to wet his brother, and although he was older than
his brother, his brother had to help him change his
clothes.
B. The relationship with the brother is also awkward.
If he tries to feed from the brother by taking the penis
into his mouth, he doesn't get good milk out of it; if
he tri~'s to feed his brother he can't feed him with good
milk - only urine.
 BRASILIA - 1975 115
So: the mother is no good; emptying his bowels is
no good; trying to walk is no good; trying to have a
sexual relationship with a sister is no good; trying to
have a sexual relationship with a brother is no good;
trying to feed a brother is no good; trying to be fed at
the penis is no good. They are all failures, one after
another. By the time this boy enters the latency period
everything is a failure, everything without exception.
He has no feelings at all, or if he has any feelings
they are depressed.
Then he goes to see a psycho-analyst. What is the
good of that? Everything has always failed and the ana-
lyst only talks. So he tries another psycho-analyst.
What happens then? Another failure - he knows it is
bound to be no good. So he goes to a third analyst. But
more and more analysts are not going to be any better -
they are all as bad as each other; they just talk. How
is a patient like this possibly to believe that verbal
intercourse could be the slightest use? One could say
that he would have to be stupid or in a very bad way to
believe that it is any good at all. In other words, he
has learnt, thoroughly learnt, at a very impressionable
age, that any relationship is no good. It is no good at
the breast - something has gone wrong; it's no good at
the other end of the alimentary canal - the anus is no
good either; it's no good with a sister; it's no good
with a brother; it's no good with a penis; it's no good
with a vagina; it's no good with the mouth. There is
only one thing which stands between him and death, and
that is analysis. Suppose there is some truth in this
idea about dreams - this would make it slightly hopeful.
If he talks about dreams, perhaps you will say or do
something that will save him. It is such a very faint
hope that it is almost like fooling himself.All you have
to go on is these dreams; and all he can believe in is
the hope that it isn't all nonsense.
You are dealing with a very dangerous situation; at
any time this patient may simply be overwhelmed by des-
pair or resentment or hatred, and kill himself. Although
he may not know how dangerous the situation is, you do -
so much so that you can almost be a'fraid of giving an
interpretation.
P. I do have great difficulty in giving him interpret-
ations.

116 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 23

B. Yes, there is such a mass of things to deal with
that it is hard to know which one to choose. I think my
inclination would be to try to bring out into the open
the fact that he does not believe in psycho-analysis or
in you, because he thinks it very unlikely that he will
be cured or helped in any way. Indeed, how did he manage
to come at all? I would try to uncover this fundamental
hopelessness and despair for one thing, but underneath
that, his hatred and resentment of this hopeless situ-
ation. There is always the fear that he will either do
nothing at all, or break out and murder somebody - and
the one person who is always available is himself.
The central problem is: how can you find a chance
of drawing his attention to the fact that it is very
difficult for him to come to you without believing that
he is fooling himself or fooling you? In other words, he
is feeling that he has to depend on a lie.
P. In order to deny the depth of his distress he said,
"I am lying to you. ` He wept, then said of his homosexu-
ality, "I can't explain it; it is a compulsion. I can't
keep it inside myself." When he leaves his sessions he
goes to look for a partner.
B. I think I would say to him, "It is true, what you
say, but I think it feels as if this bad sexual partner
which you call `homosexual', but which really means bad
sex, is something inside which you feel is you, but it
might just as well be somebody else." This bad thing in-
side is felt to be determined to have a sexual life, so
it uses him, his mouth, his penis, his anus, in order to
do so. And he has to have an intercourse with whatever
this thing inside him insists on - anything; it doesn't
mind what. But he feels that this same object has forced
him to come to analysis whether he wants it or not. So
he is frightened by a situation in which all of him is
false: he doesn't want an analysis; he doesn't want sex-
ual intercourse; he doesn't want any intercourse, not
even a conversational one. But this thing inside him is
determined to burst out and have an intercourse, using
him to have it with.

P. I would like to raise a point about a patient who

has been in treatment with me for a year: whenever she
makes any progress she becomes quarrelsome. This session
took place last Monday. She arrived very happily saying,
as she came into the room, "Now you must explain to me
why I was so happy after Friday's session, and why I am
happy now." In fact the Friday session had not been a
happy one; she had mentioned suicide and the fear that
she was going to die of a heart attack. She said, "I
don't understand what you say to me; you don't even talk
to me. However did I manage to get better?" She lay down
on the couch and said, "You don't need to be so nervous
and so tense. Why are you making noises with your
fingers?" I pointed out that she couldn't accept the
idea that she could get better just by talking.
B. I suspect she is setting a kind of trap in order to
find out what you think. I would be inclined to say some-
thing of this sort: "What you have just told me I could
not possibly know unless you had told me. I am assuming
that you are speaking the truth, otherwise we should
have to consider why you tell me lies. As it is, you
have drawn my attention to a mystery - you are feeling
better when there is no known cause for it.�We can now
continue the discussion of this extraordinary problem."
That doesn't commit you to saying that you or analysis
cures people - I think that is nonsense. Certain people
do seem to be able to make use of analytic sessions in
such a way that they become more capable of working,
more socially acceptable. But why that is so I don't
know. The only fact I know is that when I have given an
interpretation, I have either been wrong - which doesn't
matter - or I have drawn attention to what, in my opin-
ion, is already there. I wouldn't say that to the pa-
tient, but nor would I allow her to manoeuvre me into a
situation where I am agreeing that I have cured her or
made her feel better. One could say, "Assuming that you

118 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 24

are right about this, you ought to know how you feel,
and therefore we assume that you feel much better. But
so far we have heard nothing about why."
P. I tried to draw her attention to the fact that she
always wants explanations and that she herself didn't
know what happend to her between Friday and Monday. She
said, "If I were to give explanations I would suddenly
get worse. My husband said, `You were feeling so ill,
and now you seem so much better. Dr X must be a very
good analyst to have achieved that.' And I said, `I
don't even know how it happened because he doesn't talk
to me."
B. So if she is better it must have something to do
with not talking.
P. She again said I was very tense. Then she complained
that I was very hard with her. "If you don't give me any
explanations I shall certainly get worse." I said I
thought she was afraid that, since she was feeling so
well, she had robbed me of soniething good.
B. How is it that you have become so `tense'? It might
still be the same answer: if she has taken a cure away
from you, that would explain why you have no cure left.
I think there is a suspicion that when two people come
together they can't both benefit, either because it is
`only' analysis which is `just talk', or because she
will have to take something away from you, or you will
have to take something away from her.

CONTRIBUTIONS
TO
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Brasilia, a New Experience

BRASILIA, A NEW EXPERIENCE

I find myself in a peculiar position because in some

sense I must know less about this matter than any member
of the audience. But in so far as I have concerned my-
self with an attempt to understand the way in which
human character develops, I feel that it gives me a
chance to contribute more to that particular way of look-
ing at things. I am reminded of the fact that apparently
the idea of Brasilia was formulated at least as long ago
as 1820. The curious thing is that it then seemed to dis-
appear, but we who are able to come to it one hundred
and fifty years later, can all look around us and see
this extraordinary edifice which developed out of an
idea. It is very puzzling to know why or how it developed
at that particular date. One could say that perhaps the
time was ripe for it; there were people who had studied
architecture, the foundations essential for any parti-
cular building, and indeed of this city. This point may
seem obvious, but when an idea is transformed into
action-it is as if the action commits the people who
think like that to an irreversible course. If it were
possible to look at this city and guess at a sort of re-
construction of the original idea, it could hardly be
put more clearly than in the language used by one of the
English poets. I refer to the Areopagitica, and in parti-
cular to one passage in which Milton says, `I see in my
mind a noble and puissant nation.' The remarkable thing
is that that idea appears to be able to transform itself
into actions. I have heard it said that another poet,
Shakespeare, is the person who was really responsible
for giving his people the idea of what they might become.
How do these poets come to formulat�e ideas in a way
which makes them fertile? If we could turn back the
pages of time we might be able to see the primitive
people who wanted to find some way of settling here. But
it didn't have any marked effect because it seems that a
very long time had to elapse between the wish of those

122 PANEL CONTRIBUTIONS

people, and the coming of others who were able to trans-

late those ideas into action. Somebody must be able to
sow a mental seed which is capable of germination. That
is why the poets, philosophers�and mathematicians are so
important; they make it possible for an idea to become
an action. Kant once said that intuition without a con-
cept is blind, and a concept without intuition is empty.
That phrase is particularly wide-ranging; it is one of
these statements which, like a seed, germinates and
turns into some kind of tree or forest.
To come how to something more immediate and prac-
tical: it doesn't matter very much what members of a
panel think, but it is important if it starts sprouts of
thought all over the place. This sounds simple, but in
my experience it is not; in my experience these ideas
can be stamped out before they have had a chance to de-
velop. It would be nice to think that groups of people
will form and devote themselves to the development of
some idea which they have heard expressed during one of
these meetings.
Milton, in the passage I quoted, talks about the
eagle `kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday
beam'. Can somebody living in this city, maybe in this
very meeting, dare to kindle their undazzled eyes in the
full midday beam? This idea is very old: in the ffahaba-
rata (that part of it which is the Baghavad Cica) Arjuna
presses Krishna to reveal himself. Krishna agrees to do
so with the result that Arjuna is blinded by the spec-
tacle, but he survives. Is this significant, since it
was written so many hundreds of years ago? By itself
perhaps not, but it seems to be something which people
in all ages have experienced. The religious mystics like
Meister Eckhart, poets like Dante, and many others, had
the same experience although they were separated by
hundreds of years, by nationality, by race, and by lan-
guage. So I think that you,, the inhabitants of Brasilia,
need to realize that this may kindle a candle which will
shine through the world's prevalent darkness. I am not
suggesting that this can be done only by psycho-analysts
or poets or philosophers, but between them all they may
be able to light a flame which illuminates the darkness
of man's mind. I think we are more aware nowadays of the
darkness; we do not quite so easily see everything in a
rosy glow of optimism. But we must not allow the shadows

BRASILIA, A NE[V EXPERIENCE 123

and the shades to crowd in and destroy that small flicker
of civilization which springs up here and there into a
supernova illuminating the darkness of the universes of
galaxes. The situation is clearly serious and urgent. In
fact the progress of science may have developed greatly
out of proportion to the development of the humanities.
This does not mean that it can be dealt with by putting
an end to science. But nor can it be dealt with by put-
ting an end to any of the other activities of the human
mind. This is why the governors of states, of communi-
ties, are such important people; they can give the arts,
sciences, and what one sometimes rather vaguely calls
`religion', a chance to develop - not simply to become a
dead, undeveloping aspect of the mind which then decays,
leaving a gap where some important aspect of the human
mind ought to be.

The idea of Brasilia has been successfully turned into

marble and stone so that there is a habitation for the
people of the city. What is not so clear is how this
city is to be adequately and appropriately inhabited,not
only now, not only in the past, but also in the future.
The fate of Brasilia, and probably the fate of Brazil, is
being settled now, not by the housing of the population -
all that the architects can do is to make it available -
but by every single one of the inhabitants. There is no
difficulty at all in individuals having a family, but
those individuals have to make preparations long before
that, long before birth - and long after it. It is not
enough for this generation to be occupying Brasilia now;
it also has to occupy it in such a way that something is
left which will make it an even better place for future
generations to inhabit. The spirit of a nation is very
difficult to comprehend: we talk about these things and
then tend to think that, because we have given them names,
they therefore exist, that there is no need to do any-
thing else. But nobody can opt out of `naming' the pres-
ent Brasilia and the future one - everybody is drawn
into it, thereby starting a chain reaction.
Psycho-analysts have to do a great deal of work in
order to be able to express an opinion of what consti-
tute the mental food that will propagate or make pos-

124 PANEL CONTRIBUTIONS

sible mental growth. This is the kind of thing which lib-
raries have done from the beginning of time.But libraries
from the beginning of time have also been burned down be-
cause they are such a terrible irritant; people hate hav-
ing their thoughts stirred up. So a nation has to rely on
individuals who dare to have ideas and who dare to propa-
gate them. And governments have to dare to make it pos-
sible for universities, libraries, the arts, to flourish.
None of us here would have much difficulty in recalling
situations in which the development of independent
thought, whether scientific or artistic,has aroused power-
ful, destructive forces. Whether that happens here is be-
ing settled now; it is being settled by the fact that the
government is apparently prepared to give assistance to
the thinkers amongst this population. That is the most
hopeful sign in a world in which there isn't a great deal
of ground for hope.

),`6 96

Anything can be done with psycho-analytic terms - as I

have good reason to know. I haven1t noticed any particu-
lar lack of bigotry, intolerance and ignorance amongst my
colleagues or myself. All one can do is to be vigilant
and aware of the danger of assuming that a self-imposed
characteristic may not have much to do with the truth.All
sorts of people call themselves enlightened, or make ex-
cursions and experiments into the sphere of human activ-
ity, without apparently being touched by these same dis-
coveries themselves. There is a sad passage in the bio-
graphy of Max Plank: he said,of his difficulties when try-
ing to elaborate quantum mechanics, `This experience gave
me an opportunity to learn a fact - a remarkable fact in
my opinion - that a new scientific truth does not triumph
by convincing its opponents and making them see the light,
but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it.' So the
last thing I would want to suggest here is that psycho-
analysts are in any way exempted from the characteristics
of the rest of the human race. We ought to know something
about ourselves, and indeed we attempt to do so;it is one
of our rules of training that students should themselves
get analysed. I am sorry to say that, even so, it in no
way precludes the possibility of the analyst being narrow-

BRASILIA, A NE[V EXPERIENCE 125

minded and intolerant. So I don't think that the spread
of psycho-analytic theories is going to solve this prob-
lem. Why is it that one person is capable of tolerance,
compassion, concern or respect for his fellows, and an-
other isn't? I don't know. No amount of labels that he
can collect and wear really affects this point.It is very
sad.
A mathematician is able to prove a lot of things.
Newton, for example, told Halley that it was obvious how
the movement of the planets was governed. When Halley
asked, ``Can you prove it?'', Newton replied, ``Give me two
or three days and I certainly will." The `poet' Newton
made the discovery; the `mathematician' Newton proved it.
We don't seem to be able to grow or develop to order,
but we can find plenty of ways by* which we prove that
what we do is right - it is a curious aspect of the cre-
ative human being. One would like to achieve the kind of
thought which might make it possible not to be deceived
in that way. So even those few people who are disposed to
explore the possibilities of psycho-analysis have a great
deal to do; it cannot be assumed that it is a subject
which has been settled, that it stopped at Freud in the
way that the waves of the ocean might stop at the feet of
Canute. The world of reality does not conform to the capa-
cities of human beings; that is why it is so important
that scientists and others - all of us - should have some
respect for reality, and should not allow ourselves to
distort our view of it.

There are limits to what can be done in the way of build-

ing a city which will reflect Brasilia. Is it a distort-
ing mirror that clutters the inhabitants? Or is it a mir-
ror that shows the inhabitants the faults and dangers
which beset them? I am aware that if you are going to
build a city, then you have to stick to certain discip-
lines and rules of building. But I don't know what rules
of building you would stick to if you were going to
create a city which reflected the personality or spirit
of a people. Saint Augustine tried to do it with `The
City of God' which had a profound effect. In some ways it
ushered in a dynamic philosophy and a dynamic psychology,
not one which was so rigid or so clear-cut as the Platonic

126 PANEL CONTRIBUTIONS

philosophy.
l l, l

I am often reminded of the quotation, `Si monumentum re-

quiris, circumspice.' Does anyone here want a monument?
Certainly we can see one if we look around, but that is
not what Brasilia is: it is a great city and it is wait-
ing for somebody to come and live in it. People who com-
plain that Brasilia is empty are really talking nonsense.
It is supposed to be available for the people who are
sufficiently great to live in such an edifice. It is not
a monument to the past: it is an aspiration to the future
- or so it seems to me.
We are not concerned with the building of this city;
we are concerned with living in it. How are the inhabit-
ants to grow up and go through the tribulations which
appear to be inescapable? Milton, in Paradise Lost, des-
cribes his long sojourn in the Stygian pool, this fright-
ening, dark descent, and `up to re-ascend though hard and
rare . I don't think anyone can escape this. The only
thing wrong with the magnificence of this city is that it
might mislead people into thinking that they have nothing
to do except just live in it, but they have to go through
these painful spiritual, mental experiences of loneliness,
anxiety, fear about the outcome. I don't see how there
will ever be a population of this capital city fit for
the problems which the future holds for the human race.
They seem to me to be dark and threatening, and I don't
think that any looking to the past is going to help ex-
cept as a warning of what mistakes to avoid.
I cannot say how this is to be done - I don't think
any of us can. Nothing short of hard work and thinking is
going to solve that problem. Those in the university will
have to work very hard indeed, much harder than getting
through examinations and qualifying - that is a trifle.
The real trouble starts after they are qualified, after
they have grown up.
`l, `l, `l,
`l' `l' All l

A psycho-analyst should not be particularly disturbed be-

cause patients cannot stand analysis and leave. Some will
think better of it later on, and come back knowing a bit

BRASILIA, A NEW EXPERIENCE 127

more about it and trying to make some use of it. I don't
think that the analyst should produce some form of simpli-
fied analysis for people who can't tolerate~it; nor do I
think that the authorities of Brasilia should try to ad-
apt the shape of Brasilia to suit the people who can't
put up with it as it is. By all means be open to criti-
cism, but it would be a great mistake to a!low the
critics to dominate the situation and to degrade the
standards of Brasilia because it is too magnificent, too
much for them, beyond the capacity - as they see it - of
the nation. It may be, like analysis, beyond the capacity
of some people who discover that it is an unpleasant and
harsh discipline. But it is not going to be improved by
making the discipline less.

"l' l' `l' `l' `l'

Certain people have undergone the severe discipline of

engineering, or architectural, or mathematical training.
I am not sure that if they had been asked why they were
undergoing that discipline - say twenty years ago - they
would have been able to give a particularly convincing
answer. They could have answered in terms of their disci-
pline - that they were going to be architects, engineers
or mathematicians - but now we can have a strong suspic-
ion that what they were all up to' was building a city.
The kind of training that I have had leads me to consider
a particular aspect of the facts with which I am con-
fronted at any given time. But what I am stimu!ated to
express, to formulate, may have very little to do with
the ostensible reason for the stimulation. So when I see
this extraordinary manifestation, the effect it creates
on me is to make me feel that behind it there is an in-
vitation and something which is responsible for that
invitation - a reality which I would call `the spirit of
the Brazilian people'. It is an inadequate* phrase, but I
don't feel quite so dissatisfied with the idea that it is
an `invitation' as I do with any other formulation that I
can think of, such as that it is a `challenge'.
I suspect any invitation of having a fleeting nature.
It may be difficult to see it, or hear it, or interpret it,
and every individual will hear a different interpretation
and a different invitation. It doesn't surprise me in the
least that a great number of people dislike the invitation

128 PANEL CONTRIBUTIONS

very much because of the suspicion that if it is accepted
they will all be participants in having to fulfil a prom-
ise. That is a fate of which most people are frightened;
it is subscribing to saying either `yes' or `no' to the
invitation to participate or co-operate in a creative
activity. What creative activity? Nobody tells us that;
nobody knows what the response will be to that invitation.
I would say that it looks like an invitation to greatness.
What a nasty prospect, that is! One feels like saying,
"What, me? What, us? We have to be great?" It is so much
simpler to say that we have a previous engagement and
choose not to accept the invitation. But in this curious
mental world that so fascinates me, there is no such
thing as doing nothing - doing nothing is a response; it
is a sort of acceptance of the invitation. There are no
negatives in this world; every formulation is in fact a
positive acceptance whether we like it or not.

l l,

One of the great difficulties in trying to assess what

has happened in Brasilia is that we have to consider it
while it is still going on. I suspect that the city it-
self, in the way that it has come into being, is the vis-
ible part of an upheaval, an outburst of mental turbu-
lence - rather like the kind of thing Leonardo often form-
ulated in his Notebooks with his drawings of hair and
water. He was aware of a state of mind which is by no
means rare and which repeats itself over and over again;
he could attempt to `put a line round it'. There can be
a conjunction of a whole number of people - a family, a
professional family, a nation - and as an outcome of that
coming together there is an emotional explosion. In some
respects the same people who are responsible for partici-
pating in that turmoil are the victims of the same tur-
moil. It is like trying to make up your mind what it is
that has hit you while you are being hit; it is still
more difficult to do while you are not being hit, for
then you don't know much about what you are supposed to
be investigating or feel impelled to investigate. While
the turmoil is in progress, however, there is plenty of
evidence that it is difficult to assess that evidence. I
am reminded of the statement that it is not difficult to
be a successful general, but a good general has to be

BRASILIA, A NEW EXPERIENCE 129

able to think while he is being fired at and bombed and
shelled; he doesn't have to be very intelligent, b'ut he
has to be durable. The same is true of a nation which
suddenly finds that its own collection of people has pro-
duced a city. In Milton's words, `Methinks I see in my
mind a mighty and puissant nation rousing herself like a
strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.'
I don't think any of us much like being a part of this
mind that sees that kind of upheaval taking place. We
wish that the strong man rousing from sleep would be so
good as to go to sleep again instead of bothering us by
tossing about and giving us bad dreams.
I say `bad dreams' because it is impossible to parti-
cipate in this kind of upheaval without having bad dreams.
From the little that I know about history and the way in
which minds, personalities and characters develop, it
seems to me most unlikely that the people who are affect-
ed by Brasilia are going to have a nice time. They will
have to do some thinking in these superficially comfort-
able circumstances which are not emotionally comfortable
at all. Outwardly it is seductively simple, but anybody
who is sensitive to the emotional �experience is in for a
very uncomfortable and unpleasant time - although as with
some nightmares and dreams, they can apparently be turned
to good account.

SA'O PAULO
1978

P. The patient, an economist, is thirty-eight years old

and has been in analysis with me for almost a year. He
and his sister were sent, as children, to live with the
grandparents because the parents decided to devote all
their attention to the brother who is mentally deficient.
The patient refers to himself as "an orphan with living
parents". His physical appearance is good; he is well-
mannered and is punctual. I have the impression that his
contact with me has some ritualistic aspects.
B. What part of his behaviour seems to be symptomatic of
a ritual?
P. His walk is rather mechanical; the way he walks to
the couch and lies down seems like a well-finished pro-
duct of something. I notice it also in the way his first
phrases are constructed at the beginning of the session.
For example, he breathes in deeply and then always says,
"Very well, Doctor", and he uses certain expressions such
as, "I have brought you some dreams today", or "I want to
believe that we are going to work well today."
B. Why does he say they are dreams?
P. He simply tells me so.
B. It is one of these words which are so commonly used
that people think they know what dreams are and speak
about them without question. On what grounds do we say
that the patient had a dream? And what strikes you about
the patient's statement that he had a dream?
M. I would first ask myself why he starts telling me
that he had a dream.
B. Yes, it is an important question. We do not ordin-
arily say to a stranger, "I had a dream. " So why does the
patient come to see a psycho-analyst and say he had a
dream? I can imagine myself saying to a patient, "Where
were you last night? What did you see? " If the patient
told me he didn't see anything he just went to bed - I

134 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 1

would say, "Well, I still want to know where you went and
what you saw." If the patient said, "Ah well, I had a
dream", then I would want to know why he says it was a
dream.
P. I get the impression that when he says he had a dream,
he wants to let me know that he has something very import-
ant to say and that I am going to be interested in it.
B. That I can understand, but when he says that, he is
awake and `conscious', as we call it. So - both the pa-
tient and you are in the same state of mind, and that is
not the same state of mind as you or he are in when
asleep. He is inviting you and himself to be prejudiced
in favour of a state of mind in which we are when awake.
P. He has been taking his holidays either before or
after mine. In the first session after his last holiday
he apologized for forgetting to send me a cheque for his
fees. Then he said he had forgotten to apologize because
he was so busy during his vacation.
B. These are the problems this raises in my mind. I have
already asked one question: why does he say he had a
dream? I'll ask another: why does he say he is an econom-
ist? If he is an economist, why does he say he has forgot-
ten to pay his account? Aren't economists supposed to
know about accounts? This is a peculiar story: it doesn't
fit together; these bits of news don't harmonize. Perhaps
he thinks that psycho-analysis is a kind of religion and
that analysts follow a ritual of three-times-a-week, four-
times-a-week, five-times-a-week at such-and-such hours;
and that if the ritual of the psycho-analytic religion is
properly carried out, then the patient will end up cured.
I would like to hear some more about this peculiar state
of affairs.
P. I suggested that he was too preoccupied with himself
to remember the account. Then he said that he was not
worried or concerned about himself; the most important
people for him were his wife and children.
B. This is again very peculiar. He says he isn't worried
about hmself; the only things that worry him are what I
call `facts'. As I understand that, `facts' are things
you can't do anything about. If there is something wrong
with the patient, then I can understand that he might try
to discuss it. But if there is nothing troubling him -
and we know there isn't because he has said so - then
these `facts' are nothing to do with us; we can't do any-

SAo PAULO - 1978 135

thing about his wife and children, and we can do nothing
about him because he's all right. So why does he come to
you?
If you agree with me that we can't do anything about
these `facts', then what do we think we are doing? We
could say that we might try analysing him, but if he has
no worries about himself what are we supposed to do? Who
or what does he think the analyst is? Does he think you
are a surgeon? A physician? A priest? An economist? An
industrialist? Does he think your business is collecting
money from him? And if so, why has lie forgotten to bring
the money? I think I might say, "If what you say is right,
I wonder why you have come to me. There must be some
reason why you are spending time and money to come and
see me. Can you tell me what you think I am, or what I
do?"
P. It occurs to me that he thinks of himself as the ana-
lyst. The times which are productive and in which both of
us can work are those when he becomes very upset, says I
have confused him and he cannot put what I have told him
into any category.
B. Why go to somebody who treats you like that? Why
spend time and money on someone who `confuses' you?
P. He frequently says that he comes to me because he
thinks that I have something good to give him. But he
feels he has to take possession of the ingredients of my
life; he wants to know how I reach an idea.
B.. I would be inclined to say, "I thought you said you
are an economist. You seem to be behaving as if you are a
psychiatrist or a psycho-analyst." What makes him think
that you have anything valuable that you would want to
part with, or that he would want to get?
P. He came to me after a former `psycho-analysis'. In
that so-called psycho-analytical treatment he conducted
every session, and his `analyst' was supposed to agree or
disagree with what he said. He was therefore very shocked
to find that I did not conduct the analysis in that way.
He said that with the previous analyst he had known every-
thing about himself but nevertheless still felt very dis-
tressed. With me he didn't know anything about himself or
about me, but in spite of this he felt better - he
thought I must be some kind of witch. When he first came
to me he brought his `psycho-diagnosis' - his `oedipal
situation' and his `mechanisms of defense' - and wanted

136 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 1

to discuss it with me.
B. What an extraordinary story! Can he say what an `oedi-
pal situation' is? And what have `oedipal situations' to
do with psycho-analysis? It is an important question be-
cause it is the kind of thing we are liable to �have said
to us. People learn, if they are clever enough, to read
books about `oedipal situations', `dreams', `interpret-
ations', and so on and so forth. And indeed they sound
just like psycho-analysts or `psychiatrists. But when
these people who sound so knowledgeable and who use all
the correct' terms - `father figure', `mother figure',
`oedipal situation', the whole psycho-analytic rubbish
bin - are actually confronted by a psycho-analytic ex-
perience, they show great fear; the person who is so know-
ledgeable, knows all about it, becomes `confused'; the
mind which is so wonderful, cured, simply disintegrates.
One could say to' this patient, "Why, when we are
using - as far as I know - ordinary articulate speech,
should you become confused? `Suppose I am the patient
that you, with all your psycho-analytic knowledge, are
going to cure: why do you get confused? Either you have
made a mistake in thinking that you know all about it, or
you shouldn't be a psycho-analyst. You ought" to take up
something like economics; you shouldn't be coming to ana-
lyse me."
In the practice of analysis such a patient, who is
apparently wide awake, sensible, rational, well-qualified,
cannot stand the strain of being an analyst. Nowadays
there is a chance that all o'f us will get more patients
like this *- patients who know all about psycho-analysis
and are much superior to us poor analysts.

P. The patient I am going to talk about is one with whom

I have great difficulties. He suffers terribly during the
sessions and shows his suffering physically - he sneezes,
moans, sighs. He gets very desperate. And I always feel
that I fail to understand what is' happening.
B. What does he talk about when he behaves like that?
P. Very often he doesn't talk; he puts his head �in his
hands and says, "Oh, my God!" In yesterday's session he
looked at me when he came in and smiled with a happy ex-
pression - this often happens - and then lay down. There
was a long silence o;f ten minutes and during that time I
tried to watch him.
B. When do you think the session starts? Are you waiting
for him `in the consulting room?
P. No, I fetch him from the waiting room.
B. How does the session end?
P. I say the time is up. I get up and he goes out. Often,
after a very bad session, he looks at me, smiling, and
goes out happily.
B. And you go out with him?
P. No, except once three days ago when the lights went
out and I had to go with- him with a candle.
B. Some patients want to prolong the session; when they
stand up to leave they go on talking. I don't like giving
interpretations then because that lengthens the sessions
more and more - �like a prolonged good-bye. So when I have
said the session is over, I stop.
P. He once complained that he is the one who has to
start talking in the session.
B. That is his misfortune. He might complain that the
session ends when he has a lot more to say and hasn't had'
a chance of saying it. Whatever you do, there are disad-
vantages.
P. After ten minut'es silence' he started talking. He said
that wh'en he was `coming up the stairs to my consulting
room, and in his house earlier, he felt sure that he was

138 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 2

going to fight with me. But when he arrived he felt re-

lieved. "But now", he said, "I want to send you to hell -
I don't know why."
B. What is your impression of this? I would like you to
imagine that you are seeing the patient for the first
time. Do you want to take him on or not?
P. I am doubtful that I would continue with him; I might
suggest another analyst.
B. In a way every session is the first because people
change: the two-hundredth session is still the first, but
you are now prejudiced by what you have seen in the pre-
vious one hundred and ninety-nine. By then you may be
sighing but he may not. This `Oh, my God!' is a state of
mind. Whose state of mind is it? Who is feeling like that?
Is it the patient? Or the analyst at seeing him again? Or
is it his mother or father? Or is it what you are going
to feel like? In other words, what are you looking at - a
historian or a prophet? Is this a person who is writing
with his body about past events? Or times to come?
P. He once said, "I feel you can't stand me."
B. You could say, "I think you are feeling that you are
not taken in by the fact that I behave in a polite and
civilized manner; that if I were sincere and honest, I
would be feeling and acting in the way you suggest."
P. He continued, "I think you want to say, `It's no good;
go and look for another kind of therapy; analysis is not
for you.'" I felt he wanted me to send him away.
B. This may be a reminiscence, something his mother felt
- too tired to deal with such a troublesome boy, always
requiring attenticn, `always expecting to be loved and
wanted. Perhaps he had a brother or sister who.also got
tired of playing with him; or a girl friend who didn't
want to marry him. Similarly it may be that his analyst
does not want to go on with the analysis when he wants to
have more; or he doesn't want an analysis with this ana-
lyst but with a `better' one. Or he may feel, "No, this
can't come to anything because I don't want to marry this
analyst - I have somebody else in mind." In any case the
analysis cannot end happily; patients don't `live happily
ever after' with their analysts.
These are just a few possible stories: which one
shall we tell him? There are two people in the room -
who is going to get tired of the other one first? And
what is' the game that is being played? When the number of
 SA0 PAULO - 1978 139
choices is considerable, you can see that the chances of
choosing the right one are loaded against you. You don't
know whether to choose in terms of past history, or pre-
sent, or future.
P. He was engaged to be married some years ago but broke
it off. He does the same with his professional life. He
is always changing jobs, always changing his choice of
career. He was a surgeon; he left surgery to get scholar-
ships in Europe where he spent three years. When he came
back he worked in laboratory research. During the six
months before starting analysis he changed jobs three
times, dismissed from at least one of them for ineffici-
ency. I don't know what he is doing now - the information
I get is very vague and confused - except that he is
taking a course in philosophy.
B. Now the situation gets a bit clearer It is not simply
a question of choosing his doctor, analyst, wife, father
or mother; it is also a question of choosing his profess-
ion. But things are just the same; he has always been un-
faithful to his chosen profession and has tried another.
But the new one is no better than the old.Sooner or later
he is saying, ``My God, this laboratory.'' Or, ``My God,
this medicine!" Or, "My God, this philosophy!" Or, "My
God, this analysis!" At present he is doing all those
things -- he is confused and is saying, "Take all this rub-
bish and choose the best one from it." When he sighs he
is evacuating flatus; and when he talks he is evacuating
ideas.
P. Yesterday I asked him if he had ever considered that
he has a head to use for thinking, not as a bowel or in-
testine full of shit. He said, "I'm full of shit."
B. He doesn't want to be to blame. So you can choose: a
man who is full of care, trouble and worry (which is your
fault, and the fault of father, mother, brother, sister,
wife and children because they chose him), or a man who
smiles and is pleasant, polite and civil (which is again
your fault for making him carry this heavy burden of be-
ing agreeable and nice whatever he is feeling like). He
doesn't want to work or to be co-operative and friendly
whether he has a headache or is' ill or tired. He could
say that if you want to analyse him or marry him, then
you can't complain if you have someone who is tiresome
and bad-tempered because he warned you that that is what [l
he is like. His problem is how to avoid being responsible

140 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 2

for his own behaviour, and how to find somebody wh9 will
take that responsibility.
Consider the ramifications of that: it is even the
business of the job itself to be interesting. That is not
unreasonable; one would like to choose work that is inter-
esting. So - he tries being a patient; he tries being a
baby; he tries being a child; he tries being grown up; he
tries being a doctor; he tries - and so forth. But what
he is looking for is a job that will be `interesting'.
Contrast that with this point: is it the job that has to
be interesting? Or does he have to be interested in the
job? There is a big difference.
P. At the beginning of the analysis he was absolutely
convinced that I was in love with him and that I came to
the consulting room because I wanted to be with him.
B. But it has to be a particular sort of love. You are
exactly the person who would be interested in him, who
would love him - not the person he wants to love. He
doesn't want a wife and children he would have to look
after; he wants to choose a wife and children who will
look after him. He wants to choose a job that will look
after him and provide him with a living.
When he says that he loves someone, what does he
mean? Which direction is he talking about? When he loves
his food, must the food love his digestive system, do him
good? Or does he want to love the food in a way that
would make it love his insides, would eat him back again
from inside? In other words, he wouldn't mind a meal, but
it mustn't give him indigestion or ulcers, or eat him up.
P. He often complains that his stomach burns.
B. I expect you have a similar expression in Portuguese
as the English one: to be inflamed with love for someone.
This love for the partner is like a flame of everlasting
fidelity. But it is not the sort of flame that burns up
this patient, gives him `indigestion', or turns into a
sort of cancer and starts eating up his insides.

P. The patient is a thirty-eight-year-old man who has

been in analysis with me for eight years. At the begin-'
ning of the session I am describing, he came in smiling
as if he felt superior, condescending. Still smiling, he
said, "I saw your name in the telephone directory and you
are under the heading of General Practitioner." My im-
pression was that this was something which made me infer-
ior, although I didn't understand why this should be so.
B. It doesn't matter if you don't understand because the
patient has only just started talking. And the previous
eight years don't matter because this is a new session
and a new patient talking to you. Unfortunately it is
also true that he is an old patient; he was the same old
patient when he was born - and maybe before then.
When you are observing the patient, you�are really
observing a live�archaeological specimen; buried in the
patient is an ancient civilization. The patient says it
is quite modern - it is in the telephone directory. But
it isn't only in the telephone directory; it is in the
`telephone' which goes back much further. It goes back
further than his nervous system - that telephonic system
which travels from the cerebellum down to the toes.
As with the archaeologist who uses a spade, at a
certain point the spade must be put aside and a brush
used to remove the mud. This patient is also carrying out
an archaeological investigation of you. He doesn't use a
spade; he uses his mind and he uses a very blunt instru-
ment - a sense of social superiority. So he can discover
that you are one of these inferior people like GPs - very
poor class. That keeps him on top - that's fine. But what
have you uncovered? With his blunt instrument he can make
it very difficult for you to think. Nevertheless you
don't have to be superior to him; `you can go on looking
at him, listening to him, excavating his mind to see what
sort of personality he is. He' is afraid of what you might
bring to light and make clear so that he could see it; he

142 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 3

doesn't want this superiority disturbed; he doesn t want

you to understand - but he is afraid you are going to.
We all have to be aware that patients are frightened
of us. They are afraid because they think we are ignorant,
and they are possibly even more afraid that we are not
ignorant. This patient is afraid of you for both reasons:
you don't know enough to help him, and y�ou know too much
to want to help him. And the previous eight years make
matters worse; now that you know him better you nay not
want to go on seeing him; you may not want to help a
person like him. The analytic experience is potentially
a nasty one both for the analyst and the analysand, al-
though the analyst is more used to it. It is like being
at sea: it is just as stormy for both people, but one of
them may not be able to stand the storm. Here it is an
invisible storm; these are storms of emotion. Psycho-
analysing a patient causes an emotional disturbance; some-
times it creates so much emotional disturbance that it is
not even confined to the consulting room - the waves
spread out to the patient's husband, wife, children or
other relatives. So it is not surprising if they also
spread to the analyst. It is not possible to be an ana-
lyst, any more than a sailor or a soldier, without know-
ing this turmoil, this storm which is raging. In spite of
the apparent calm of this superior person who looks down
on the analyst, we know that he is frightened.
When you get far enough to uncover the patient's
psychotic capacity he may mobilize his relatives who will
want to come to see you. Being afraid that you may un-
cover what he would call his `madness', he may want to
upset you so that you will stop analysing him.
As you come nearer to what he doesn't want you or
anybody to know, he is bound to be upset, and he is bound
to want to look calm. In a surgical operation we can an-
aesthetize the patient: in an analytic operation we can-
not. On the contrary, we make him aware of his pain and
try to tell him where it comes from. He tries to deal
with it by saying, "I haven't got a pain; you have the
pain." Or to put it in other terms, how awful to be a
doctor whom society needs; how much nicer to be society
which is superior to doctors.
P. I told him that I noticed he seemed very happy in
feeling superior to me and in thinking that I was at his
disposal - waiting and expectant. He usually arrives

SAO PAULO - 1978 143

early and has to wait for me, but this time I was waiting
for him.
B. I am sure that he wants to make it clear how lucky
you are to have such a co-operative, pleasant patient.The
difficulty is, how are you to make this clear to him with-
out appearing to be sarcastic? In the middle of this emo-
tional storm you still have to be able to speak in a way
that is not hurtful; you have hurtful things to say but
you don t want to hurt. To fall back on a pictorial image
borrowed from surgery: you have to use a scalpel to cut
into the flesh, but you don't need to dip your scalpel
into poison before you make the incision. So you have to
denude your statement of any hostility or sarcasm - if
possible - because it is bad enough for the patient to
know the truth about himself without it being made worse
by the way in which it is made clear to him. It is dif-
ficult because the patient is doing his best, without
necessarily realizing it, to upset you and make you want
to be sarcastic.
P. Do you have the impression that I spoke sarcastically?
B. No, I don't. I think he would have reacted different-
ly if you had. You can always see from the patient's re-
action if your interpretation has something of that kind
wrong with it; unconsciously the patient can give you a
clue as to whether you are on the right track or not.
P. I think he agreed with what I said. He gave a slight
smile. But immediately afterwards I had the impression
that he was troubled.
B. You have the chance of observing these things you
mention. It is like being able to listen not only to the
words but also to the music; it is not simply what his'
words tell you, but also what the little facial muscles
tell you - something that is very difficult to describe
to another person. It certainly sounds as if you were
getting through to him to a point where he was not com-
fortable. We hope, of course, that the patient will feel
better, just as we hope that a patient will feel better
after a surgical operation.
P. He then seemed to change the subject and asked, "What
time is it by your watch?" I had noticed that his watch
was slow, but I didn't consider it at the time although
I remember it now.
B. I could ask: what time is it? And whose watch are you
going to use? Shall I look at mine? Or the calendar? Is

144 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 3

it April 5th? 1978? 1948? 300 BC? What is the time? Where
have you got to with this patient? What age is he'? We
know he could say that he is thirty-eight, but what is
the date of this material you are discussing? Apparently
it is now - but one wonders. Is it geological time? Or
cosmic time? Is it historical time? We have not yet found
out what analytical time is. Perhaps some day there will
be a psycho-analytical calendar by which we could date
the material. Was this patient born late? Was he post-
mature or pre-mature? It is difficult to find out; even a
mother is liable to forget that it was a painful labour
because the baby was, say, a big one. If the baby is pre-
mature it might be an easy birth but a very difficult
survival.
As I say, I don't know what calendar or watch we use
for psycho-analysis. In historical time we talk about BC
and AD; are we going to talk about `Before Freud' and
`After Freud'? It is quite artificial, but might be use-
ful.

P. The patient is thirty years old, a university de-

partmental director. He came for analysi's because he had
a problem with premature ejaculation. He has a phantasy
of soon becoming President of the Republic.
I am reporting a mid-week session. He arrived punc-
tually as usual, wearing a stern expression - also as
usual - and was silent for a while. Then he said that he
had been choosing what to say about something that was
causing him great anxiety: a friend had told him that a
former girl-friend of his had returned from abroad.
B. Supposing you were God and sa'id to the patient,
"Right - go on! President of Brazil!" Would that be a
premature ejaculation for him?
P. It could be - he is always ahead of himself, always
puts the cart before the horse.
M. Do you think that the patient's silence was related
to his fear of premature ejaculation?
B. Yes, and I think his attention could be drawn to the
fact that his fear is of such a kind that he has to go
to the opposite extreme.
P. When he got home th,at evening his wife was waiting
for him in bed, but he was so disturbed by the news of
the arrival of his girl-friend that he didn't go to bed
and decided to watch television until three o'clock in
the morning, although he knew that his wife was waiting
for him. He said the programme he was enjoying so much
was the presentation of the Oscar awards; `he could see
all the stars he admired so much.
B. We all think we know what `television' means, but we
forget that it actually means `vision at a distance . It
is all right to want to be President if it is far enough
away, but not if someone says, "All right - you go and
be the President." It is all right to see someone having
intercourse, but not close to'. If he has a wife, he can
see the couple having int,ercourse but he is one of them.
He may not be much better at having a loving relation-'

146 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 4

ship with a wife than he would be at having a loving re-

lationship with the Republic. He is always ahead of him-
self, as you have described it; he is not simply having
a conversation with his analyst; he is also watching and
listening to that conversation.
P. I told him I thought he was approaching me with
great caution so that he would know what he was going to
tell me and what I was going to answer. I said he enjoy-
ed watching himself and his analyst in the same way as
he enjoyed watching television and discussing ideas; and
perhaps that could be a masturbatory or voyeuristic atti-
tude.
B. Yes, but that means that he can be afraid of what he
would say if he were the analyst. That is why he is
afraid of what you will say. It is not a question of be-
ing President of the Republic, or the husband of his
wife; it is a question of being the analyst of his ana-
lyst. If he knows so much, you might say, "All right -
you be my analyst - I'll be your patient." This would
also make him afraid of what he might say if he didn't
think very carefully. It is much easier to be the ana-
lyst at a distance - in time or space - but not when the
two people are in the same room at the same time. The
same thing applies to being in the same room at the same
time with the girl-friend. It is worse still if the girl-
friend has become a wife and he might have to become a
husband.
P. After my interpretation about the possibility of a
masturbatory or voyeuristic attitude, he choked and
coughed and said, "Mm... mm...", babbled, and then said,
"Why did you say that to me?"
B. Now - which intercourse are you witnessing? The `bab-
bling' may be a premature verbal intercourse; it can
sound just like talking. A good actor can act just like
a king, a queen, a president - anybody. But not the
President. Or you could say, "Yes, you can be just like
an analyst, but not the analyst." I think this patient
is talking like the analyst, but that is not the same as
giving interpretations. Your difficulty is how to make
this clear to him without making him feel foolish. He
can be afraid that you may make him look silly or stupid;
he can be afraid that his wife may make him impotent -
she can be a better mother than he can be a father. But
that depends on whether he feels that the relationship

SAO PAULO - 1978 147

is one which is intended to show who is top, who is

first, who has won, rather than a loving one. It takes
time to learn about passionate love, and one of the pair
may reach this state before the other.
This patient prefers to watch television rather
than to get into bed with his wife;he may prefer to have
an analysis as a way of putting it off, as a protection
against the marriage bed. Yeats wrote, in his poem `Solo-
mon and the Witch', ~... Maybe the bride-bed brings des-
pair, For each an imagined image brings And finds a real
image there;' We haven't words for the real thing, the
thing itself. There is always the danger of falling back
on `psycho-babble' in order to sound like a real analyst.

P. I have not prepared a case for presentation -

B. It is just as well to get used to the fact that you
are unprepared. There is nothing more to be said about
what you are prepared for; what you know, you know - we
needn't bother with that. We have to deal with all that
we don't know.
P. I would like to talk about a patient, a young woman
of twenty-five, who has been in analysis with me for a
few months. She insisted that she ~a~t~d to be seen by me
so I arranged an appointment. When she arrived I was im-
pressed by her appearance: everything about her was like
spring, but the story she told me about herself was not,
and certainly did not accord with my feeling that she was
charming and full of love. I thought I would !iketo
accept her for analysis but sh,e coul'dn't afford my usual
fee and didn't want to ask her father for the money. So I
lowered my fee so that she could have five sessions a
week.
B. This is a very important point. We never know any-
thing whatever about the patient's financial capacity' -
nothing. What we do know about is ,the bill we shall get
tomorrow at the `supermarket; it is no, good saying, "Look,
I can't pay you for this food, but I ve got a very charm-
ing girl patient, so will you give me the food free?" You
cannot really say that you will lower the fee - or at
least you can say it, but whether you can afford it is a
much more serious matter. Although it is difficult to
know how much money we need, we can' have an idea of what
it costs us to remai'n in existence. A patient can say, "I
may not be able to pay, but I want the very best doctor,
the very best psycho-analyst. I don't want polluted food -
I want the best." But who is going to pay for it? The
apparently simple request made by this very attractive
girl means that you are invited to feel she is worth pay-
ing for - in other words, Seeing her for less and thus
paying the fees she can't pay. If you are very wealthy or

SRO PAULO - 1978 149

have independent means, you might appear to be able to

pay the fees. But a father or mother who says to the son
or daughter, "I'm very rich - you can have whatever you
want; do what you like", cannot have any feelings of love
or affection for the child. Whether we like it or not,
sometimes we have to say, "No".
P. The experience I have had with this patient is the
opposite of my first impression.
B. Quite. As Shakespeare says (in Macbeth), `The prim-
rose way' to the everlasting bonfire.' The road is lined
with primroses; the road to the analyst is lined with
beautiful girls and boys; it leads to hell in the end.
P. I think she is doing what she can to make my work im-
possible - not unconsciously, but deliberately. She never
has anything to tell me apart from' giving her opinion. of
herself.
B. Thanks to psycho-analytic theory, everybody knows all
about psycho-analysis. I myself create just such diffi-
culties: every lecture I give increases the supply of
theories about psycho-analysis. One hop'es that it is of
some use to analysts, but in fact over and again it makes
things more.difficult. People are able to throw these
technical terms around: they don't feel angry, they feel
`paranoid'; they don't feel depressed, they are in a `de-
pressive situation'. Did you ever hear such nonsense?
It's a kind of hell of our own making, a sort of psycho-
analytic hell.
Can' you still find a patient buried somewhere
amongst all this rubbish? This patient can put on a suit-
ably spring-like costume, this cosmetic cure, but she can
also put on this mental cure; she can wrap herself in
psycho-analytic terms. So we need to get through these
layers and layers of `cure' to reveal the suffering pa-
tient. It is no good saying to her, "Give up all these
cosmetic appliances - I want to know where it hurts." But
if we listen long enough we may be able to `see' where it
hurts.
P. At the beginning of the analysis she was very dis-
turbed, distressed, and complained of a lot of pain. She
wanted me to prescribe medicine to stop her suffering,
but in the sessions it was al'ways very clear that�she wa'k
not suffering physical pain. I felt that she wanted to
involve me in what was happening outside the analysis.
B. My impression is that this girl is suffering from a

150 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 5

very bad attack of cure. She can never get properly trea-
ted because she is so cured; she has learnt all the tricks
of how to be exactly like a charming little girl whom
everybody loves. But she knows who she really is, and she
suffers this painful fear that the analyst also will
think that she is this beautiful spring-like creature. A
conflict is bound to arise because she doesn't know
whether to be what everybody says is a `good girl', or to
say, "No, I feel horrid and I'm going to be horrid - I've
never had a chance of being nasty." From what we have
heard, I think that she is getting relief because she is
able to be nasty, she is able to give her analyst hell.
But so far you haven't broken up or broken down, or said
good-bye - or, "You're cured", which is just as bad. So
the very fact of feeling relieved is indistinguishable
from feeling far worse.
To give a dramatic example of what I mean: the sur-
vivors of a shipwreck are drifting on `an improvised piece
of wreckage. They aren't frightened; they are just hope-
less and they are starving. But when a ship is sighted,
anxiety, fear and terror break out; the calm of despair
disappears. Theoretically the position is better; they are
within reach of rescue and safety. But instead of feeling
better they feel worse.
It is similar with this girl. The possibility of be-
ing able to be horrid can bring a kind of relief which is
also horrid; it is worse than being in a state of despair.
The person who is in despair doesn't show any particular-
ly marked feelings, and would sometimes like to be left
in that state because it is less upsetting than the possi-
bility of rescue.
This patient may feel, "Yes, this is what I want; I
don't want to be treated as if I were a beautiful, loving
creature. I would like somebody to know that I'm hateful
and horrid."' But at the same time there is the fear that
if she believes that, she will suddenly find that you
don't. You might say, "Oh well, if you are such a nasty
creature, I won't see you any more."
P. Now I understand better something which surprised me
at the time. Whenever I give an interpretation about some-
thing `nasty', she laughs, secret laughter like a child
who has been discovered doing something naughty and does
not want to be seen laughing. It seems to give her plea-
sure.

SAO PAULO - 1978 151

B. If she values herself, she knows that while she wants

to be cured, she would also like to retain her `self'. I
use this term because it hasn't already been `polluted'
with meaning and associations. If I say `her body',or'her
mind', we all know what that means but it doesn't give an
idea of what it is that this patient values. Fundamental-
ly, basically, tucked away somewhere, is the feeling that
she has a self that she doesn't want interfered with -
improved, cured, or anything else. On the way to finding
her self, it would be useful to find a fulfilled self. A
man or a woman cannot be fulfilled unless they have found
a mate. Then potentially they can become fulfilled if
these two personalities come together mentally in the way
that their bodies come together. On the way to that it is
possible that analysis might help. But the analytic re-
lationship is different; it is not the fulfilled one. It
could be called `transferent', `transient', not permanent.
It is like a lodging-house you find on the way to some-
where; it could be a stage on the journey towards a real
communion between two people. It is useful to remember
that `transference' means also `transient'; it is not IT.
I have to use a word like `it' as the best way of talking
about the real thing, the thing-in-itself, because I
don't know what to call it. In this work one has to fall
back on these `transient' expressions.
There are all kinds of transient situations: a boy
can love a boy-friend; a girl can love a girl-friend. But
after a time it becomes rather unsatisfactory; they can't
be married. Nevertheless it may be a stage on the way.
Masses of laws, rules, conventions might help someone to
find the real thing, but very often they can be a bit of
a nuisance. That is why it is useful to allow a patient
to say how much she loves her girl-friend; any suggestion
of homosexual behaviour kills the growing shoot, for be-
ing able to love somebody who is just like yourself can
be a step on the way to something else. We cannot say
that we ever meet the `perfect couple', but sometimes we
can feel that a married couple get close enough to it to
remind us of what that state might be.
P. There was a time when I had a feeling that she was
having a homosexual relationship, but when I spoke of it
she didn't mention it again.
B. That may have been because you had made it clear
enough, and once something has become clear there is no

152 CLINIC1lL SEMINARS - 5

need to talk about it any further. That is one possibil-
ity; another is that she dared not speak about it again.
What language are we to use to explain to patients what
they are talking about without giving the impression that
we either disapprove or approve? We are not expressing an
opinion about whether something is good or bad - that is
up to the patient.
A patient may make no reply at all to an interpret-
ation, so you can get no idea whether it has had any help-
ful effect or not. But if you go on listening, you may
find that the patient's whole mode of conversation alters.
The tone of voice changes; the tension in the vocal cords
disappears. You don't then need to be told that your in-
terpretation was correct - you know it was, because the
relationship between you and the patient has altered com-
pletely.
It may nevertheless be very difficult to put up with
not giving all the many other possible interpretations.
We are always dealing with an unknown situation, not what
we or the patient know already. We may have seen the pa-
tient for ten years, but today's session is a new one.
M. Analysands who are training candidates, psychologists
and other therapists, often think they know everything.
One gives an interpretation - they know it already.
B. Some of the saddest words one hears are, "Yes,I know;
yes, I know; yes, I know." It is terrible to have a pa-
tient who says that all the time.

P. The patient, a fifty-year-old man, has been in ana-

lysis with me for a year. His background is a simple and
modest one, but he is a very interesting and intelligent
man. The session I have chosen shows the chief aspects I
have noticed in my contact with this patient.
He came in, shook hands with me and said, "Good morn-
ing, how are you?" Then in a complaining voice, "I've
been up since four o'clock. I've been thinking too much.
My entire life has been like that - always thinking,
thinking. I can't stand it any longer. I've also had prob-
lems with impotence - I'm worried about it." He continued,
"When I arrived at the central bus station" (he comes
from another town for his analysis) "I ate a meat roll,
some pears and two tangerines. I didn't eat the cellular
part of the tangerines because I don't think it is digest-
ible. Nevertheless I now have indigestion - they are
heavy in my stomach."
B. He is always thinking, thinking. Where? In his head?
Or in his stomach? In the alimentary canal? Or with
voluntary muscle?
P. That reminds me: in the next session he said, "I ate
fried manioc and steak for lunch, and they are still in-
side my head.''
B. Mental indigestion.
P. I have the feeling that he digests thoughts with the
alimentary canal, and food with the head.
B. I would remind you of something else which may be sim-
ilar. Somewhere inside the head is the `rhinencephalon' -
the nose-brain. Why is that? Do our noses think? Have our
noses got brains? Why did the early anatomists call it
the `rhinencephalon'? Where did they get that idea from?
 Fishes use the sense of smell as a long-distance re-
ceptor; sharks and mackerel, for instance, can smell de-
caying matter a long way away.* As embryos we go through a
state when we are like fishes living in a watery fluid be-
fore we are born. After birth we carry this same watery

154 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 6

medium inside our nostrils so that we are still able to
smell when in a gaseous medium - air. If this happens
when we change from being a foetus into a newborn baby,
does something similar happen when we change from being
an unthinking animal into a thinking one? Conversely, is
there a time - as with this patient - when we give up
trying to use our voluntary muscles and start thinking
instead? Is it possible to be thinking too much? Is it
possible that we lose the use of our limbs? Is it pos-
sible that we lose the capacity to use our digestive sys-
tem as might, for example, a patient who is so anxious
that he begins to have gastric and duodenal ulcers? Per-
haps we shall be able to answer questions of this kind
through an analytic investigation.
P. He continued, "I know life is a habit - I have learnt
that already. God help me, I don't want to make analysis
a habit. I have read so many books that people told me to
read, and I've been forcing my personality, trying to
keep all those things in my head."
B. Most people have become used to the idea that some-
one will `cure' them - physically or mentally. And they
have so often heard that `there's a good time coming'
that they don't want to hear it again. Nevertheless, some-
thing is making this patient think that perhaps he can
hope that psycho-analysis will solve the problems which
have never been solved, and which he has had to keep with-
in himself. But he doesn't want to get married or devoted
to psycho-analysis or psycho-analysts. At the same time
he doesn't want to be disillusioned - he is too used to
being dis-illusioned - and he doesn't even want to be-
lieve that psycho-analysis might help.
M. Do you think he has a religious attitude?
B. I think there is always a religious attitude, and the
religion is always changing. At some time the god might
be a footballer like Pele. Now the fashion is a psycho-
analytic religion - the great god, Freud, and all the
lesser saints. I don't think this patient wants to adopt
the psycho-analytic religion or the psycho-analytic pan-
theon of gods and saints. I use the term pantheon', but
don't forget that it always also means `pandemonium';
every demon has its accompanying saint; every saint its
demon. In the same way every cure has its accompanying
disease.
M. Do you think that this patient's anxiety about his

SXO PAULO - 1978 155

stomach refers to a symbolic system that he has been un-
able to develop, or does he think of his digestive system
as a god?
B. It is possible to speak of someone having `his belly
as his god". Similarly we can say that people have as
their god the intellectual life. For all this patient
knows, psycho-analysts are just like that; they have made
thinking into their god and ignore all the rest of life.
Indeed, I think it is possible in dealing with anxieties,
for us to appear to mean that there is nothing to be
anxious about. But if a patient is frightened of being
robbed or murdered, we think that it is better to be
aware of that fact, and aware that there is something to
be frightened of, than to pretend that it doesn't exist
by not thinking of it, getting rid of it by pushing it
into the unconscious where it will fester and grow.
What is cropping up here is not a real disagreement
between the patient and the analyst (that is only part of
it), but a disagreement between the patient's alimentary
canal and the food, and between his mental alimentary
canal and his mental nourishment - neither of these being
endo-psychic conflicts. As well as that there is a dis-
agreement between his alimentary system and his mental
system.His mind feeds on nourishment provided by thinking
too much, but his alimentary canal gets ulcers. In other
words, he is so anxious that he doesn't digest his food
properly.
In analysis we get nearer to a disagreement between
the patient's ability to think and his ability to exer-
cise his muscles - voluntary and involuntary. It is this
conflict - now an endo-psychic one - about��which we can do
something; all the other conflicts are not affected by us;
we can do nothing about them. For example, we cannot stop
a patient from drinking so much alcohol that he poisons
his system.
This patient may not be altogether wrong to be
afraid of thinking. There can be such a thing as too much
cerebration, the cerebral hemispheres used to the detri-
ment of the sympathetic or autonomic system. And so the
marriage between this patient and himself has never really
been consummated. He is very glad to be hopeful of ana-
lysis, but if he has been starved of mental relief, what
starts as hope rapidly becomes greed.

P. The patient is a woman of forty who dresses as if she

were much younger. She is French and speaks Portuguese
with a strong accent. She has been in analysis with me
for only two months, four times a week, but consulted me
from time to time for about a year before that. When she
first came for an interview she was very excited and
happy because I had an hour to spare. Just before start-
ing analysis she went to Europe on holiday. In London,
amongst the crowds, she suddenly felt ill and frightened
of being alone, frightened of something happening to her
with no one tc turn to.
B. This is a fundamental point. You can be `all alone'
with yourself; `all alone' with your analyst; `all alone'
in a crowd of people in London. It is a curious combin-
ation: being all alone and dependent on people and things
not you. We seem to be the kind of animal that has to
have a society; we depend on it and are all alone at the
same time. It is true at the age of forty, at the age of
four, and at the age of nought.
P. The need always remains with us?
B. I think so. It is something to which the analyst
tries to introduce the patient who has either forgotten
it or has never been conscious of it. It is like having
the experience but never being aware of it.
P. Her father died four years ago and her mother one
year ago. She is an only child and had lived with her
parents for some years prior to their deaths. She told m'e
that since her mother's death she has kept her parents'
bedroom intact; she has never moved any clothes, furni-
ture, ornaments or photographs.
B. The advantage of `the facts' is that they make it
easier to talk about the furniture of the room than the
furniture of her mind or character. But it is a step in
that direction; it is a way of `getting to know'' who she
is. It is a sort of `transient' relationship; a sort of
`transference'. It is felt to be more bearable to know

SX0 PAULO - 1978 157

your self than to be ignorant of your self. But on the
way to knowing her self it is easier for this patient to
know the furniture of her house. �She might get to know
the furniture of her mind in time.
P. She was married for one year when she was seventeen,
and had a child. She said she couldn't stand that life,
being tied to the child and the home; she wanted to
travel and enjoy life. She left her husband, and his fam-
ily kept the child. She went abroad where she lived alone
for some years. She has never seen her child since, nor
is she interested in doing so.
B. I think she is afraid that if she goes on with these
conversations with you she will get to know herself as a
child; then she may think that the clothes she wears are
not appropriate to who she is now. That is easier for you
to see than for her.
The feelings of a mother for a son or daughter can
be very powerful. So what has happened to them? She is
hoping to escape from them by moving about the surface of
the earth, but whether she can really escape is a differ-
ent matter. There must be some reason why she comes to
see an analyst, but I don't suppose she knows what it is.
P. I have the impression that she spends her life escap-
ing.
B. She is probably more expert at that than at anything
else.
P. Last Monday she came to the session looking very mis-
erable and said, "I feel so lonely. The week-end was like
all the others. I am worried about the future. I feel
more and more alone all the time. Yesterday some friends
took me out, but I got no pleasure from it at all. They
were very kind, but what help was it?" Then she wept.
B. I think this is again part of the fundamental. story
that she can't tolerate being all alone with her self
even when she is with other people. This `self' won't
leave her - it goes with her. But we don't know what this
`self' is - it certainly isn't a self that she wants to
be alone with, so she is always reaching out for somebody
else. If she couldn't come to you she would certainly go
to someone else; if she couldn't find anyone else, she
would find a crowd of people in London, anywhere where
there are masses of people so as to avoid being aware
that she is with her self whether she likes it or not.
It is difficult to describe what she is talking

158 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 7

about, but I feel it is a sort of `urge to exist'. And
this urge is completely indifferent to human beings; it
doesn't care whether we die in childbirth or in any other
way. Her parents' urge to exist forced them to give birth
to a child whether they wanted one or not. So she herself
is a product of that same urge and is at i'ts mercy. She
is frightened of being all alone with that urge to exist
which doesn't mind what happens to her - it is completely
ruthless. And she is terrified of being a slave to the
urge as her parents were. In a similar way bacilli and
viruses are completely indifferent to human beings. If we
are wiped out, another kind of `thing' will exist instead.
P. Something like an `incarnation' theory?
B. Yes. Or Jnplantation - plants will do just as well.
It is not only the bacilli, but also the cocchi; not only
animal but botanical life. Recently it has been suggested
that there is a form of animate object which is neither
animal nor vegetable.
M. Where would you put what Freud called `the instinct
of self-preservation'?
B. One could place that in the human b'eing because it is
the human being who wants to go on existing. But this im-
pulse to which I am drawing attention, and of which I
think this patient is frightened, doesn't mind what hap-
pens to her provided life goes on....

P. This patient has been with me for thirteen years. At

the beginning of the analysis I didn't know why he came
because he didn't seem to have any complaints and appar-
ently knew everything. He even asked me to read several
books, and as I was interested I did so.
I have the impression that the analysis falls into
three phases. The first was when symptoms and complaints
started to appear and he wanted to understand exactly
what I said. He brought a dictionary to the sessions and
would look up various words I used. Then he brought an
etymological dictionary also. I tried to show him that
all his efforts were really an attempt to avoid under-
standing what I was saying.
B. What language is being used by the analyst and by the
patient? The relationship seems to alter when the patient
has `symptoms'. Who thought they were symptoms? The pa-
tient? Or the analyst? Who called them symptoms?
P. I used the word as a characteristic of the patient at
that stage.
B. Did the patient think they were symptoms?
P. At first he couldn't accept anything that might mean
he was ill.
B. Yes, I understand that, but what has happened to make
him think that there are any illnesses?
P. For a time, both before and during the analysis with
me, he tried several different kinds of treatment such as
group therapy.
B. The questions I am asking are very difficult to
answer. What is going on with this patient? There is no
physical illness; no mental illness. But there is a great
outbreak, an eruption of treatments and cures. Would you
not begin to be suspicious that there must be some dis-
eases somewhere? Why should there be a concentration of
cures and methods of treatment in one place? It seems to
me that we have to consider that there is something wrong.
What you have been describing here is not an outbreak of

160 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 8

patients, but an outbreak of analysts wanting to cure you.
You are suffering from somebody who has nothing wrong
with him, but who has a whole lot of books with which he
can treat you.
Let's hear some more about this curious `treatment',
this outbreak of cures.
P. In the second phase I noticed that he was worried
about tj�me and space. For example, he wanted to take a
lot of physical exercise. He spent more than thirty
minutes of every session running up and down the consult-
ing room, and spoke only after this seemingly fixed
length of time.
In the third phase he continued to be worried about
the meaning of words, but now expected an absolutely ex-
act sense of the words I used. If I mentioned this to him
he became violent and even broke two chairs.
Although he seems to be getting worse in the ana-
lysis,in his social and professional life he is getting
more and more successful. He has married, bought apart-
ments and cars, and has had written work published. Per-
haps he leaves all his bad aspects with me while becoming
successful outside the analysis.
B. Most patients don't believe that they have mental
pain. This patient hasn't any troubles, but if he doesn't
know that he is ill,it also means that he doesn1t know
when he is cured either. He has to know something about
mental pain and mental health.
P. I suspect that he has provoked in me a response sim-
ilar to the outbreak of treatments. There has been an
outbreak of supervisions. I have even been abroad for
supervisions on this case, and have had three years of
supervisions here. I remember that one supervisor said I
should read Piaget and other authors; I became even more
confused - the illness was transmissible.
B. It is a puzzling situation: the patient has nothing
the matter with him; he has become better and better, and
more and more successful. But the analyst has become
worse and worse.
P. Even financially the pattern has repeated itself: on
on the grounds of hardship he paid reduced fees. And I
have spent a great deal of money on travelling and super-
visions.
B. The patient gets richer and richer; the analyst
either stays as poor as usual or becomes poorer and poorer.

SAO PAULO - 1978 161

The patient gets cleverer and cleverer and becomes suc-
cessful; the analyst gets more and more ignorant and has
to have more and more supervisions. It reminds me of that
theory about the baby being able to evacuate its mental
troubles into the breast or the mother, in the way that
it can evacuate urine and faeces. The baby gets well, but
the breast or mother gets ill and dies. That's all right
if it is Melanie Klein's theory of projective identifi-
cation. But this man isn't a baby, so although I am
reminded of the theory, it isn't right; it doesn't fit
this story in which everybody does so well except the an-
alyst.
Why is it that the more experience psycho-analysts
have, the more they realize how ignorant they are? What
is the disease which causes us to realize how ignorant we
are, and then to have to have more and more congresses,
conferences, supervisions, analyses? I think the disease
is a mind. Once the human quadruped started standing on
its hindlegs it had to become an acrobat. And the more
civilized we become, the more difficult it is to behave
in a civilized manner. The moment we become involved in
thinking, we have to learn how to think properly; the mo-
ment we learn to stand on our hindlegs, we have to learn
how to stand on two legs, not four. When we have learnt
that, we have to keep both those legs healthy and strong;
the moment we find we are thinking, we have to think
clearly. That is never-ending - the more we learn, the
more we shall find how ignorant we are. You will never
know what this patient's troubles are, but you will cer-
tainly know what yours are. To take an exaggerated ex-
ample: in war you can know that you are terrified, but
you don't know anything about the enemy. The enemy always
seems to be well-off, brave and trouble-free. Psycho-
analysts know where it hurts. It is easy to envy people
who are wealthy, and have no troubles or difficulties,
but we are supposed to know ourselves, our character-
istics; we are not allowed this easy cure of looking and
behaving as if we had no troubles. We are also supposed
to be like leaders. Officers aren't supposed to run away
in war, not are they supposed to be so stupid that they
don't know that it is dangerous. We know that these neu-
roses and psychoses are not' just imagination - they are
real. And we have to judge how to tell the patient the
truth about himself without frightening him.

162 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 8

I don't think this patient knows why the analytic
discussion helps him to improve, to get better. But he
does know that he is better for having discussed these
matters with you. So he wouldn't like you to stop seeing
him. That is why he has been coming for thirteen years;
and that is why he would probably come for thirteen more
if he could.
P. The patient is an eighteen-year-old girl who has been
in analysis with me for five months. Her parents, who
came to see me first, said they were very worried because
she was refusing to eat. She had been in treatment for a
year previously with a man analyst, but had asked her
father to find a woman analyst instead.
Her illness appeared to have begun when she was fif-
teen: she didn't want to be fat, although she was not in
fact overweight. She had always had a beautiful body - as
both she and her parents told me - but in order to be
fashionable she wanted to be thinner.
She had had a boy-friend who lived a long way away
from her home town, but she stopped seeing him and only
kept in touch by letter. When she eats she prepares the
food herself; she can only eat one egg or a little fish,
and has the feeling that her stomach is unbearably full.
She also takes strong laxatives - as many as fifteen tab-
lets in a few days. She told me that she feels addicted
to these pills which act as tranquillizers.
When I first saw her she aroused my sympathy. She
shook my hand formally and said in a tense voice, "I want
treatment because I am afraid I can't stop something that
will kill me - but I don't know what it is." Later she
said that she was full of aggression, that people feel
she is very arrogant, and that the only impression she
can give to other people is one of coldness.
B. She feels very beautiful, like a distant star; it
glistens like a diamond, like steel; it is very far away
- and useless.The same thing applies to the beautiful wo-
man, the beautiful queen whom nobody would dare to ap-
proach. If you did approach her you would find she was
sterile. And somehow she knows this. On the other hand,
she fears that she could become pregnant, and then her
beautiful body would swell up, she would no longer be
athletic, no longer able to compete in a sort of Olympic
Games.

164 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 9

I think this story centres on the feeling that she
is a person of no importance and that she is the slave of
forces which don't care what happens to her.
P. She had a dream: her bitch was pregnant and she felt
that the animal was experiencing the same feelings as she
does when she evacuates.
B. It is entirely true.
P. She said, "When I went to pick her up, I saw she had
been changed into sandwiches."
B. It is in line with the feeling that there is an urge
to exist; it is felt to be something which doesn't care
whether you are a dog, a bitch, or a beautiful woman - it
is completely indifferent. The mother may die, the off-
spring may be eaten up, but all in the service of this
force. If the human race blew itself out of existence
with the neutron bomb, the force to exist wouldn't mind
in the least - it would be just one more discai-ded ex-
periment. So the patient can be afraid of being used
simply as a means of perpetuating existence.
 I don't think it would be the slightest good saying
that to the patient, but it is something that would be
useful to me if I were analysing this patient because I
would expect everything to fit into that basic theory. I
would expect it to crop up all the time - the patient
waging war against this force, wanting to remain a person,
a beautiful person, and not liking being a slave to that
force, that power, that energy.
P. She always complains that she feels she has to be a
beautiful daughter, a tender child, always smiling. She
feels that her father invades her privacy and controls
her, but at the same time she tells me that maybe it is
not true, maybe it is only her feeling, maybe her father
is suffering because of her illness. But when he is af-
fectionate and tender towards her, or touches her, she
rejects him.
B. I think she feels that her father also is an instru-
ment in the progress of existence. I use the word `exist-
ence', but I am trying to describe something which has no
human characteristics. If the father is a slave to this
same power, then these little rules about incest don't
count, and if he submits to that force he will unhesitat-
ingly seduce his daughter into producing more babies.
There was a time when the pharaohs had incestuous rela-
tionships as a privilege. Nowadays it is not fashionable

SAO PAULO - 1978 165

but it still exists. The force behind it is very powerful,
much more powerful than the sexual urge or sexual pleas-
ure - those are simply things which we are aware of as
human beings.
This patient would be afraid that you are just one
more of these objects which are slaves to this power; or
alternatively that you are also engaged in a hopeless war
for individual existence against this massive force. It
seems that she has found no way of mobilizing any resist-
ance against that kind of omnipotent drive. I think all
her problems are related to this one; all the individual
problems are aspects of the same thing. It is like look-
ing at one's hand: looked at through a microscope one
sees individual cells, but they only add up to a totality
we call a `hand'. The individual piece of life - whether
it is a dog, or a plant, or a human being - is simply one
little particle in this total existence.The force doesn't
mind what happens to it any more than we mind what
happens to single cells of our skin which we shed and
don't even know we have worn them out.
The patient knows nothing of this is any conceptual
form. She probably thinks she is beautiful because she
wants to be. But her beauty has very little to do with
her - it is simply a way of leading her to be seductive
so that somebody would want to have intercourse with 1,er.
She herself, unaware, is aiding the process; the more
beautiful she is, the more likely she is to be used as a
mate. Her problem is how to be beautiful but unapproach-
able, on the grounds that she is so beautiful,so majestic
that nobody will come near her.
P. Sometimes she tells me, "I shall only recover my
health when I want to be well again", as if she can con-
trol her illness.
B. She may not be able to do that, but she can control
you. She can get you to agree that she has that power;
she would like to have the kind of analysis in which you
would say, "Yes, you are quite right; you have all that
power, you are potent, you are omnipotent."
P. When she has to go to see the physician she is very
anxious. She says that she doesn't believe he can do any-
thing for her.
B. A patient like this feels she has no character, no
opinions of her own, no feelings of her own. So she is
frightened by examination, whether it is a temporary one

166 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 9

by a doctor, or a longer one by an analyst, or a still
longer one which occurs if she goes so far as to marry
somebody. The married couple are sure to find out a great
deal about each other; there is no experience quite like
that of marriage for laying bare the personality in all
its nakedness.
M. What are the chances of her having a psychotic break-
down?
B. Not yet - but later when she has made more progress.
It is something of which she is frightened now, will be
very frightened of when it happens, and will also want
the analyst to be frightened. What is more, she will
mobilize a lot of people to say, "What have you been do-
ing to this beautiful, gifted girl? She was all right
till `she came to see you." So you have all that coming.

P. The patient, a twenty-year-old girl, came in, sat

down and said, "Do you know what happened? My phone was
disconnected. I went to ask what had happened and they
said the account hadn't been paid. They said they would
reconnect it. It's not right, is it? Do you think it's
right?" Then she said, "Guess what mark I got in the test
I took - you must guess - I won't tell you. Maybe you
don't want to tell me because you're going to give me a
bad mark." She stopped for a moment and then said, "I got
nine out of ten."
B. Do you want to go on being analysed by the patient?
She makes an evocative statement, `You guess - then I
shall know who you are. If you say nine is a bad mark, it
ought to have been ten, then I shall know that you are
the sort of analyst who is like a very bad conscience.'
P. I said, "I think you are very worried about the kind
of marks you think I am giving you." She agreed: some-
times she says, "Yes"; sometimes she expresses agreement
with her eyes; sometimes she smiles. Once in a while I
ask her what she is smiling about. She says, "Oh no, it's
nonsense."
B. There is something about the way in which you observe
her that makes her afraid of what marks she would be
given as a result of that examination. `What were you
thinking about?' `Oh, nothing in particular; please don't
pay any attention.' It is always the same reaction: `I
didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. I didn't think
anything. Don't be an analyst and pay attention and ob-
serve me. Everybody, gives me nine out of ten; don't you
dare give me less.
P. She always asks me questions like a small child. Some-
times I feel that she looks like a small child who wants
to know everything she hasn't been told. And sometimes I
feel that she asks me the questions because she doesn't
stop to think. Everything she tells me has a question
mark.

168 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 10

B. In the theory of analysis one is supposed to tell the
patient the truth: in practice it is much more difficult
because one does not know whether the patient is strong
enough to hear the tz�uth. Patients are sure that they
want to know the answer to the question; what they don't
know is that the answer may be very unpleasant. We may be
asked, "Is life worth living~1 Knowing as much about ex-
istence as we do at our age, we might be frightened of
telling patients what we know. On the other hand we can
be equally frightened of not telling them - or our child-
ren for that matter - what we know. But it may be import-
ant for children to know what real life is like; not the
life in story-books, or even in psycho-analytic case his-
tories which are more often like bad novels.
There is no particular reason to doubt this assess-
ment of nine out of ten; it can mean that this girl is
intelligent enough to understand what is said' to her. So
in a sense it puts a bigger burden on you who cannot
therefore rely on her being so limited or so stupid that
she wouldn't understand what she is not really prepared
for. She could learn something prematurely, precociously,
before she is in a fit state to tolerate the truth. So
you have to sum up very quickly whether the person who is
asking the question is robust enough to hear the answer.
No amount of books are going to answer that question; we
can't read some more Freud to find out. But so long as
the patient comes to see the analyst, and the analyst has
a chance of seeing and observing that patient, there is
always a possibility of finding out what we might dare to
pass on.
Melanie Klein said - and I think it is borne out -
that at the very experience of birth itself, the full-term
foetus feels castrated, mutilated, as if the mother's
genitalia cut something off. Severed the umbilical cord?
Severed the long-distance sense of smell? One would have
to be this patient's analyst to guess, conjecture what
the telephonic system is that has been cut off; what the
messages are that she can't get. There is nothing wrong
with her intelligence - nine out of ten is a good mark -
and she may feel that the analyst knows more than she
does. One could say that while her intelligence is nine
out of ten, her wisdom iS not the same as that of the an-
alyst. Wisdom is a long-distance affair and takes time to
develop; it has to be experienced. To put it another way:
 SO PAULO - 1978 169
her tele-phone, her television is defective, but she may
be intelligent enough to know that she doesn't know the
psycho-analytic language, the language her analyst can
speak. But she must feel - she doesn't know - that a
psycho-analyst is a helpful person, otherwise why come to
analysis? It is another of these imaginative or rational
conjectures which have to take the place of facts because
she hasn't got far enough to know what the facts are. At
present she doesn't know her self, but you may be able to
help her to know her self.
Again one wonders: what is the distance between her
and her self? How `tele' is it - whether it is tele-phone
or television? Analysis sounds and reads as if we are
concerned with the past. So we are, but our past mistakes,
our stupidities, our faults and our crimes are not the
whole story - althoug1; it is quite useful to know what
they are. This girl can know that she also wants to be
wise enough to know somet'hing about the future. It might
be all right to be `married' to her analyst for a certain
length of time, but if she wants to have a husband and
children, then the communication has to be even with her
unborn children. But that method of communication is cut
in much the same way as the umbilical cord is cut; we
don't really remember the past, and we can't remember the
future because it hasn't happened yet. So a great deal of
our present knowledge is conjecture about the past, and
conjecture about the future. And yet we do feel that
there is a lot to be said for prudence and foresight. Im-
plicit in, `What shall I tell the analyst, and what is the
analyst going to tell me?' is, `Shall I ever be able to
profit by past mistakes? Shall I ever be able to know
what I did right? If I could, then perhaps I might fore-
see the future and make decisions which would show fore-
thought.'
M. I have been thinking of what Freud said about phylo-
genetic inheritance. Do you feel that this is something
which can help the patient to develop and to live better
in the future? How can we bring this about?
B. According to Freud and others, by psycho-analysis.
But in practice it is quite a different matter. For ex-
ample, I had a patient who, as a baby, was asleep with
his mother, brothers and sis�ters when a man entered the
room, murdered the mother and all the children, but missed
him. We don't know what that baby saw - and it was be-

170 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 10

lieved by the foster parents that he knew nothing about
it - but the patient who came to me had terrifying night-
mares, terrifying impulses to be cruel. One day, for ex-
ample, he saw a pretty girl in the street, put his foot
out, and `accidentally' bumped into her. She fell and was
badly hurt. He was terrified of what he had done, and
terrified that he would go on doing it. What that was all
about I don't know, but of course I could guess that it
had something to do with this dreadful story. But we
don't know.
What is the correct procedure? To analyse it and
make what is implicit and unconscious, explicit and con-
scious? Or to forget it? But the theory is that you can't
forget what you can't remember, and th)t you have to re-
member things, otherwise they fester and grow out of con-
trol in the unconscious. But as analysts we are not con-
cerned with theories; we are concerned with, `What shall
I say to this man?'

P. The patient came in, greeted me, and lay down on the
couch. Her speech was interspersed with sighs and weeping.
She complained that she woke up several times during the
night. During the day she is unable to take care of her
house; she has to stay in bed most of the time and needs
her mother with her all the time to comfort her. Although
this calms her down, it has been a cause of worry and
annoyance to her husband.
B. Do you get the impression that she suffers from in-
somnia?
P. Yes. During the three years she has been coming to me
she has had alternating states of insomnia and sleeping
well.
B. I don't know what all these sighs and tears are about,
but supposedly the patient is in a state of mind in which
people are when they are awake. The fact that a person is
what we call `asleep' could also be described as being
`in a different state of mind'. Patients say they had a
dream and did this, that or the other; it is quite useful
if we can interpret these `remains', but suppose the pa-
tient doesn't have any dreams. Why does this patient not
want to `go to sleep'? Where does she go? And where does
she go when she apparently sleeps well?
P. She continued with her complaints, telling me that
her husband wants her to look after the house without her
mother's interference. I pointed out that her mother's
presence had not resolved her feelings of despair and
abandonment. I said, ``I think your despair is based on
the need to know what this despair is about."
B. This crops up with some frequency. It is quite often
necessary to point out to patients that they can have
feelings of despair about despair, and they can be very
angry about it. Putting it as a more general principle:
patients hate having feelings at all; whether they are
feelings of anger or despair or depression, they are all
hated. They would like the analyst to `cure' them or make

172 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 11

them incapable of having feelings.
P. She changed her position on the couch and sat up fac-
ing me. She said that during the morning she hadn't
wanted to come to the session because she was feeling
very low. She had heard news on the radio that frightened
her: the death of a young boy, the son of a politician,
in a car accident. She phoned a friend, who had already
heard the news, to talk about the accident. She gradually
calmed down and then decided to come to the session.
B. Analysis, like other facilities such as the radio and
telephone, can make it possible to hear things that could
not otherwise be heard. But as a result of being able to
stretch our ears with mechanical instruments, what we
hear may not be at all pleasant. In analysis, patients
are likely to become aware of things they didn't know be-
fore; the analyst can enable them to see more and to know
more. But that doesn't mean to say that what they can see
more of is nicer - it may be nastier. Why does this pa-
tient come for analysis? Is she hoping to hear nice
things? Or has she changed? Has she begun to be able to
hear nasty things? It seems to me that from your point of
view the fact that she decided to come again is quite an
important indication. It is so easy to feel that if the
patient gives up analysis we have failed. Well, maybe -
we don't want to dismiss that idea because we can never
be such good analysts that we don't make plenty of mis-
takes. If this patient dares to come again, although ana-
lysis is probably as unpleasant as it has always been,
it could be an interesting sign of what sort of progress
she is making.
P. I said, "I think you came back to find out with me
the reason for the mental disasters you have suffered and
which you think are irrevocable." She said, "It's true
and then fell silent and became increasingly anxious.
B. I have the impression that she is surprised to find
that she helps you by telling you when you are right. But
the discovery that she is capable of co-operating with
you is very frightening.
P. She said, "On my way here I was thinking about the
friend with whom I discussed the accident. She is a good
friend because she is always receptive, but I feel infer-
ior because I realize I need her help. It may be because
I always want to be the one who is superior." I said,
"You came today to make sure that I had not been des-

SliO PAULO - 1978 173

troyed by your phantasies of wishing me ill and wanting
to destroy our relationship. You are afraid that you may
have destroyed me internally just at the time when you
have the most need of my help." She calmed down and said,
"This is the vital point. But I still don't know if I
shall be able to bear to go on coming to analysis." The
session ended there.
Shortly after this a patient who comes four times a
week telephoned to say that she was going on a trip and
would miss a week's sessions. She added that she was go-
ing to look for other psychiatric treatment so that she
could get some lythium she wanted.
B. There are always plenty of things to do besides ana-
lysis. And if you don't give the patient drugs, there is
no difficulty whatsoever' in getting them from someone
else. The same thing applies to interpretations which can
be a drug; if she can't get the kind of interpretations
that she likes, she can always get them from another ana-
lyst.
Your difficulty is to know what you did wrong.But it
is also important to know what you did right. Giving the
right interpretation can lead to the termination of analy-
sis just as well as the wrong one. So if this patient
finds somebody else whom she prefers, she too may dis-
cover that she has made a mistake.
It is very difficult to assess the analytic associ-
ation. It is easy to be misled by wanting to forget our
mistakes, but it is equally easy to be mistaken by assum-
ing that we are going to make mistakes. The analytic ex-
perience is a disciplined and unpleasant one - neither
the analyst nor the analysand can do what they like.
There are niasses of seductive alternatives, but the job
of analysis is a tough one. This helps to explain why an-
alysts must have rests, must have some kind of life other
than the analytic one. It is very unsatisfactory if they
make their home life into a kind of psycho-analysis. It
seems to me that analysts often fail to recognize that
analysis is a very good thing for analysts - if that is
what they want. But if they want a family, then they
don't want a kind of psycho-analytic museum. It is ex-
tremely easy for theni to start interpreting their hus-
bands' or wives' remarks. I think it is a great mistake.

P. The patient has been in analysis with me for two

years. In an interview before the analysis began, she
told me that she had chosen me because she liked what she
had heard me say at a conference. She said she was coming
for analysis because her husband had problems and she
thought that perhaps she could help him to start analysis
too. I suggested that it might be interesting for her to
work in some way other than psycho-analysis.
She returned for a second interview and spoke in a
very incisive tone of voice. "I know I need an analysis
for my own work." After a long pause she said, in a dif-
ferent tone of voice, "I know I' am very fat." I agreed to
start analysis and a schedule was arranged.
She had great difficulty in tolerating any hostile
feelings towards me. The things she talked about seemed
to belong in fairy-tales; she described her wedding, her
wedding dress - everything was so beautiful. She said,
"It will soon be Christmas and my husband is going to
dress up as Santa Claus - I almost believe he is Santa
Claus. After all, I believed in him for a long time."
Everything was beautiful, her whole life was beautiful.
Nevertheless she suddenly said, "You are bad; you make me
say things I don't want to say. You're like the witch in
the fairy-tale who forced people to speak."
B. If she thinks that, why does she come to see you? Al-
ternatively, if she comes to see you,why does she say you
are bad? A tremendous number of people have learnt what
they think are the sort of things that analysts want to
hear. It is an increasing difficulty for us.
P. She reports dreams in that way, as if she is giving
me something I would like to listen to.
B. She can dress up in any kind of clothes, or in any
state of mind. The character she chooses to wear can hide
her from herself. It is easy for her to feel that both
she and you are dressed up, but who the two real people
are, in the same room at the same time, is quite another
 S~O PAULO - 1978 175
problem.
P. It is as if she offers me a wardrobe and we both have
to choose different costumes. At present there is a great
deal of confusion. For example, after I made an interpret-
ation along these lines, and after a long silence, she
spoke with considerable emotion but the words she used
could be found in textbooks.
B. The glimpse of confusion that you get is very import-
ant - it is nearer to the `real thing'. Confusion is a
nasty feeling, so patients always want to get the analyst
to behave as if he or she knew all the answers.
P. There is something of this pressure in my always feel-
ing compelled to add to the interpretation I have already
given, or to give another interpretation seen from a dif-
ferent point of view. There are times when it is very
difficult to form a working relationship; she either
quickly agrees with everything I say, or she thinks what
I say is an accusation.
Sometimes I feel that some emotion is surfacing, al-
though the words she uses are standard textbook ones.
Once, when I had pointed this out to her, she said, "De-
cipher me or I will devour you." I get the impression of
cultural poverty; I am therefore very surprised when she
shows a knowledge of literature or refers to trips to
Europe and the USA.
B. It now becomes much clearer that this is all part of
the costume, part of the culture she wears to disguise
the poverty of her personality. If you are able to see
the person without all this costumery, all the states of
mind she has assumed to cover up her poverty, she is not
going to like it.
Suppose this patient came to you with a physical com-
plaint: she might be able to put up with the request to
take off her clothes for a physical examination. Some pa-
tients like doing this. In analysis, patients may get a
secret pleasure out of analytic examination, the fact
that they are stripped naked, and you think they are go-
ing to go on coming for ever. On the other hand, the ana-
lytic experience may become so frustrating that patients
learn to like being frustrated. So - they can like being
flattered; they can like being insulted; they can like
being frustrated.
I think that whatever you say to this patient there
will almost immediately be a reaction. The problem is to

176 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 12

see what the reaction is.
P. I am reminded of something that illustrated the fear
she felt. She said, "A friend of a friend of a friend of
mine told me that she had had a baby in an elevator with*-
out any previous warning. This seems unbelievable - just
imagine if something like that could really happen, that
something could go in or come out without one's knowing
it."
B. This is a very important statement. Patients come to
analysis but don't believe it has any effect. So it can
be very frightening and unbelievable if in fact it works,
if there is a result of analytic verbal intercourse. This
patient can be afraid of being pregnant, of having a kind
of mental baby; and afraid that you likewise would not
know what co do. There would be two people in this elev-
ator who would be taken by surprise.
P. She said, "I read in a magazine that in China people
don't have any sexual educatioii - young girls are afraid
of getting pregnant even in swimming pools." After a
short interval she said, in a voice showing more emotion,
"Those girls gained knowledge and lost fear simply by
talking about it."
B. What we call a `sexual relationship' has hardly any
meaning - it is borrowed from anatomy and biology. But a
girl can feel that a certain type of conversation can
have serious consequences. If a brother and sister play
`Mothers and Fathers', the attitude of each to that same
game is very different. Sometimes both of them get fright-
ened, stop playing, and ask the mother or father, "What
shall we do now?" They don't know why they stopped play-
ing or why they want somebody to tell them to do some-
thing else.
In the psycho-analytic game plenty of people are
taken by surprise, are frightened, and frightened of be-
ing frightened of playing this rather dull, conversation-
al game.

P. The patient started analysis with me three years ago

when he was twenty years old; he was a second-year medi-
cal student and had failed his anatomy examination. He
complained of anxiety. His parents are Jewish: he says he
doesn't feel like a Jew but accepts that he is because
people tell him so. But he doesn't follow the Jewish
religion.
B. How does he know that he doesn't feel like a Jew?
What does a Jew feel like? If you say, "I don't feel like
a well person", it means* that you must know what it feels
like to be a well person. If I were told, "I don't feel
like a Jew",by this patient, I should feel suspicious
aboi,t it. It must in fact be that he doesn't want anybody
to know he is a Jew. In a sense it is like saying, "I
don't feel like a Jew; I feel superior to a Jew."
In any choice whatever, you are bound to choose what
you are not choosing. To quote an Arabian poet (recalled
by Lawrence of Arabia), `For Lord I was free of all thy
flowers, but I chose the world's sad roses, And that is
why my feet are torn and mine eyes are blind with sweat.'
The Arabian style of `poetry and the Arabian discipline
get nearer to what I am drawing attention to. At some
point these various choices are made: instead of `all thy
flowers' I could say, `all the options'; we cut down the
number of options to the number of things that we choose;
but we also choose not to choose the rest.
This patient chooses not to be a Jew. It is a matter
of some importance if he chooses not to be one of his
parents' children; and if he feels, "I don't want to be
like my father and mother", it is more serious still be-
cause it means, "I don't want to be like my father or my
father's father before that." That is a repudiation of
his ancestry. So with what is apparently a simple state-
ment, probably made at a time when he didn't know very
much - he might not even know that the Jews have a very
ancient culture and history but just chooses not to be

178 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 13

one of these inferior creatures - he has wiped out thous-
ands of years of the history of his race.
This is all conjectural of course, what I mean by
`imaginative conjecture', what I want to include as part
of scientific thought. That doesn't mean that I don't
want to know some more about this patient, but it seems
to me to help map out an area which we might populate
with ideas or knowledge.
Have we any idea of what this patient wants to know
instead of himself? What area of himself does he want to
know nothing about? Falling back on `rational conjecture 1
a rational psycho-analytic theory, he could be said not
to want to know anything at all about sex, because geneti-
cally he must have both a father and a mother, and they
may be Jewish. It doesn't tell us very much because we
don't know what `Jewish' fathers and mothers are; it is
no good looking up `Jewish', and `father', and `mother'
in the dictionary. There is no way of answering this ques-
tion except by observing this personality that has come
into the room.
P. I have observed that he is very hostile to his par-
ents. Sometimes he makes comments like, "My mother is a
really crazy woman - the only thing she can do is to
interfere in my life." And, "My father is a weakling and
is often away." When he first came to analysis and had
failed his examination, he was having difficulties in re-
lationships with his fellow students. His feeling of in-
feriority was associated with what he felt was his par-
ents' poverty - both financial and cultural.
B. I can imagine a situation in which, having decided
not to feel like a Jew, he at the same time loses his abi-
lity to be tolerant and achieves an ability to be bigoted
and selective; he achieves a whole area of `not to be'.
We could say that only a fraction of himself is left, and
there is a vast area which he cannot learn about because
it is inferior. And now he is supposed to pass an exam-
ination. It is hardly surprising that he fails if he is
engaged in saying, "I don't know this; I don't know that;
I don't know the other - it's inferior." How is it pos-
sible for him to know himself? To know himself involves
knowing his `self', his `breed'. Not to know his breed in-
volves a repudiation of breeding.
The analyst is like a person who is turning the
pages of a book rather idly. The analysand can say, "Page

S~0 PAULO - 1978 179

thirty'', or to put it in different words, ``I'm thirty1, .
The analyst is then listening to the story of the book
which is open at age thirty. As the patient reads the
story of his life, starting at page thirty, can you imag-
ine what happened on pages one to twenty-nine? Can you
imagine what will happen on pages thirty-one to forty?
These things we call interpretations are really `imagin-
ative conjectures' about the missing pages. This patient
has already torn out a whole number of pages - all the
Jewish ones. How are we to read this story? How is he to
pass the analytic examination if he says to the analyst
something analogous to saying to a physician, "I have a
pain - oh no, I don't want to take off my clothes - no,
I don't want to have an X-ray - no, I don't want a blood
test." We try to make the analytic examination as easy as
possible for patients and also for ourselves. So you
could feel - I don't suggest you say - "I'll have to know
more about this patient; I'll arrange to see him tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow.1,
As Shakespeare puts it: `To-morrow, and to-morrow,
and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yester-
days have lighted fools The way to dusty death.' This pa-
tient's yesterdays, his tomorrows which creep at a petty
pace, are in fact all over very quickly - the time be-
tween O and the day of his death; we don't know how many
pages there are to the book. So the patient and the ana-
lyst don't know at what metranome speed - borrowing a
musical term - the analysis should be conducted.

P. The patient is forty-six years old. He has three

older brothers and two younger sisters. His father was a
powerful, wealthy man who died a few years ago. The pa-
tient's difficulties go back to early childhood. His test-
icles remained in the abdominal cavity and two surgical
operations were unsuccessful; consequently he is sterile.
He didn't finish high school education and has never had
a steady job. His brothers work in the family business,
but because his relationship with his father was so bad
it was impossible for the patient to enter the business
also. He described his father as a violent dictator. The
patient left home and lived in a slum for four years. He
took to drink and gave his money away to any new acquaint
ance.
When he started analysis three years ago he was
drinking heavily, had hallucinations at night, and was
very anxious about the possible death of his father who
was very ill.
The first year of treatment was confused: he missed
many sessions, drank a lot, and sometimes phoned to say
he wanted to come to the session but was too afraid. He
made the analytic work very difficult by lying all the
time.
In the second year, after his father's death, he
changed completely. He became apathetic, stopped drinking
and came to the sessions accompanied by his mother. He
usually started by saying, "Doctor, I am on foot - I
haven't anything to say."
M. For how long did he come wit!i his mother?
P. Every day for a year.
B. Whose idea was it that `his mother should come?
P. The family's, because he missed so many sessions and
was apathetic.
B. Why did he miss the sessions? Because he didn't come.
or because he didn't listen? Or because his mother
brought him - not his own legs and feet? If the mother
insists on bringing him, not when he is four or six `but

570 PAULO - 1978 181

forty-six, she comes to the session.
P. During the second year I felt the analysis was empty.
Month after month: "I am on foot." Silence. And a phant-
asy about having won a football pool, and what he would
do with the money - he would buy a large apartment, have
a lot of cars, and so on. These were the only communic-
ations, month after month.
B. Who is this who says lie is going to win the pools?
Put it like this: X is betting on the pools; X is expect-
ing to win; if X wins, X is going to... Who is X? Of the
two people in the room, is it the patient? Or does he
think that the analyst is the person who is betting on
psycho-analysis and hoping that he will make enough money
never to have to do any more work? Who is this person who
would choose not to do any work? Is it his mother? Is she
betting on having a son who will support her for life?
Then she would never have to do any more work and' would
be looked after and protected.
Having posed all these questions, you can send your
senses back to get more information. You have to listen
again tomorrow, listen day after day to the patient say-
ing the same phrases - apparently. But they are not the
same. If he says them today, they are not the same as
yesterday; if he says them tomorrow, they are not the
same as today; if he said them at age four, they are not
the same as when he says them at age forty-six. There is
something wrong with the story. It would be all right if
he were a four-year-old, or even a six-year-old, but not
a forty-six-year-old. Your eyes may tell you that this
patient is forty-six; your ears may tell you something
else.
It is possible that he has to go on repeating -
apparently - the same words. I once had a patient who for
months on end said, "I don't know what I mean."
P. What was surprising were the changes in him. In the
first year he was one kind of person; in the second, com-
pletely different; and in the third year he became com-
pletely different again. He started talking, and referred
to his behaviour during the second year as that of a ro-
bot.
B. Sooner or later this patient has to walk on his own
feet - not his mother's. Socrates said he was a midwife;
he attended the birth of a mind. The same thing applies
to us; we can help a patient to get born, to emerge from
the womb of thought.

P. The patient is an eighteen-year-old girl who has been

in analysis with me for five years, four times a week.
She came in, lay on the couch, and was silent for a
while. Then she said, "While I was silent I kept wonder-
ing whether I was going to speak or not. I thought the
couch was hot. And I thought it would be very difficult
for you to separate one person from another."
B. Patients often do this. I find that it is important
to draw their attention to the fact that they are putting
distance between themselves and themselves. This patient
says, "I wonder what I am going to say." It might be use-
ful to reply, "Well, what is the result of your wondering?"
P. She continued, "As a test I stayed silent to see what
would happen." I had the feeling that she was not sure if
I could distinguish one patient from another.
B. You could say, "Well, I'll remain silent too,and then
there will be two of us who can wait to see what happens."
This suggests that there are three people present - she,
herself and somebody who is neither of these. So if any
two of these could get together, they might hear what one
of them alone could not.
P. Might that not imply, "I can also provoke and tease
you"?
B. Possibly. That is why we have to be careful with the
tone of voice, the inflection and so on. There is not
only the difficulty of having to give an interpretation,
but also how we give it, what musical accompaniment we
put to the words.
P. I told her that I thought she was wanting to force me
to speak. She answered, "I wanted to know if you were
thinking of another patient." I felt that she was afraid
of being mixed up with all the other patients, like the
children of a very big family who fear that the parents
won't be able to distinguish one child from another. I
suggested that she was confused about her own identity.
After a while she said, "I have never thought about it."

SO PAULO - 1978 183

And then, in an anxious tone of voice, "I think I am
afraid of losing myself from myself. It upsets me ter-
ribly."
B. It may be true that she has `never thought about it',
so thinking can bring with it all the surprise and anx-
iety of a completely unfamiliar experience.
P. She was silent for a while as if she was thinking
about something. Then she said, "Are you saying that I
don't understand the words I use?Do you think I use you
too much as a sort of reference?"
B. It is curious. Why can't she talk to you? As the ana-
lyst I would not object to being `used', but I would won-
der why the patient could not talk to me. Is the practice
of analysis making people lose the capacity for ordinary
human intercourse? I can see that there is a lot to be
said for analysis if that is what you want, or if you
want to be an analyst, but not if it is going to take the
place of other activities. I would rather play chess, or
tennis, or piano duets than be in a state in which I was
simply restricted to the very narrow sort of conversation
which is psycho-analysis. I don't think one wants to be
less, but more of a human being as a result of analysis.
But this patient is talking as if she is unable to have
an ordinary conversation.
P. It is true that the patient and I very often have
great difficulty in establishng normal conversation.
M. Does the analytic relationship form an obstacle to
other kinds of contact outside the consulting room?
B. No, but it does pu't restrictions on behaviour inside
the consulting room. Although the conversation sounds
like an ordinary one, because we use ordinary words, we
ought to use those words very carefully. A surgeon cannot
use any old knife to make an incision in the skin of a
patient; a surgical operation must be carried out in a
disiplined and precise manner. Both in analysis, and here
and now in what we call a supervision, I use ordinary
English because it is the language I know best. But I
nevertheless consider that there is a certain discipline
which is proper to both these situations. It is alarming
to hear two married people, both of whom are analysts,
talking as if they were analysing each other. Good gra-
cious! Haven't they anything better to do? They could dis-
cuss painting, music, all sorts of things. They could
even have a sexual relationship. If the analytic relation-

`184 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 15

ship is made into a substitute for other activities, that
seems to be a serious and dangerous by-product of analy-
sis. I have no objection to having the analytic experi-
ence which makes it possible for me to take up the analy-
tic profession; I want to be a psycho-analyst. But I do
not want that experience to make it impossible for me to
have a life worth living where I could never go to the
theatre or a pictur.e gallery, or paint or swim.
M. Patients cannot have any social contact with their
analysts. What are your views about this?
B. Analysis does make the social relationship more dif-
ficult. If, for example, you were a surgeon and your son
or daughter fell ill, I don't think you would like to
operate on your blood relation; it would be sure to a-
rouse very powerful feelings. That kind of emotional ex-
perience would interfere with the necessary clear think-
ing and destroy your dispassionate technical ability.
Similarly in analysis; if you begin to have feelings of
love for a patient, that interferes with the analytic
relationship and the capacity to think in a dispassion-
ate manner. The analyst should remain under a discipline
and refrain from letting down the barriers and having a
rhapsodic response - that is, throwing his arms round the
patient and having a passionate love affair. That is just
as bad as saying, "You don't want an analysis - all you
need is to get married." That is nonsense. If you are
dealing with a patient who is suffering mental pain, then
it is silly to say, "All you need is a holiday by the sea",
or, "All you need is a nice man or woman to marry. ` That
is not a cure - marriage is for something else. It is not
supposed to be a cure for neurosis or psychosis. But ana-
lysis is supposed to be.

P. The patient lay down on the couch and started to talk.

"Mrs J is the owner of the house where I live. She is
eighty-eight years old. I dreamt that she was walking a-
long the road, talking about the rental agreement." Then
she started shouting, "What are you doing there behind
me? Tell me immediately. You are a dishonest liar!" This
took me by surprise.
B. I wonder what the difficulty is. If she knows that
you are a dishonest liar, the'n obviously you would be
telling lies behind her back. At the same time, why ask
you what you are doing behind her back? Presumably you
will only tell her more lies. Alternatively, is she
afraid that you do not tell lies? If she thinks there is
a chance that you speak the truth, that would explain why
she asks you what you are doing. To put it another way:
there is something wrong with this story; either the pa-
tient is lying, or she is slandering the analyst. Other-
wise why should she spend her time with a dishonest liar?
P. I said, "I am listening." She replied, "Yes, that's
important." She calmed down and continued describing her
dream.
B. That is a very interesting sequel. Notice that the
analyst didn't start an argument about whether or not he
is a liar; he didn't get up and leave the room; he didn't
lose his temper. The effect on the patient seems to have
been quite helpful. It is not a cure, but a little bit of
a cure; it is enough of a cure to make another minute or
two possible. Not only does it matter what you say or do;
it also matters what you do not say or do.
P. She continued to describe her dream: "Mrs J wanted to
come into the house and look it over. There was a portrait
of a nude in one of the rooms and I knew that she would
not like that. So I tried to stop her coming into the
house, but I couldn't. In the kitchen there were two
blood-stained garments.1,
B. The patient said this was a dream.Did you believe her?

186 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 16

It sounds very likely that she wanted to stop you from
seeing what was in her mind, leaving her feeling naked.
But she wasn't able to lock the door; she wasn't able to
make you leave; she wasn't able to put a stop to the ana-
lysis right away. So now you may find out what kind of
person she is. However, there is always a safeguard: if
you give an interpretation she can say, "It doesn't
matter - I don't really think like that - it was only a
dream."
P. She went on, "I was afraid the houseowner wouldn't
renew the contract, complaining that I didn't take care
of the house - although it was in an even worse condition
when I first rented it. With a magic wand she turned the
nude portrait into a negro woman dressed in a rose-col-
oured dress. The negro woman started to move. I saw a
door I had never seen before, opened it, and found a dy-
ing plant. I was afraid the owner would be angry because
I hadn't taken care of it. I tried to revive it with the
magic spell she had used, but cotildn't." Then she began
to shout again, "What are you doing there? You are a liar.
You are doing something you don't want to tell me about.
I hate you. I want to destroy you, tear you into pieces
and throw the pieces away." She was very, very angry.
B. What are you doing to her? She has continued to talk,
so she is taking off her own disguises. If you take off
the black skin, there is a person there; if you take off
the dream, she�herself is there. I think she is worried
about what you are doing to her. Why do you make her
speak the truth? It seems that you are only talking, but
she knows it isn't only that. You are talking in some
peculiar way which makes her expose the truth. This ana-
lytic conversation is very disturbing and frightening to
the patient; she doesn't know what will appear. She is
frightened of you because you don't only hear what she
says, but understand what you hear; and she is frightened
of herself for coming to see you. When she is so angry
that she hurls these accusations at you, it also means
that she is very frightened - being frightened and being
angry are so nearly the same thing; they are feelings
which are fundamental; they could be felt even by an em-
bryo - in medical terms, the development of the adrenals.
These fundamental, primordial feelings of fright, anger
and hate are seeping up so that the patien'c cannot think
clearly. So it would seem to be quite a good idea to make

SAo PAULO - 1978 187

the analyst frightened and angry too: let's start by call-
ing him a dishonest liar and see if that will frighten
him or make him so angry that he won't be able to think.
Then it will be all right because he won't be able to
think any better than she can. But we know it is no use
at all to have two people in the room who can't think. So
although it is horrible for the patient, it is just as
well for the analyst to remain able to think. But we can-
not settle this matter by being unable to be angry or
frightened; we have to be able to have these strong feel-
ings and be able to go on thinking clearly even when we
have them.

P. The patient is a fourteen-year-old boy. He came in

and lay down on his front - not in the usual position. He
began by saying, "If you were ill next time, we shouldn't
be able to have our session and I would save money." Then
he looked at me and said, "You are moving your fingers."
He kept glancing at me all the time. Then he asked, refer-
ring to a boy who he knew had been one of my patients,
"Did he leave you ?" Then, "How long does an analysis
take?" Is it possible that I shall he here for ten years?"
B. I might say something like this: "You are not really
sure whether you are the boy who came here and never came
back again, or whether you are the boy who came here and
has come here again today. But since you are the boy who
has come here today, you are beginning to be afraid that
you might also be coming here for ten years. And you
would like me to be able to tell you how many years you
have been coming so far, and how many more years you are
going to come."
I suggest that this boy feels he has already been
coming for fourteen years - in fact ever since he was
born - and that it's quite long enough. At the same time
he is not quite a boy - he's a young man; and he's not
quite a young man - he's a boy who needs a father or
mother or psycho-analyst to come to. In short, we are
looking, at rather close quarters, at what is known as an
adolescent. It's no good telling him that because it
wouldn't mean anything to him. But he could possibly
understand if one said, "You are feeling like a grown man
and you are tired of being a boy. But you are frightened
of being a grown man and would like to be a boy for a bit
longer - perhaps for ten years more. You want me to tell
you when you will be a man and when you can stop being a
boy."
These are just rational guesses, rational conject-
ures. But during analysis you don't have time to discuss
this kind of thing. Here we can imagine that the patient

sAo PAULO - 1978 .189

is waiting for the interpretation, but in real life he
wants an answer straight off. This is the analyst's prob-
lem: how to answer on the spur of the moment - literally,
for the moment is a spur which is provoking an answer -
and how to give an answer which helps the analysis to go
on but which isn't too much or too little. This is why
treating adolescents is so difficult.
To give a pictorial image: if you are the captain of
a sailing ship on a stormy sea, you have to know at once
what sails to carry or what sails to strike. That is why
the experienced caPtain has an advantage; he doesn't have
to think too much because he has done the thinking before-
hand. In the same way we have this kind of discussion so
that we can do our thinking before we have to answer; it
is useful to keep our own im'aginative and rational con-
jectures up on the surface, ready in case we want to use
them.
P. He got up from the couch and asked me, "Don't you
want to give me the small box?" This contains things for
drawing and painting which he used when he first came to
me at the age of twelve.
B. "Can't I be a little boy a little longer please?" He
doesn't want to grow up just yet.
P. He began to draw a copy of the cheque he had brought
for the monthly account, saying that if he were the ana-
lyst he would keep the cheque for himself. He spent the
rest of the session drawing the cheque - a very exact
likeness. Then he tore it up and, indicating the real
cheque, said, "I'll take this with me." He looked at me,
took the torn-up drawing and left the cheque.
B. You are dealing here with an emotional storm, a dy-
namic situation. So whatever you do will probably be
wrong the next moment - or possibly right. That is the
problem with having to reply instantaneously in a situ-
ation which is constantly changing like the waves of the
ocean.
M. Perhaps he was drawing the cheque because he isn't
able to earn money and write real cheques.
B. When will he be grown-up enough to write cheques of
his own, and when will his own cheques be worth as much
as those of grown-up people? If he could write the
cheques himself, perhaps that would pay him.
M. He may be identifying with his father, drawing the
cheque in competition with his father.

190 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 17

B. Yes, but his pencil, his penis, isn1t a very potent
one. Cheques which his pencil or penis can make are not
as powerful as the cheques made by his father1s pencil or
penis - or the analyst's. He is at this awkward stage
where he is not a boy or a father; he is bot'h of them at
the same time.
P. I felt that he wanted me to impose limits on him.
B. It is perfectly true that he may want you to do that,
but he also wants to be free. So how are there to be
limitations which mustn't be limitations? I find the pic-
torial image of the storm-tossed sea useful, the motto of
the city of Paris: `fluctuat nec murgitur'; storm-tossed
but not submerged. This boy is saying, "How high are
these waves going to rise? How high are these emotional
feelings going to rise? What are their limits? But there
mustn't be any limits - I don't want them to become a
prison. `

P. The patient is a woman journalist. She came twenty

minutes late to the session I am reporting, did not use
the couch, and sat in the chair. On some days she uses
the couch, on others she sits in the chair; sometimes she
changes places during the session. She arrived looking
tired, as if she had been running, but she was well-
groomed and well made up. She said, "I wish I had come
earlier because I would like a rabbit to come out of my
hat today. Lots of things have happened: my mother is go-
ing back to the States, and my sister is getting divorced.
I have been thinking about leaving analysis because my
sister will need money for the divorce. I have other prob-
lems as well." After a pause I asked her what she meant
by `other problems'. She said she didn't know, but she
thought she should stop the analysis because she didn't
deserve to have so much money spent on her; she should
move to a little house in the suburbs instead of living
in several houses.
B. I get the impression that she has become aware of the
fact that there are an enormous number of options. The
problem is, how is she to spend the limited time and
money she has? And because they are limited it matters
very much what she buys. She could spend the money on a
divorce for her sister. Or she could spend it on herself.
But it sounds as if she would be unable to tolerate her
guilt if she spent her resources of time and money on her-
self.
I don't think I would say any of that at the moment
because I am not sure that she could stand' it. I would
probably want to hear some more. In the meantime I would
keep to myself the opinion that this is a fundamental,
basic guilt, the kind of conscience that, if one took a
religious view, one would call `original sin'. But from
my point of view these are symptoms of a very dangerous
conscience which is more of a liability than an asset.
It doesn't tell the patient what to do; it only tells her

192 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 18

what she must not do. So I suspect she is afraid that
you are that kind of conscience.
If I were the analyst, what interpretation should I
give the patient? Or should I remain silent? If I remain
silent, I am slipping into the position of being the con-
science who is no good to her. I need more information
and would therefore prefer to remain silent until I hear
some more. But I would not know whether I could afford to
wait or whether it would make her more than ever fright-
ened of me as the unhelpful, hostile conscience. On the
other hand, if I gave her that interpretation I would be
afraid that it was premature. In either case there is a
risk that she will walk out and not come back. Could I
say something that would be neither of those mistakes?
P. Perhaps I might say, "How about looking inside this
hat you mention, and trying to see those rabbits?"
B. The danger I would anticipate with that would be of
the patient thinking I was being frivolous or taking her
statement seriously. I don't say that is necessarily an
objection to it; I think there would be an objection to
whatever you said or did.
P. I got the impression that she was bringing a divorce
upon herself.
B. Divorce, like marriage, is only an institution. The
question is what does one use either of them for,and why
one rather than the other? Why does this patient think
that divorce is the best present she can give her sister?
I would be inclined to draw her attention to the
fact that there are actually two people in the room, but
there is also an observer who is watching this verbal
intercourse between you and herself; while she is parti-
cipating in a conversation with you, she is also listen-
ing to it. I might add, "In other words,I think that you
and I are being watched by- a very inquisitive person who
is also you." If that is right we are dealing with some-
thing basic. It is reminiscent of the biblical story
about curiosity which impels a character to eat of the
Tree of Knowledge. This is a dynamic situation involving
these three characters - analyst, analysand and observer.
But we don't know which is playing which part at any
given moment; they are constantly changing. It is also
fundamental in the sense that it is called a'triangular'
situation.
P. It occurred to me that she wanted to leave analysis
as a way of coping with feelings of abandonment and sep-

SAO PAULO - 1978 193

aration. Her mother is leaving her to take care of her

sister, making her feel abandoned, so she will abandon me
and leave me alone too.
B. The two are left alone, again with a primitive con-
science. I could put it in these terms: two young child-
ren need a parent because that parent has a great deal of
experience; this primitive conscience has no experience
and does not know enough to look after two children. The
experienced mother is liable to seem very strict because
she is always saying, "Don't do this", "Don't do that",
"Don't be naughty", and so on ad infinitum. But in fact
the experienced mother is much milder, much less severe
than the inexperienced conscience. So the danger of leav-
ing two young children alone is not only all the naughty,
bad things that they would do, but because they would be
at the mercy of a very severe, harsh and inexperienced
conscience. At a much later stage the danger in that kind
of moral system is that it can impose a sentence of death
unnecessarily; in other words, it is the sort of consci-
ence that can drive a patient to suicide.
Although we are dealing with this in terms of child-
hood, we are in fact dealing with something which would
be very serious if it were left untreated. This is what
makes the analytic experience so important; patients can
be helped to modify their ideas of right and wrong in
comparison with what they now know. We do not say, "With
a conscience like that, leave it to them to keep them-
selves dominated by such a conscience for the rest of
their lives." The analyst may, like the mother, appear to
be very restrictive because he wants patients to behave
in a civilized and polite manner, not simply to go
straight from some impulse to action without the inter-
vention of a pause for thought. That is one reason why we
believe that there is a lot to be said for discussing
these matters and thinking about them. You may get a pa-
tient who, instead of working it out with the analyst,
goes to the United States or England or France - acting
first and repenting at leisure. It is a serious situation
if a patient telephones to say, "I want to see you Doctor."
"All right." "But I can't - I'm in the United States."
Instead of spending all these months and years in analy-
sis, the patient goes straight from the impulse to action,
doesn't know what to do, and can't get back for the next
session. So this patient is actually being quite sensible;
she doesn't go to the United States; she comes to see you.

P. The patient, a woman, has been in analysis for two

years. From the first I had the feeling of being in the
presence of an unprotected and defenceless person, al-
though she did not express this verbally. In the session
I am reporting she said that she had a phantasy that she
came from an egg and that in leaving the egg she hurt
herself. She said that before the analysis she lived with-
out being conscious of more than half the things she did
to herself. "I had no idea if it would be good to leave
the egg or not. I just jumped, and plop! I hurt myself.
After starting analysis I tried to leave the egg more
carefully. I think you were right to say that unless I
want to know the truth, the analysis can't go on. It is
like the chicken hatching from the egg; if the chick
isn't ready to leave the egg, it could hurt itself by try-
ing to force its way out. I think I shall know when the
egg is right. Can you hear me? I feel you are so far away
from me that I can't see you."
B. You had not left the room; nor had she. So what had
happened? The physical senses don't seem to throw any
light on this. However, I have a very great deal of res-
pect for what the patient says. What senses is she talk-
ing about? Is it possible that she has eye-sight which
tells her one story, and in-sight which tells her an-
other?
The baby seems to be aware that it is dependent on
something else - something not itself - such as a breast,
a bottle, a father, or a mother. It seems also to know
when there is nobody else in the room. It is an unpleas-
ant experience, this feeling of being dependent, incom-
plete, and at the same time the feeling of being all
alone. This patient can be aware of being all alone with
a psycho-analyst in the same room; she is dependent and
all alone with the object she depends upon. When she came
out of the egg, or her mother's inside, she could experi-
ence these feelings but would not then know how to com-

S~O PAULO - 1978 195

municate them; today she can communicate them verbally,
but she has forgotten what they are. I say she has `for-
gotten' what they are, but as analysts we may have to re-
vise our views about `forgetting' and `remembering'. Has
this patient `forgotten' what it feels like to be a new-
born baby? Or is she `remembering' what it feels like? I
don't know. These words have so many meanings that they
are of no use to us. If we want to make a scientific com-
munication, we shall also have to make a work of art.
P. She said, "I feel the need for sensual contact like
the need for oxygen. I need to touch people, to embrace
them, to stay close to them. Since I have been in analy-
sis this feeling has increased." I said, "I think you are
confused by feeling like a small child, unprotected, de-
fenceless, who only feels safe in close contact with the
mother. `
B. She might say, "I don't understand all this talk, but
if I use my hand I can understand this table, or if I
could touch your body, then my body would know what your
body was saying. I don't understand these noises in my
`ears; let me touch you, and then my hand will understand
what yours says." If she cannot stand the situation, she
may actually hold your hand. What she doesn't know is
that if she does, she will have such powerful feelings
that she will get frightened. In fact she could get so
frightened that she might never come back again - not be-
cause she has been prevented from touching you, but be-
cause she has been allowed to. So - what are we to say to
a patient who wants physical contact? Or what are you to
say if a patient tells you, "I don't understand this, but
if you had a piano here, then I could play it and you
would understand what I mean. All this talk is no good -
I can't talk"? Or perhaps a patient says nothing at all
but just gets angrier and angrier, and more and more hos-
tile. At last he says, "Why don't you do something?"
"Well, why haven't you told me anything?" And the patient
replies, "I've done nothing but tell you - I've been tell-
ing you for the past two weeks." As far as the analyst is
concerned `the patient hasn't said a word; he has come
every day, five times a week for about two months without
saying a word. But he is furious because he has told the
analyst so much, yet the analyst knows nothing of it.
People often fail to realize that besides talking,
analysts also listen. I think the patient we have been

196 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 19

hearing about knew that the analyst was listening - that
is why she said, "You've gone away." She must have known
that the analyst was still in the room; something was
there, and she had the intelligence to know that although
it couldn't be smelled or touched or felt, the analyst
was thinking.
There are cultures which expect people always to be
talking, always making a noise, so that anybody who is
thinking is assumed to be doing nothing. The analyst has
to be able to respect and pay attention to his own in-
tuition while pressure is put on him to say something, or
to do something, or to touch the patient, and to give up
remaining in silence where he can at least hear himself
think.

P. The psychiatrist who referred this patient to me dia-

gnosed him as psychotic. He had been committed to hos-
pital. I didn't have a vacancy but I interviewed him and
we agreed to leave it until I had a vacancy. Later he
left hospital and phoned me, but I still had no vacancy.
I said I would phone him when I had a mutually convenient
time.
B. Where does this idea come from - that the patient
needs help? We can understand that' the psychiatrist would
think so, but the interesting thing is that apparently
the patient thinks so too. In other words, he is not so
mad that he doesn't know he needs help. There are plenty
of people who are what we would call `insane' but who
wouldn't want any help from anybody; they could feel that
they were quite all right. But this patient seems at any
rate to be sufficiently well to know that he is ill.
P. When he first came he gave the impression that he ex-
pected a great deal of me. At the same time he couldn't
articulate words to express himself in order to communi-
cate with me. I experienced this problem of mutism with
another patient, and based on this I had the impression
that this patient would remain silent for a long time. I
knew he was studying architecture, so I suggested that he
might like to do some drawings for me if he was having
difficulty in using words. He accepted the suggestion en-
thusiastically, and has drawn in every session since.
A kind of ritual has been established: he does the
drawing; I ask what he has drawn; he gives it to me; I
look at it and ask what he thinks about what he has drawn.
Sometimes I ask, "How do you interpret the drawing?" Or,
"What have you drawn?" In the last session I said, "G;�ve
the drawing a title. "(Here it is.) He thought for a while
and then answered, "Bestiality Advancing". I asked him,
"Are you representing the advance of bestiality by a foot
that is advancing?" He replied, "Bestiality is not a foot;
it is something that has feet." He spoke quite quickly

198 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 20

and then drew a line round the picture as if it were a
framed painting.
B. I could say: this is a funny piece of architecture;
this looks like a drawing of a part of the anatomy. If
that is the case, then perhaps he thinks the human body
is a piece of architecture; it has a skeleton in much the
same way as buildings have - iron girders, ferro-concrete.
But this building is a plan for one of flesh and blood.
P. This might be the `bestiality' to which he referred.
B. It is very interesting: this patient, who has been
diagnosed (probably quite correctly) as psychotic, is
also well enough to know he is ill. That is point number
one. Point two: he is also well enough to know that the
analyst is likely to help him, so he doesn't mind co-
operating by drawing a picture. He doesn't tell you in
words where the pain is, but he draws a picture of it.
M. Isn't it dangerous to consider that a drawing of this
kind is a mental communication?
B. I think it is dangerous to consider anything. Psycho-
analysis is a dangerous occupation; so is being a doctor
or a fireman. In all these occupations people lose their
lives. And it is just as well to remember that analysis
is a dangerous occupation whatever you do - if you don't
do anything, or if you do do anything.
This drawing is of something. If it were a house on
fire, one could say that the flames were advancing. But
if it's a drawing of a piece of human architecture, then
it is a state of mind that is advancing - bestiality. In
other words, he does not feel that he is becoming more
civilized, more polite, more co-operative, but more bes-
tial; not more human but more like the beasts.
While we are dealing with the advance of bestiality
now - which may have advanced too far already - it would
also be useful to know where it started, where its origin
was. If we knew that, perhaps we could stop the origin
from feeding the advance. If we were dealing with a fire,
it would be important to contain that fire to prevent it
from spreading. But it would also be important to know
what was feeding it. If it wad a physical ailment which
was advancing, it would be useful to know where the
source of the infection was. In fact I think that your
asking the patient to draw is helping to contain the
spread. Drawing is quite a civilized procedure; it has a
long history; it even goes back to cave paintings twenty

Sli0 PAULO - 1978 199

thousand years ago. We can see signs in the patient of
something wliich has a long history, is right up-to-date,
and we come into the story very late.

P. The analysis of this patient seems to have been

through three phases. In the first she was chiefly pre-
occupied with the material conditions around her, such as
the couch. She was very rigid about the schedule for ses-
sions and became aggressive if any changes were made. On
one occasion I was surprised to find myself twisted in my
chair, trying very hard to follow her words because she
was speaking so softly. It was only after I noticed this
that I realized that she was exercising control to such
a degree that I was unable to think analytically.
In the-second phase she spoke almost as if she was
talking to herself. Later she exhibited the same anxiet-
ies about material objects as in the first phase, but in
relation to me, saying how nice I was, or how punctual.
But I noticed that she was now using her talking as an
evacuation so as to avoid contact with me, pushing me
away.
In the third phase she began to consider me as a
person. This phase was tinged with deep doubt and anxiety;
she said she was now able to glimpse another world al-
though she couldn't reach it. She was able at this stage
to refer to the importance of analysis in her life.
I am going to describe yesterday's session -
B. Before we hear about this session there is a question
I would like to ask. I get the impression that the pa-
tient knew you would have to twist round in your chair to
hear what she said. Did you feel that she knew you could
not hear what she said and that you would have to move
your bodily position?
P. I don't think she was consciously aware that she was
forcing me to twist in the chair; I only felt it and ob-
served it in myself.
B. If you were only a piece of furniture, a piece of
wood, then there would be no question of making you feel
anything. But if she is aware that you are a human being,
then she is also aware that you have to listen in order

SlO PAULO - 1978 201

to hear what she is saying. So if she speaks very softly,
you will have to do something about hearing what she says.
This would certainly fit in with what we have already
heard, namely that she is not really aware of you as a
human being. But in so far as she is aware of that, she
will also be aware that she is doing cruel things to you.
Let us hear more now about what happened in yester-
day's session. We have heard the historical part: now we
expect to get a much closer view.
P. She came into the room, handed me a cheque and said,
"Today I am very worried because I put the wrong date on
the first cheque I wrote. I'm disturbed." Then she went
on to describe how she was nursing her two children who
have `flu. (I was surpri�sed to find that while she was
talking I was looking at the cheque and noticed that she
had made it out for too large an amount.) She said she
felt very happy to be able to look after her children;
she had formally had a maid with whom she used to leave
them. I said, "Your disturbance can be seen in the cheque
you wrote. You are expressing not your worries about your
children, but your maternal feelings, the aspects of be-
ing a woman, of your sexuality." She agreed, but said I
should also notice that as well as looking after her
children she is now able to talk about sexuality to me.
She drew my attention to the fact that she is now able to
wear dresses whereas she used always to wear pants.
B. It seems to me that in what you have described as the
first phase, the patient didn't really know that you were
a live person, or was being cruel to a live person - and
to herself to some extent; if you cannot hear what she
says, then you cannot give her any interpretations and
she cannot get any treatment. However, something happens
during this time which makes possible a second phase;
both she and you have changed. Similarly with this second
phase; something must have happened to make possible a
third phase. If she has developed or grown, then she may
have grown past the stage of wanting to be cruel to a
`thing', and she can feel indebted to you because you
have put up with phases one and two.
It is difficult to know why this kind of psycho-ana-
lytic conversation should actually relieve a real mental
pain and produce a real cure of a real mental pain. Ana-
lysts talk and argue about Kleinian theory Freudian
theory, Abrahamian theory and so on, as if they had for-

202 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 21

gotten that behind all these theories there are people
who are actually suffering. It is almost like a surgeon
regarding an operation as a bit of carpentry carried out
on a living body. You would soon see the point if a den-
tist drilled your teeth and regarded it simply as a tech-
nical accomplishment as if he had forgotten that those
teeth belonged to a real person.
It is easy to get involved in arguments about tech-
nical questions as to who knows the most theories, or the
best theories, and to forget attogether that we are con-
cerned with people. Paradoxically, we are so close to the
suffering, so involved with giving the correct interpret-
ation, carrying out the correct mental operation, and pa-
tients are so concerned with how painful the correct men-
tal procedure is, that it is a surprise to find as they
progress that they are different; they are what we have
to call, `better', `healthier', `more cured'.
This patient discovers that all her past sufferings,
anxieties, troubles, lead to a situation where she has a
family of her own. It can be a surprise to find that it
is quite nice to have children of her own. She may not
feel that she remembers how she got there, but she can
feel that she owes a debt to you. The problem that now
arises is, how is she to express her feelings of grati-
tude to you? On the face of it she can fall back on the
idea of money as a method of settling that debt. But what,
if any, payment are you to expect if you are a good ana-
lyst? What coin are you to be paid in? There is a saying:
virtue is its own reward. The reward for being virtuous
is being virtuous; the reward for being a good analyst is
being a good analyst; the reward for being a good father
or mother is simply being a good father or mother.

P. The patient usually arrives a little late, lies on

the couch and immediately starts to talk. Yesterday he
arrived ten minutes late and paused for about a minute
before speaking. He said that while he was silent he was
thinking about your lectures. He had considered attending
those meetings but was afraid he would meet his former
analyst (with whom he had been for eight years) and would
not know what to say to him. He said, "It's funny - I re-
member things pecple tell me; I remember things about
those people; and yet I don't remember the people them-
selves." He has been in analysis with me for six months,
two months of which he spent in Europe. He said that
while in Europe he sometimes remembered what I had said
to him but never remembered me. He said this also applied
to his memory of his father; he remembered his father's
words but never his father.
While he was saying this I recalled that he had a
habit of using quotations. My interpretation was, "You
use words as if they were something that can be kept in a
cupboard and which are at your disposal, but you leave
people aside." He seemed to agree with my observation. He
said that although he is "intelligent, sensitive and
shrewd", he is unable to retain the things he learns. As
a result he feels ill at ease even when among friends. He
thinks that is why he doesn't enjoy any serious convers-
ation.
B. What strikes me about this is that he thinks he knows
`why'. People very often say, Because... because... be-
cause. . .``; then while you are waiting to hear the cause,
they don't tell you. This patient tells you the cause,
but we don't know that he really knows what it is. !f he
knows the cause, why bother to tell you? The reason why
he tells you is in fact that he does not know. I think he
is frightened of you and of what you will find out. In
physical medicine this fear can be so great that someone
who thinks he has cancer won't even go to see a doctor.

204 CLiNICAL SEMINARS - 22

When a patient comes to see an analyst, he hopes that the

analyst will say there's nothing the matter. At the same
time he is afraid that that isn't true, and also that the
analyst will say, "Let's find out."
P. He refers to himself as a `homosexual' so as to
shield himself from any examination of what leads him to
consider himself thus.
B. These words are so commonly used that they lose their
meaning. I think one has to consider what language the
patient is talking; it can sound just like a psychiatrist
or a doctor - but it isn't.
P. He told me that on his return from Europe he had
accepted an invitation from a girl-friend to spend the
week-end at the coast. But since her parents would be
there and he would have to converse seriously with them,
he didn't go. He preferred to stay in the city with men
friends and sit and chat with them. He says he enjoys
chatting with men friends because it gives him a chance
to feel very witty. The conversations are not serious but
require his astuteness and wit.
 Ever since childhood he has been surprised by the
anxiety he feels when night comes because in fact he en-
joy�s night-time. When he was an adolescent he went out
with friends at night because he was afraid to stay at
home. He has to go out every night to meet friends, and
after these exchanges of witticisms he ends up by choos-
ing a male sexual partner. Although he is not very ex-
plicit about it,he implies that he takes an active part
in the relationship.
B. It seems to me that he can't stand the fact that you
can observe him in daylight. He would like to be able to
cover himself in darkness in the way that he can at night-
time. If it is daylight and he is in a conscious state of
mind, he is uncomfortable - he has a pain which he calls
`anxiety'. It would be much nicer if it were night-time
and he could be hidden so that you couldn't see him. But
he is afraid that you may be able to see him and keep on
thinking whether it is daytime or night-time. So he takes
refuge in staying awake at night. And while you can see
men and women, he can only see half the human race - that
half which looks like him.
P. Two things you say remind me that as a result of an
attack of polio the patient limps. One is your mention of
night as a refuge; the other is your reference to his

SAo PAULO - 1978 205

only being able to see half the human race. Perhaps he

feels only half a man and wants to hide his limp.
B. The difficulty can also be that the unmarried man is
only half a human being. One can say that biologically
the human unit is a couple; it takes two human beings to
make one. It is simpler if this patient can feel that he
is complete because he doesn't want to have to find a
mate. In fact he doesn't even like having to find an ana-
lyst; although he would like your help, it would be much
nicer if you could send him your words but stay away your-
self. This incomplete person is having the unpleasant ex-
perience of being all alone with himself and with you. If
you left him, or he left you, he would have to get an-
other analyst straight away. But he is frightened of a
successful analysis, of what he might see if you opened
his eyes or his ears, or any of his senses. And he is
frightened of an unsuccessful analysis; he's not sure
that he wants to remember the past, and he doesn't want
to `remember' the future either.
P. He is an art dealer and has a partner in his business,
but would prefer to work just for himself. But he is
afraid to do this. He lives with his mother, grandmother,
sister and brother. He would like to set up home on his
own but cannot.
B. He is not `at home' with himself. But whether he
likes it or not he has to be `married' to himself for as
long as he lives. He objects to being the kind of animal
that has to have a mate, but while he may not like being
with his analyst, he likes it less still being alone with
himself. So since he has to have a mate, the only thing
he can choose is another human being - and all human be-
ings are so much alike; they are all imperfect creatures.
So then there are two imperfect beings and the problem is
whether these two halves make one whole or not. Will
these two halves fit together? If they are both women, or
both men, they don't fit.

P. The patient came in looking very tense. She lay on

the couch and remained silent. I asked her if she wanted
to speak about the subject of payment which she had men-
tioned in the previous session. She got up from the couch,
sat on it, opened her purse and took out an appointment
book. Sh.e said she didn't think she would be able to pay
me until the beginning of next month. I had the impres-
sion that she wanted to establish some kind of link, a
complicity.
B. We can all now say what we would do if we had an ex-
perience of the kind that has been sketched out for us.
It can't take the place of what the analyst already knows,
but we can give our imaginations an airing. I don't want
to appear to interfere with what you are talking about be-
cause I could call that `sacred1. What I would do if I
had such a patient is more a matter of my peculiar ment-
ality than of the actual analysis. The way that I do ana-
lysis is of no importance to anybody excepting myself,
but it may give you some idea of how you do analysis, and
that is important.
I don't think I would say anything about the previ-
ous reference to payment. But after a time, and if I
thought the patient could understand, I would say, "I can
understand now what you meant about the difficulty in
paying. You are mentally constipated, so you are not able
to give me any free associations - you can't give me any
information and I can't give you any interpretation. So
we can see how difficult this question is: how are you to
pay me, and how am I to pay you? There are two people
here, but this silence shows that neither of us can pay."
If I give that interpretation, then I have the chance of
seeing from the patient's reaction whether it seems to be
the right one, or whether I have made a mistake.
We know now what in fact you did say to her in the
actual situation. So we can go on from there.
P. I told her that I didn't know for whose benefit she

SAO PAULO - 1978 20,

was explaining in such detail why she was unable to pay.

She became very irritated and said, "Well, you are quite
right; next time I'll pay you. As a matter of fact, if I
haven't the money for more sessions I can always give up
coming here." Then she lay down again and lapsed into si-
lence.
B. Did she say she was irritated, or was it an observa-
tion of yours?
P. It was my observation. She is a dancer and uses her
body very expressively.
B. That is the kind of thing that makes the analyst's
position quite different from any amount of theory. You
can use all your senses in the analytic session - con-
scious or unconscious - so that you have a very great
deal of information.
Why does this patient not know that you are there to
help? And if she doesn't know it, what has she come for?
Why is she irritated, annoyed? After all, you have only
told her something in order to help her.
P. She remained silent for some time. After a while I
felt I could ask, 1,How can I help you?" She said, "No,
you can't help me." I said, "But isn't this a contra-
diction? You say I can't help you, but you are here."
She said, "Well, to avoid the contradiction I had better
leave." She sat up, arranged her hair, and left the room
with an air of offended dignity.
B. Well, what about that? If she feels disposed to trans-
late her feelings into action and walk out of the room,
it might be because she can't help you. There is nothing
she can do for you: you aren't her baby or her husband or
her son - or even her patient. However, she has actually
created another difficulty because she has gone straight
from the impulse of annoyance to action. And if she wants
more analysis she will�have to come back again. That is
much more difficult that it would have been if she had
not walked out. You can't do anything about that; you
can't bring her back or tell her to come back because
that gets close to breaking the law - you aren't allowed
to imprison the patient. If you said, "Here, come back!",
she could bring an action for damages on the grounds that
you weren't allowing her to be free. She has to learn the
hard way, namely that if she translates her impulse into
action without thinking, then she has to do more thinking
to get back again. Or will she have to find another ana-

208 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 23

lyst which is just as bad.
This can all be very disagreeable for the analyst
because none of us likes losing patients; we always won-
der what we have done wrong. It is quite useful to know
what we have done wrong, but it is also just as well to
remember that in this world accidents happen and ordinary
human beings make mistakes. We aren't obliged to be God;
we aren't obliged to be what we can't be. It is not our
privilege to be free of mistakes; it doesn't matter how
old or how experienced you are - you will always be mak-
ing mistakes.
What happened next?
P. She came again the next day.
B. We are always having to stop the story when it is
getting very interesting.

P. The patient, a woman of twenty-four, has been coming

to me for nine sessions. Sometimes she sits on a chair;
sometimes she lies on the couch; and sometimes she
changes from one to the other during the session. In the
session I am reporting she chose to sit on the chair. She
said, "I would like you to explain what you said yester-
day about my being unable to cope with my feeling of
anger." She fell si!ent, waiting for me to reply.
B. I would feel that I had explained it to the best of
my ability. If the patient didn't understand what I said
yesterday, what is the good of my saying it again today?
One says it at the time when it is possible for the pa-
tient to know what one is talking about; the next day is
a different day, a different situation. Is there any
point in acceding to that request? On the other hand, is
it a good thing for you to make no reply?
P. I had the impression that she was talking about feel-
ing angry, but I couldn't see or feel any signs of anger
while she was with me. I think she wants to talk about
the past, while I want to talk about the present. She
wants to build a wall around herself with rational words
and remain inside that wall with her own feelings. I am
somewhat anxious because I cannot put my finger on what
she is actually feeling, and I haven't enough material to
form an opinion.
B. You are not obliged to talk if you feel you haven't
anything to say. Only you can know when you have enough
evidence to give an interpretation.
P. I felt constrained by her behaviour to understand her
feeling. This worried me.
B. This is typical of the way in which pressure can be
put upon you by the patient: a demand for premature or
precocious reassurance. But you have to be able to resist
these demands.
M. I wonder why we feel compelled to give interpreta-
tions. If we have only been seeing a patient for a short

210 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 24

time - as with this patient - we cannot give a profound

interpretation.
B. It is usually because we are afraid of losing the pa-
tient. At the beginning of an analyst's career he is
afraid that supervisors or training committees will count
it against him if he loses patients. I think that is non-
sense. If I were on a training committee - as I have been
- I would consider that those patients had certainly
taught the analyst something about what it feels like to
lose a patient.
With a new patient it is of course useful to fall
back on a certain amount of psycho-analytic theory when
there is very little else to go on; it is useful for
about three sessions. Giving interpretations after that
without the necessary information encourages the patient
to think that the analyst doesn't need evidence.
P.- The patient said she felt very sleepy and relaxed as
if after massage. She then found a comfortable position
in the chair and fell asleep. I thought she might sleep
until the end of the session and I would* then have to
wake her.
B. I have known a patient come forty-five minutes late
for a fifty-minute session. He lies on the couch and says
one or two sentences; I get up and say, "We've finished."
"That", says the patient, "was a very short session." I
suspect that the patient is not aware that time passes.
If a patient is wealthy enough he can use the time how-
ever he wishes; as well as plenty of money, he thinks he
has plenty of time. But how does he know that? We know
that we can die at any time - even before birth. So why
does this patient, at twenty-four, think that she has
plenty of time, and spends it sleeping?
There is another question: why does this patient
feel safe enough with you to go to sleep? If she were my
patient I would think, "She doesn't know who I am; she
has only seen me nine times; why does she think it safe
to go to sleep with a stranger like myself?" Either she
is deperately short of sleep, or she has a completely
mistaken idea of the safety of going to sleep in the pre-
sence of a stranger. One is bound to wonder, what is this
sleep? Is it a form of catalepsy? ...

P. The patient is thirty-two years old, a paediatrician,

and comes from the north of Brazil. His father is violent;
his mother was sickly and died when he was seven. His is
a big family. As is usual in the north, one of the child-
ren was chosen to study for the priesthood, and he was
that one. He left the church school in a state of revolt,
was able to pay to study medicine, and became a paedi-
atrician. While he was still living in the north he made
three suicide attempts: twice by poison and once by shoot-
ing. He came here two years ago, got married, and has a
baby daughter.
He first came to me three days before my vacation
was due to begin, having already cancelled an arranged
consultation. I had the impression that he was a]=�ra;j d of
coming, and during the interview I understood why. He
told me that when he was a little boy he returned home
after a vacation and found that his mother had died. As I
was due to go on vacation I think lie was afraid of estab-
lishing contact with me and then being left alone. He
wanted to be quite sure which day I would be back and
when I would be able to see him again.
B. Dont you think it is very s-1�gnificant that although
he has all the drugs of a pharmacopoeia at his disposal,
he can't poison himself properly,? When he has a gun, he
can't even shoot himself. So he s a bungler. What reason
would he have for supposing he would be any good at any-
thing? If there is something that anybody ought to be
able to do, it is to kill themselves - there isn't even
any opposition - there is nothing between him and the
person he wants to murder. So if this patient can't even
murder himself, what do you think he could do?
P. What he can do is to blackmail.
B. One wonders if he would be any good at that either.
On what grounds does he think that he can bring up a fam-
ily? Why does he think he can support a family? I am not
suggesting that you can say any of these things to the

212 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 25

patient, but I think we can consider them here. Do you
consider that such a person would make a good, capable,
potent husband? These questions raise a surprising prob-
lem: somehow he has persuaded somebody that he would make
a capable paediatrician.
P. Perhaps in the same way as someone thought he would
make a good priest, or as someone has persuaded him to
undergo psycho-analytic treatment.
B. Does he always do what he is told? As a boy he may
not have been in a position to refuse to go to school,
but he set himself up against the authorities in his re-
volt against entering the church. Although he could be
qualified as a priest, he knew he couldn't be one.
P. He apparently acquiesces in what is asked of him, but
internally he is full of hate for his family, for me, for
everyone including himself.
B. But he is still unable to kill himself. Even if he
couldn't kill his father and mother, one would still
think that, hating himself, he could kill himself - but
he couldn't.
P. He said, 1,Nevertheless, I need you. I would like to
be resting inside you. But I am afraid someone would come
inside me." When I pointed out that he wanted to identify
with me, he became frightened and said, "I love you.
B. I wonder why he thinks so. He has talked about two
fundamental things: hate and love. All other feelings are
really variations of love and hate; it is easy to learn
the words; if you can read, you can find them in any
dictionary. Do you think this man can either love or hate?
I daresay he can make the right noises - `I love you', or,
`I hate you', but do they mean anything? If he is such a
bad chemist and such a bad shot that he can't murder any-
body, why does he think he could love people?
M. Why did he want to see an analyst?
P. He was afraid of what effect his behaviour might have
on his wife and child. He wanted to be able to take care
of them and was afrai<1 of becoming incapable of working.
He was also afraid of killing himself and thereby lea'ving
his wife and child alone.
B. So what do you think he meant when he said he loved
you?
P. I don't know, but I felt touched by it.
B. The question of how you feel has to be settled by you
in your own analysis. The problem in the analytic session

SAo PAULO - 1978 213

is: what does the patient mean? It may be true that you
are touched, but by what? I might have been touched had I
been there, but I wasn't, and I am not. But you aren't
reading a story, and I can perfectly well understand that
you were touched. To you it is a practical experience; to
us it is a theoretical discussion ...

P. The patient sat on the couch and said in a strong

voice, "I've asked myself why I'm here today. There's a
soccer game this afternoon - Brazil are playing. I enjoy
soccer so much I'm sorry to miss it. I was sure that I
was going to get awfully bored here. I've been thinking
how bored I would be ever since I put the key in the car
to come here. And I'm still asking myself why I came." I
said, "I feel it is very difficult for you to admit that
you do something because you enjoy it. You arrived here
feeling certain that you would be bored. It seems to me
that behaving like this makes you feel happy. Perhaps you
are being masochistic."
B. The patient says he `asked himself', but he doesn't
say what he himself answered. Perhaps `he' and `himself'
are playing another game which is also very pleasurable -
a game in which he is cruel to himself and is also cruel-
ly treated. But neither of the two people in the room can
go to the football match, so both of them are cruelly
treated.
P. He said, "I don't understand when you talk about
things like masochism. I'm getting bored again. I've been
bored ever since I woke up this morning, and I'm so bored
now I feel like crying. " His tone of voice was one of a
mixture of anger and sadness. He went on, `There's a
story about a woman that I can't get out of my mind. For-
tunately she is so unbearable that I can't fall in love
with her."
B. What do you think the patient understands when he is
with you? Brazilian? Portuguese? Football?
P. Although he says he doesn't understand me, I have the
impression that he does. I agree with your reference to a
cruel game - I think that is what he was feeling.
B. Verbal language is very difficult to use for this
purpose. I need some way in which I could say, `under-
standing + absolute'. I mean by that, understanding, both
positive and negative. What is the patient absolutely

SAo PAULO - 1978 215

understanding? He is understanding psycho-analysis, but
he is not understanding football - he hasn't gone to it.
Having chosen to come to analysis - and also chosen not
to go to football - he is able to observe two people in
the room; he has a chance of seeing the game that is be-
ing played by the analyst and himself. Similarly, when
you choose to give an interpretation, you are choosing
what interpretation not to give. I could say that here in
this room I am choosing not to hear the traffic. It is
partly done by shutting the windows, but it is also done
by shutting my mind to those noises. I am also choosing
to close my eyes to things I can see in order to look at
something else. There is always this problem: what to
listen to, and what to be deaf and blind to.
I suggest that this patient is watching you and him-
self playing the game of psycho-analysis. All games are a
mixture, partly fun and partly serious. But this patient
is talking as if having an analysis is supposed to be
something you don't enjoy. How does he then choose to
come at all? Why has he not gone to the football match?
Is he afraid that that international match wouldn't be
fun?
You have to talk to this particular patient in a way
which he can understand. Therefore it is necessary to be
careful to choose words' that are as simple and unmistak-
able as possible. I think you have to be careful about
words like `paranoid', `schizoid', `masochistic', `sadist-
ic', even though they may be commonly used and your pa-
tient may be an educated man.
M. Do you think the patient is trying to control the an-
alyst?
B. Patients often do. There is nothing surprising or
particularly wrong about it, but they would be frightened
if they succeeded. I think this patient must be making
progress: he puts up with the frustration of not watching
a game - probably quite an exciting one, a nice way to
spend an afternoon - and chooses to spend it doing ana-
lysis.

P. The patient, a woman of twenty-four, was sent to me

for analysis two years ago by a psychiatrist after a de-
pressive breakdown for which she had received drugs. She
had almost finished a course in psychology and was pre-
paring to be married. She said that when she was twelve
years old she underwent psychotherapy but no progress was
possible because she sat and wept all the time. In the
session I am reporting she was silent for forty minutes,
wept all the time, and was apparently only aware of what
I said for the last ten minutes.
B. She fears that the conversation, the verbal inter-
course, between you and herself is going to be interrupt-
ed by a twelve-year-old who can drown it in tears. She is
also afraid that intercourse between her and her poten-
tial husband will be interrupted by a twelve-year-old -
or perhaps even by a one-year-old, or two-year-old.
What would I say to her? If I say, "You are feeling
depressed", she can compare that with what she knows she
is feeling. The advantage of that kind of interpretation
is that I am talking about what is happening now, not
about something that happened twelve years ago. One c�ould
say, "You are afraid that if you are depressed I will
have nothing more to do with you. You are afraid that I
will not go on with the analytical marriage." She, who
knows most about the whole matter, can then feel whether
I am right or wrong, and can help to keep me on the right
track; she has a chance of knowing that I am talking
about her self; and I have a chance of being able to
judge what her reaction is to what I have said. The ana-
lyst and analysand can know what is going on in the con-
sulting room, but neither of them can really know what
happened twelve years ago, or what happened in the psy-
chiatric hospital; that depends on memory which is very
deceptive. It is therefore useful to dismiss both one's
memories and one's desires so that the present is unob-
scured. It is a great advantage' for the analyst to feel

SliO PAULO - 1978 217

that he does not have to talk about anything for which he
has no evidence at the time.
P. Although she remains unchanged during the sessions,
her extra-analytic life has developed; she finished her
course, got married, and is doing well in a job.
B. In this psycho-analytic intercourse there is no way
for the patient to know what kind of thing is born as a
result. The anxiety is that it will be somebody who cries
for forty minutes without stopping, and the analyst or
husband will say, "I can't stand this any more - I'm off.
You can keep the baby - I'm going." If you were writing a
novel, the story could be: A and B meet; they love each
other; they marry; they give birth to a child, C; C cries
so much that the marriage breaks up.

11

P. The patient has been in analysis with me for almost

five years. This session took place four months ago. He
started by asking if I had read a certain psycho-analytic
book. He said, "It's a very good book and I noted several
interesting things. It's very good indeed, but I haven't
read it all because there are parts I'm not interested in.
There is a part which described a duel - this is very
interesting indeed because last Saturday I almost didn't
go out - I was so tired I had to rest. Do you understand?
I had to rest." I said, "You started on one idea, inter-
rupted it, and then went on telling me about something
else." He said, "Well, all right. Because I only read the
part that interested me - because I noticed that - and
because I rested on Saturday, I felt it was important." I
said, "I think we are having a duel here too." He said,
"Yes, but it's very difficult because what is happening
is as if there were several situations which are super-
imposed." I replied, " You feel that if you don't try to
tell me what is happening inside you, you will become
confused." After a short silence he said, "When you speak
I feel as if you had left a mark, like Z does." (Z is a
character who wears a black mask, rides a horse and
leaves his mark, Z.) I said, "He is a man who fights in-
justice." The patient laughed. "He cuts the braces of the
sergeant's trousers and leaves the enemy with no clothes.
That is why you make me feel irritated." I reminded him,
"But the person he attacks is also a friend of his." The
patient laughed again and said, "Oh yes, I quite agree -
the sergeant is a fool." I said, "For you a friend is a
fool - perhaps that is why you don't show friendly feel-
ings towards me here." Then he fell silent.
B. If the patient says, in effect, that he is going to
pick and choose what to listen to, one could say, "Well,
I hope you will be able to choose the right things. I can
see that I may be telling you some things that you don't
want to learn or to hear or to see. I can't do anything

a out t at - go a ea by ali means." I have sometimes

said to patients, ``If what you say is right, then I am
the wrong person to come to. You hate being with me here;
you hate what I say to you; you don't want to hear it.
That is no problem because, as you know, there are plenty
of other analysts. The door isn't locked, so you can walk
out if you like." We are trying to show patients something
we think would be good for them to know. So whatever they
say, we should not lose sight of that fact; we are there
to help. We don't agree with patients that we are there
to cause trouble or to make things difficult for them.
They are free to think wham they like, but we are also
free to be what we want to be. This patient seems to want
to force you to be the sort of person that would suit him.
You may want to be helpful, but there is a great differ-
ence between being helpful because you want to be, and
being helpful because you are forced to be.
M. I am not sure that the job of the analyst is to help
the patient.
B. The language is so ambiguous; so many different things
are understood by `help'. The oracle at Delphi was sup-
posed to have carved into the stone, `Know thyself'. So
the idea that it is useful and helpful to `know thyself'
is not new. In that sense we are trying to say, "I will
help you to know yourself. If you tell me something, I
will tell it back again to you in a way in which you may
be able to see yourself. I am trying to be a mirror which
doesn't tell you who I am - that is of no importance
whatsoever - but who you are. The only thing I can do to
help you is to reflect back to you who you are, so that
you can see in what I say to you an image of yourself. If
you don't want to know what you look like, I don't mind -
you need not look to me to reflect you; you can find a
different mirror." We would like, if we could, not to be
too turbulent a�mirror, because if we can remain steady,
then the patient can get a clearer image of who he is. If
we change too much, then it becomes a distorting image.
An actor has learnt how to put on make-up and the
clothes of different characters. If he comes to you for
analysis, he can see the image in you of any particular
character he chooses to assume. But when you start ana-
lysing such a person, you take off those clothes and he
feels naked. This patient has shown that you make him
feel naked. He is in effect saying, `I don't want you to

220 CLINICAL SEMINARS - 28

take off my mental clothes.' In fact he is asking you to
make a deal with him: he will s1iow you only what he wants
to show you if you will promise only to see what he wants
you to see. In a way it is one of the weaknesses of psy-
cho--analysis that analysands can only get the kind of an-
alysis they deserve. We can't force them to learn.
This patient seems to be making a condition: he will
come to you for analysis if he can get only the analysis
he wants. It is as well to bear in mind that the only
`cure' he will get is that kind.
FOUR PAPERS

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE

The entity known to members of the medical, psychiatric,

and psycho-analytic professions under the usually ad-
equate designation `borderline patient or `borderline
psychotic' is in no way familiar to laymen and workers in
other fields. It therefore seems possibly illuminating to
approach the conference's topic as it usually presents
itself to the medically unsophisticated and to work from
this to the medical definition.
We are all familiar with the term, `latency'. I want,
for the time being, to forget the customary usage because
it is easy to focus on latency rather than what is latent.
I find it useful to consider that,in latency, what is
latent is emotional turbulence. When the quiet, co-opera-
tive, nicely-behaved boy or girl becomes noisy, rebelli-
ous and troublesome, the emotional upheaval rapidly
ceases to be limited by the physiological boundaries of
what we call John, Jack, Jill or Jean in his or her corp-
oreal frame. Into this emotional field the psychiatric
worker enters. His problem can be seen in its hideous,
practical reality when he is called upon - usually too
late - to pronounce on the admirable (though to except-
ionally intuitive authorities not so admired), docile
child, and strongly suspects schizophrenia; or when he
must judge the depression (or admired liveliness) of a
manic-depressive psychosis. In choosing `emotional turbu-
lence' I include its counterpart and opposite.
Leonardo's Notebooks contain many drawings of water
swirling in turmoil, of hair in disorder. Milton, in
Paradise Lost, writes in his invocation to Light at the
start of the Third Book, `Won from the void and formless
infinite.' We can think of other works by painters, poets,
priests, which call up similar pictures or thoughts from
our own experience. It is not my intention to interpret,
psycho-analytically or otherwise, these instances of
human creation. I wish to recall them so that you may in-
voke similar images from your own scientific, artistic,

224 FOUR PAPERS

or religious inheritance - whatever is for you most evoca-
tive of a period of mental turbulence similar to that
with which psycho-analysts deal. I do not stress adolesc-
ence because, for most psycho-analysts, that conception
is too strong; latency is too weak. I would that analysts
recall periods of mental turmoil that have evoked the
most turbulence in themselves.
To clarify `too strong', I take the term `caesura'
from Freud's `Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety' (1926):
`There is much more continuity between intra-uterine life
and earliest infancy `than the impressive caesura of the
act of birth would have us believe.' Freud's summary can
itself be described as one in which the `impressive
caesura' is too impressive to allow us to suppose that
the foetus might have a proto-mind and personality, or
could develop its proto-mind into a mind after birth.
Repression, said Freud, is not an event that takes
place once; the caesura of birth, like the caesura of
death, is impressive because it apparently takes place
only once. It is hard to observe that repression is a
kind of death. Breakdown, neurosis, psychosis may, in
their turbulence, be difficult to discern, but they may
be a birth inseparable from repression and death. In ana-
lysis we often have reason to think that we cannot pen-
etrate the impressive caesura of resistance or its vari-
eties.
Can any growth take place without repression? Is
progress inseparable from repression of the previous
state? Does any thought occur without resistance to the
thoughts not selected? Is there any feeling or idea that
is not subject to resistance as an inevitable part of
choice or chance? Is anything separable from anything
else in the way that one word can be separated from an-
other, or one physical body from another?
The problems of decision are reactivated as emotion-
al turbulence, and as a cause of,or precipitation from it.
On occasions when the turbulence is great enough, it is
dramatic, as at birth, death, adolescence, or the onset
of senility. Decisions are evolved in the community, fam-
ily, group and individual; people with a psycho-analytic
vertex have committed themselves to thought and discus-
sion. The decision, and the discussion of it, entails a
considerable preceding process of maturation. A patient,
whether a child or not, requires some degree of precedent

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE 225

experience. There are limits, even if we do not know what
they are, beyond which the analysand is too young or too
senile, too retarded or too precocious. We consider only
what lies between these somewhat shadowy precincts - the
limits of wavelength that bind the polyspectral `area'.
There must be choice; this entails being tolerant
enough to view the emotional turmoil. The turmoil observ-
ed has to be split - artificially, verbally. Some indi-
viduals appear unable to make these verbal splits without
feeling that they have in fact physically split. The next
element in choice depends on chance, that is on some
force other than the conscious human being who chooses.
The matters dictated by chance cannot be discussed by us
in advance because this is an open-ended problem con-
fronting any group, any individual, any society. In ana-
lysis it is possible to discuss what is going on between
the two people who are participating: the analysand can
keep the analyst informed, and the analyst can do his
best to interpret the information made available to him.
The patient, who is usually in a state of turmoil, has
first to decide what he will choose to talk about. Pa-
tients frequently say, "I can't think of anything to talk
about today", or, "I have an awful lot to talk about, but
don't really want to talk about any of it." These state-
ments have their counterpart in a group where the members
seem uncertain what to discuss. Sometimes one particular
person is anxious to put forward his view; at other times
nobody wants to say what he is thinking about, and the
group becomes duller and duller, less and less communicat-
ive. The person leading the group must then consider what
he should do with the situation which is unknown to him
but which the chance of that particular session presents
to his inspection. Here again there is chance, namely,
events discernible in the turbulence. The individual in
analysis may not be communicative, but he is nevertheless
upset. It is wise for the analyst to assume that people
do not spend time and money on analysis unless they are
disturbed - no matter how smooth, straightforward, and
apparently simple the view they present for the analyst's
inspection. The same applies to the group; the individual
members certainly have problems. But a group inspection
provides a chance to see what interaction there is be-
tween the emotional situation that is apparently re-
stricted to the individual, and the way it spills over

226 FOUR PAPERS

and affects other group members.
One disadvantage of the group situation is that see-
ing, say, six or ten people at the same time leads one to
suppose that there are six or ten discrete personalities
present. In other words, the distinct physiology of the
participants is so dominant that one is liable to assume
that the personality is similarly bounded by physical
appearance. The `dramatic' effect of having the personal-
ities present makes one suppose that the important thing
is what any individual participant is saying or doing -
another caesura. A similar situation exists with the indi-
vidual who, it is assumed, has no problems dating from
before birth - this dramatic event appears to present a
caesura which cannot be penetrated.
In the Greek city state, where the numbers were
small, democracy could operate; every individual was able
to know sensibly what was going on. The people could col-
lect in a forum and each Individual could exercise his
senses on material presented for his inspection. In small
groups it is possible to be available to the forces that
are operative; the reactions of the group can be seen. In
addition to paying attention to what is actually said, we
can be open to whatever else is going on - tones of voice,
smiles, gestures, silences, and overt signals from one
person to another. A wide spectrum of events is thus open
to our inspection; there is a turmoil of communications.
But, however chaotic the situation, however psychotic or
neurotic the phenomena seem to be, the analyst must be
sufficiently tolerant of them to be able to observe what
is going on. He is then faced with the problem of what,
if anything, he proposes to say - saying something in-
volves choice and the events therefore have to be ordered.
What takes place is an artificial splitting of the total
situation into various elements, an ordering of these ele-
ments, and a reintegration to bring these perceptions to-
gether again.
The expectation of the group can be so intense that
it can hardly wait to hear what is going to be said. This
expectation stimulates a great many feelings which can be
so intense that the group becomes resistant to any emo-
tion and falls silent. Expectation has been overaroused
(including expectation of disappointment or disillusion-
ment); a barrier (resistance, prohibition, caesura) is
erected to protect the solution of the previous problem,

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE 227

to separate the present from the past, the future from
the present. This barrier can become impenetrable to fur-
ther development, but on the other hand, the group can
develop if the caesura is an illuminating idea.
This situation is inadequately described by terms
like `caesura', `resistance', or `cure'. A polyvalent
word is needed to bring together the actual elements, or
a representative number of them, involved in one caesura.
What I am describing signals the cessation of an epoch;
the patient feels `cured1 by an interpretation (or mis-
interpretation), or sees some point which hitherto has
been obscure. The tendency is for the patient to want to
say, if he can verbalize it at all, "That settles it now.
I don't want it to be unsettled." Having achieved illu-
mination, he does not want any more. This is more observ-
able in a group when it is presented with an idea which
it has not had before. If the members see the point, this
stimulates closure, converting the open-ended problem
into a closed solution, settled once and for all. But
there is no solution once and for all; each solution
opens another universe. The situation, except for that
point where a breakthrough in analysis has occurred, is
wide open again - a vast, open-ended problem. The indi-
vidual is now free to learn more, but unless he wishes to
do so, it cannot from his point of view be regarded as a
satisfactory `cure'.
To turn to a few questions: without any suspicion of
Socratic irony, I would make it clear that they are ser-
ious ones. And although I know they are simple questions,
I am aware that the answers may be unexpectedly difficult.
As an example of the simple answer to a question, I
offer a joke illustrated in Punch magazine. A small boy
draws an adult's attention to a lark singing in the sky.
He states, "Hi, mister, there's a sparrer up there an' `e
can't get up an' `e can't get down an' 1e ain't `arf
`ollerin'." This discovery made by a small boy gives in-
formation which might otherwise escape attention.
Another anecdote taken from the same source: a small
boy speaking to his father says, `What's that, Daddy?"
The answer: "A cow." "Why is it a cow, Daddy?" Answer:
"Because his Mummy and Daddy were cows." "Why were they
cows, Daddy?" These three simple questions, asked one
after another, take one directly into realms of complex-
ity which include problems still unsolved. This is true

228 FOUR PAPERS

not only of the questions but also of the answers, because
like all really good answers, they stimulate still more
questions. Any good solution to a problem causes the sub-
ject illuminated to reveal further questions and further
problems.
A simple question: when is a human being born? Indi-
viduals may give me an answer in the particular instance
of their own birth. I would then ask: when was your per-
sonality born? When did you first see light? When did
your optic pits become capable of seeing light? Were your
optic pits susceptible to pressure, giving the impression
of light adequate in the sense of stimulating the sensa-
tion of sight, inadequate in the sense that what you `saw'
was not what is called adult or mature sight? I could ask
a similar question about the auditory pits.
Some more questions and answers: what are you doing'?
Thinking. How do you know that you are thinking? My
phrenes are going up and down. That answer is plausible;
anybody can see that when a person begins to breathe
heavily, in and out, it is reasonable to suppose that
that state is caused by the diaphragm, as we call it, or
phrenes, as the Homeric Greeks called it. Like the lark,
it has an obtrusive characteristic; the answer is com-
prehensible, it would seem to be correct. How does some-
body think? Their phrenes go up and down. It is a good
answer in this respect: it stimulates still further quest-
ions. In the time of Democritus of Abdera people began to
suspect that the inert and somewhat useless mass of stuff
they carried about in their skulls - the brain - was con-
nected with thinking; thinking might be a function of
that material which seemed to terminate the parasympath-
etic, sympathetic, and central nervous systems.
During the Second World War I encountered the Matrix
Test, imposed on members of the British army. Men were
expected to choose one pattern out of several to complete
a page of incomplete patterns. The number of correct ans-
wers was matched against the number of failed answers,
and it was thereby supposed that you had a rough-and-
ready intelligence test. There were complications. One
man, for example, was certain that the tests could not be
so ludicrously simple, azid proceeded to measure the pat-
terns offered and the vacant spaces. Consequently, his
score was zero. Theoretically this would mean that he had
a very low intelligence. If this man's personality is

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE 229

assessed psychiatrically, the problem becomes more com-
plex. He may not be stupid, but why is he so suspicious?
Why can he not believe that a simple answer is the cor-
rect one?
Ignorance is filled with knowledge; there are numer-
ous answers to the questions that arise if it is supposed
that the human animal has a mind. Why is it a cow, Daddy?
And why is Daddy or Mummy not a cow? As a psycho-analyst
I could fall back on articles by Melanie Klein, Abraham,
and others too numerous to mention. But I will first fall
back on a simple answer. People do not often deliberately
and consciously withhold information when they are expect-
ed to provide it. That would be a conscious example of
presenting the inquirer with a blank space. There are,
however, certain failures to answer which Freud considers
1to be unconsciously withheld - that is, they are not de-
liberate attempts at falsification, deception, and eva-
sion. There are other occasions when a person exhibits
doubt, or presents an answer that seems to be unsatisfact-
ory. Freud calls this false memory, intended to fill the
space left empty by the amnesia. This suggestion is fruit-
ful; it leads to more questions and inquiries which I
would extend still further. If it is true that the human
being, Ilke nature, abhors a vacuum, cannot tolerate
empty space, then he will try to fill it by finding some-
thing to go into that space presented by his ignorance.
The intolerance of frustration, the dislike of being
ignorant, the dislike of having a space which is not
filled,can stimulate a precocious and premature desire to
fill the space. One should therefore always consider that
our theories, including the whole of psycho-analysis,
psychiatry, medicine, are a kind of space-filling elabor-
ation not in essence dissimilar to the belief that the
lark in the sky is "a sparrer that can't get up and can't
get down and ain't `arf `ollerin'." In other words, the
practising analyst has to decide whether he is promulgat-
ing a theory, or a space-filler indistinguishable from a
paramnesia.
Anybody who reminds the human animal that it knows
very little is likely to be unpopular. Human beings clam-
our for some kind of authoritative statement to take the
place of both ignorance and the exercise of curiosity;
they hope, in that way, to put a stop to disagreeable
feelings of ignorance and the repetition of the questions.

230 FOUR PAPERS

The repeated questions may even be what is known as re-
petition compulsion. But repetition compulsion may in
fact be a spark of human curiosity which has hitherto
failed to be extinguished by any authoritative statements
from whatever source.
We are familiar with being expected to provide the
answers to questions. In examinations, as candidates, we
are invited to provide answers to the questions asked,
and our examiners are usually, and plausibly, thought to
be entitled to fail us if we do not know those answers.
But here again, one wonders whether this is a kind of dis-
guise - anger at being frustrated, at being unable to be
presented with a plausible answer to the question we ask
and are asked by other people. We identify both with
those who ask questions, and with those who are supposed
to know the answers. I mentioned that I did not wish to
be suspected of Socratic irony, not least because Socrates
came to an unfortunate end - a result of asking questions.
It is possible that the same danger will arise if our
answers make open-ended what appears to be closed.
In view of the advances made by the human monkey who
has become powerful enough to blow himself off the face
of the earth, the situation is urgent. It is a race be-
tween his capacity for inhibiting knowledge - his own and
other people's - and his capacity for advancing his abil-
ity to make `tricks'. Walt Whitman wrote, `I am the
teacher of athletes. He who spreads a wider chest than my
own proves but the width of my own. He best honors my
style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.' Stu-
dents may learn today not only through what they are
taught by their universities, but also through themselves.
I should be sorry to give the impression that be-
cause I am not filled with panic I therefore tell a harm-
less bedtime story. I would, without alarm, draw atten-
tion to a situation which is now one of urgency. It is `a
question of whether the paramnesias, the answers that are
immediately comprehensible, that can be used to fill up
the space of our ignorance, mislead us into extreme dan-
ger; whether the powers of the human mind match its de-
structiveness. So far the human being has survived and
preserved a capacity for growth.
The gifted person may be able to draw and thus com-
municate visual images to others, to those with less cap-
acity to intuit. Leonardo's drawings of hair and water

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE 231

give a good idea of what turbulence looks like. Mental
turbulence, whether one's own or that of the community in
which one lives, is much more difficult to depict; its
existence and significance cannot be understood if the
turbulence is not observed. Today almost any newspaper
displays signs of turbulence; it exists in areas which
have hitherto been regarded as civilized. If turbulence
is demonstrated, the reply is likely to be, "What about
it? We all know this." That is an example of the caesura;
it is hard to penetrate what we `all know' and to suggest
that there may be something that has not yet emerged from
the turbulence, just as there may be something - we do
not know what - that led to the turbulence. Are we then
to inhibit the turbulence? Or are we to investigate it?
From a certain point of view it would seem simple to
answer that question. Universities and learned societies
consider it wise to investigate, to exercise curiosity on
the observed turbulence (the problem) and the theory be-
lieved to be a satisfactory explanation of the problem.
Curiosity has itself to be under scrutiny while being ex-
ercised; we must not be directed toward understanding
other problems by inhibiting observation of our own curi-
osity.
In a group with a diversity of opinions and views
available, a diversity of characters we can observe and
be observed by, what procedure should we adopt? All the
members of the group represent different states of mind;
each state of mind may be seen as an integer, an integ-
rated whole, as something we might describe as human
nature, human mentality, or human character. We could in-
vestigate it more easily by `splitting' these different
`vertices' into states of mind corresponding to the an-
atomical structures of the individual human beings. But
is personality bound by the physiology of the person, or
is there an integration corresponding with the statement,
vox populi, vox dei? If there is a cultural character-
istic, it might express itself by favouring certain
thoughts and disfavouring others. A caesura, difficult to
p,enetrate, is created. (It is curious that this term,
caesura', was misprinted in the original paper by Freud
as `censure', so that it was even then - accidentally of
course - unconsciously described as a censor, an inhib-
ition.)
Recently the primitive artist appears to have pene-
trated the caesura between cultivated and primitive; the

232 FOUR PAPERS

cultivated artist seems prepared to learn, or allow him-
self to be aware of, the elements the primitive artist
wishes to convey. Rimbaud was one of the early articulate
people who listened to the inarticulate; Baudelaire,
Shakespeare, and Homer formulated the states of mind of
the people among whom they lived, and were able to pene-
trate states of mind which did not then exist - ours.
Such persons find some method by which what they have to
say is made available to those to whom they wish to say
it. In the process of making it acceptable, what they
have to say may be softened, made so tolerable and so
bearable that its substance is lost to sight. Only the
beauty of the work of art is seen: the Odyssey- Iliad9
or Aeneid are mere poems. What lies behind the beautiful
formulation, drawing, painting, music; is lost; only the
beauty remains. It appears almost accidental if something
escapes from the prevalent force of the inhibitory author-
ity. Instead of listening to music, someone listens to
the radio interferences; there is a vast breakthrough of
listening with more powerful instruments focusing on the
interference; radio astronomy is born. Whether anybody
wants to hear what they might hear thanks to increased
powers of understanding, is an open question. The ap-
proach usually made by the combined wisdom of culture, the
godlike omnipotence of the people, is to dismiss the new-
ly discovered formulation as a construction - and then to
erect a monument which it is hoped wall be sufficiently
weighty to keep the underlying corpse buried. The other
procedure is equally ef ficacious - the deification or
glorification of the person or thing disturbing the
placid surface by saying, "Yes, you are a god just like
us", and inviting the individual to join the Establish-
ment. There are thus two means available to deal with the
newborn idea or discovery, namely to bury it or to ideal-
ize it; to say the person is a genius - and therefore be-
yond us - or to say the person is crazy - and therefore
beyond us. ( The latter is safer locked in a mental hosp-
ital from which the `sanity' of the people cannot be pen-
etrated.) Both mechanisms are discernible - but only at a
distance. "These things happen - but not here. My col-
leagues and I don't behave like that." It is difficult to
see that `my colleagues and I' behave just like that. I
can scrutinize myself as I am always available, whether
awake of asleep; it is both difficult and unpleasant.

EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE 233

The escape from self-knowledge is easy and can be
extremely violent - by self-murder. The group or society
can, similarly, solve all its problems by killing another
group or society or culture.These murderous impulses have
so far not been adequate because the murderer is penetra-
ted by the thing he murders, or the society is penetrated
by the culture it is trying to destroy; the religion be-
comes impregnated with the religion whose place it is at-
tempting to take.

ON A QUOTATION FROM FREUD

`There is much more continuity between intra-uterine life

than the impressive caesura of the act of birth would have
us believe.' I don't know if I am misinterpreting this
quotation, but I think it is not inappropriate that Freud
says, `the impressive caesura ... would have us believe',
as if it were the caesura that governed us. This reminds
me of the early Homeric description from which one gets
the impression that the phrenes is really the origin of
human thoughts and ideas - a very reasonable scientific
conclusion because it is obvious that when a person ex-
presses himself the diaphragm goes up and down. The dia-
phragm, the caesura, is the important thing; that is the
source of the thinking.
Picasso painted a picture on a piece of glass so
that it could be seen on both sides. I suggest that the
same thing can be said of the caesura: it depends which
way you look at it, which way you are travelling. Psycho-
somatic disorders, or soma-psychotic - take your choice -
the picture should be recognizably the same whether you
look at it from the psychosomatic position, or from the
soma-psychotic position.
I want you to join me and try to achieve the same
depths of ignorance I have managed to reach, to get back
to a frame of mind which as nearly as possible is denuded
of preconceptions, theories, and so forth. What I am ask-
ing is really something of a mental acrobatic feat. I can
well appreciate that; it is not easy for people well-
versed in anatomy, physiology, psycho-analysis and psy-
chiatry to get back to a state of primary ignorance.
I want to say something which sounds just like say-
ing something for the sake of saying it; and perhaps it
is. `Bloody cunt'. `Bloody vagina'. The first phrase is,
I suspect, part of a universal language. It is not sexual;
it is not physiological or anatomical, not medical; it is
something quite different. But `bloody vagina' might be
the sort of thing about which doctors talk, probably

ON A QUOTATION FROM FREUD 235

obstetricians or gynaecologists. What about the other one?
I am not going to try to produce the answer, not be-
cause I hope that the cure is ignorance, but temporarily,
at any rate, I shall treat the answer as being a kind of
disease of the question. (Doctor Andre' Green once drew my
attention to the quotation from Maurice Blanchot, `La
re'ponse est le malheur de la question.') I want to draw
attention to the sounds - bloody cunt. As I say, `cunt'
is not an anatomical or physiological phrase. What it is
I don't know. Indeed, I throw it open to you, because if
you investigate this question, you may find what this
very primitive and archaic language is. `Bloody' does not
have much to do with the white cells, red cells, or what-
ever. It is, in fact, an abbreviated way of saying, `By
Our Lady'. So it is really part and parcel of what in
more sophisticated terms we think of as being sacred.
This is very peculiar - `cunt',and this sacred term
mixed up with it. The sacred aspect of it would probably
be much more meaningful to people familiar with the Roman
Catholic religion. But I think one could find a similar
sacred element without it necessarily having a Christian
version. This is simply by way of introduction, to try to
draw attention to the actual sounds of `bloody cunt' and
whatever its counterparts are. I do not, for example,
know to what extent this phrase could be translated or
recognized, shall we say, in Chinese or in Russian. The
Chinese, at any rate, seem to be able to detect a differ-
ence in muscular movements of the face which are not the
same among Russians as they are among themselves. The ad-
vantage of a conference of this kind is that so many dif-
ferent kinds of experience can be brought to bear on
these matters.
The queer thing about this `language' is that it
seems to have an archaic quality which nourishes the more
intellectual and less lively aspects of one's character-
istic thinking, although without emerging to a point
where one could verbalize it. A person, for example, who
is very angry with somebody else might find that his
intellectual and angry expression is nourished by these
archaic factors which he cannot express but which do make
the angry expression much more alive if he calls the
other person a `bloody cunt'. It will almost certainly
lead to a great deal of turmoil of one kind or another.
Leonardo, in his Notebooks, has a great many draw-

236 FOUR PAPERS

ings of water and hair. This seems to me to be an artist-
ic delineation of this same turmoil. When we disperse to
the loneliness of our respective consulting rooms and
offices, I suggest that what is there is turmoil. It may
appear in a form revealed in verbal expression; it may
appear in a form that would seem more appropriately
called `latency phase'. Palinurus is described, at the
end of the fifth book of the Aeneid, as saying that
Somnus must think he is very inexperienced if he can be
led off course while steering his fleet on the calm and
beautiful surface of the Mediterranean. This is something
we should not forget; we should not be misled by the
superficial and beautiful calm which pervades our various
consulting rooms and institutions.
I would like now to indulge in some scientific fic-
tions. I don't mean by that that I am not taking the
problem seriously, but I know I shall never get anywhere
nearer to a scientific statement. It seems to me that
from a very early stage the relation between the germ-
plasm and its environment operates. I don't see why it
should not leave some kind of trace, even after the `im-
pressive caesura of birth'. After all, if anatomists can
say that they detect a vestigial tail, if surgeons like-
wise can say that they detect tumours which derive from
the branchial cleft, then why should there not be what we
would call mental vestiges, or archaic elements, which
are operative in a way that is alarming and disturbing
because it breaks through the beautiful, calm surface we
ordinarily think of as rational, sane behaviour?
A baby, quite satisfactorily born, cried and yelled
at birth and could not be quieted; the more the mother
soothed the child, the more it yelled. It became imposs-
ible for the mother to sleep because of this apparently
indefatigable yelling. I suggest that this was a very
late event in the story, hidden only because of the `im-
pressive caesura of birth'.
I don't suppose there will ever be any chance of
knowing, so to speak, what a foetus thinks, but - to go
on with my scientific fiction - I suggest that there is
no reason why it shouldn't feel. I think it would be
quite useful to consider that some stages of fear, of in-
tense fear, are more easily visualized or imagined by us
if we think of them as thalamic fear, or as some sort of
glandular manifestation such as something to do with the

ON A QUOTATION FROM FREUD 237

adrenals, or what later on turn out to be the genital
structures. You can look at this as you like, say as mem-
ory traces, but these same memory traces can also be con-
sidered as a shadow which the future casts before. I
could say that this meeting itself can be regarded as an
expression, as a revision of such experience and know-
ledge as we have managed to pick up in the course of our
lifetime, but it can also be regarded as showing the
shadow of a future we don't know any more than we know
the past, a shadow which it projects or casts before.
The caesura that would have us believe; the future that
would have us believe; or the past that would have us
believe - it depends on which direction you are travel-
ling in, and what you see.
It seems to me that there are certain premature and
precocious developments that are too premature and too
precocious to be tolerable. Therefore, the foetus, the id,
does its best to sever that connection. At a later stage
the individual can shut himself up. This happened with a
man of thirty-odd years who drew the curtains of his room
and as far as possible insulated himself from the uni-
verse in which he found himself. He objected to that uni-
verse, and at the beginning of the analysis objected to
me sufficiently to bring his Smith and Wesson revolver
to the sessions; he laid it ostentatiously by his side so
as to have available the means of putting a stop to the
interpretations. Luckily, or unluckily, having been an
instructor in small arms, I paid a great deal of atten-
tion to that Smith and Wesson. It did rather distract me
from paying attention to what the patient was saying, and
I think the patient was similarly saved from having to
pay too much attention to what I was saying.
Another patient was extremely sensitive to sight, so
sensitive that it was difficult for him to wear ordinary
clothes because their colours were intolerable. Another
patient found it intolerable to listen to the Philharmonia
Orchestra at a time when it was one of the supreme orches-
tras, because, according to him - and I believed him -
the clarinetist played sharp; the problem then became how
to shut it out.
A patient of this kind is very often intelligent,
sometimes wise. I remember one poor wretch who had com-
mitted a murder, but his sentence was limited because it
was discovered that he was of very low intelligence. Un-

238 FOUR PAPERS

fortunately for him, by the time he saw me, his intelli-
gence was not low enough to be less than that required by
the British Western Command which was anxious to punish
him if he did not look after his rifle and bring it on
parade. He said to me, "Sir, I am not fit to bear arms. I
have been allowed out of gaol because they said I could
be free if I would serve my country." Very difficult to
do, very difficult, especially if the country insists on
giving him a lethal weapon which he knows he is not cap-
able of carrying.
To continue with my science fiction, one cannot very
well say this about a foetus, but I can imagine a situa-
tion in which, due to variations in pressure of the amni-
otic fluid, it could see light which might be intolerably
bright, and hear sounds which might be intolerably loud.
Is a foetus at full-term a character and personality, or
not? When is that character or personality born? And when
does that character or personality forget, get rid of,
dispense with all that it has picked up in the course of
existence in a liquid medium? In this liquid medium it
seems to be possible, for certain animals at any rate, to
achieve a kind of long-distance perception by being cap-
able of smelling things; dogfish and mackerel congregate
around some piece of decaying matter.
There appears to be quite an impressive change when
this foetus changes to a gaseous medium, air, which is
not liquid but is fluid. Therefore, once again there are
oscillations and wave senses. I certainly do not see why
there should not be a carry-over of extremely primitive
sensitiveness; the foetus could be a healthy or sane ob-
ject, and yet have been subjected to pressures communi-
cated long before we would think there was such a thing
as a personality, and long after it.
When I was a medical student, a small black cat used
to appear at very regular hours in the forecourt of the
hospital. It would `do its stuff', cover it up neatly,
and walk off. It was known as Melanie Klein - Melanie,
because it was black; Klein, because it was little; and
Melanie Klein, because it had no inhibitions. I have a
feeling that this is repeated, as it were, on a rather
different level of the heliacal progress of the human
mind - borrowiiig from the molecular distribution of the
DNA molecule. We come back to these same things, but on a
somewhat different level. I think we are trying to get
back onto the different levels without losing the vital
contribution made by these archaisms.
 EVIDENCE

The following free association was made to me by a patient

in analysis. "I remember my parents being at the top of a
Y-shaped stair and I was there at t1ie bottom. . .and `
That was all; no further associations; finish. I waited,
and during this time I, as usual, had plenty of free
associations of my own (which .1 keep to myself because I
am supposed to be the analyst). It occurred to me that
this was very like a verbal description of a visual image,
simply a Y-shape. The thing that struck me straight away
about a statement that was so brief, so succinct, and
stopped short at that point, was that it must have a lot
of meaning that was not visible to me; What did in fact
become visible to me I could describe by writing `Y'.
Then it occurred to me that it would be more comprehens-
ible if it was spelled, `why-shaped stare'. The only
trouble was that I could not see how I could say this to
the patient in a way which would have any meaning, nor
could I produce any evidence whatsoever for it - except-
ing that this was the kind of image that it called up in
my mind. So I said nothing. After a while the patient
went on, and I started producing what seemed to me to be
fairly plausible psycho-analytic interpretations.
Thinking about this later, I imagined a Y-shape
which, when pushed in at the intersection of the three
lines, would make a cone or a funnel. On the other hand,
if it was pulled out at the intersection, then it would
make a cone shape sticking out or, if you like7 a breast
shape. In fact it was an evocative free association on
the part of the patient as far as I was concerned, but I
was still lost because I had no idea of what I could say
that would reveal an interpretation, and would also be
comprehensible to the patient. In cther words, could I
possibly be perspi~acious and perspicuous?$��
In the next ses'sion I seemed to be killing time with
conventionally acceptable interpretations. Then I thought
I would launch out on what I have been saying here. "I

240 FOUR PAPERS

suggest that in addition to the ordinary meaning of what
you have told me - and I am perfectly sure that what you
said means exactly what you meant - it is also a kind of
visual pun." And then I gave him the interpretation. He
said, "Yes, that's right. But you've been a very long
time about it."
Now the question is, what was the evidence that the
patient was giving me, and what was the evidence that I
saw, or thought I saw, for the interpretation? It is all
very well for the patient to say, "Yes, that's right." I
believe him. But I do not know why he thought it was
right, or why it was right. In fact I don't know what the
evidence is for that statement.
Freud, in his obituary notice of Charcot, lays great
stress on, and obviously was enormously impressed by,
Charcot's idea of going on staring at an unknown situa-
tion until a pattern begins to emerge and can then be
interpreted. Charcot was, of course, talking about phys-
ical medicine, surgery and neurology. When it comes to
psycho-analysis it is another matter; conventionally at
any rate, we are not supposed to use our senses in phys-
ical contact with the patient. But we can attach enormous
importance to the patient's presence - if he turns up.
The problem, in a sense, is that of trying to make it
worth while for the patient to come again another day. In
theory there is no difficulty whatsoever; in practice it
is very difficult indeed. So I think it is a matter of
some congratulation if one retains the patient's curio-
sity or interest enough for him to come again.
There is still, however, this problem: what are we
to say to people who are not psycho-analysts, or have not
had psycho-analytic training, or, for that matter, if
they have? So much of what we learn between the time we
are born and the present is crudely perceptible through
our senses; whatever else we learn is difficult to de-
scribe. Had I been able to verbalize it, I could have
said what the evidence was for my supposing that this
statement the patient made was a pun, but I still do not
know what language to use if I am trying to communicate
with somebody `not me .
Leaving that subject for a moment, I would remind
you of Freud's statement, `There is much more continuity
between intra-uterine life and earliest infancy that the
impressive caesura of the act of birth would have us be-

EVIDENCE 241
lieve.' He did not follow that up very far; on the whole
he seemed to dismiss it in the way that he says, `I
learned to restrain my speculative tendencies and to
follow the forgotten advice of my master Charcot, to look
at the same things again and again until they themselves
began to speak.' That also seems to me to be very import-
ant; I have thought of it in terms of trying to dismiss
memory and desire - memory as being a past tense; desire,
a future tense. In other words, trying to start a session
with as nearly blank a mind as one can get - which is not
altogether very near because one has such an enormous
past history between the time that one is born and the
present day; such an extraordinary amount has been learn-
ed since becoming an inhabitant of a gaseous medium, the
air. How much has been forgotten I do not know; indeed
lone of the revolutionary and disturbing theories in
psycho-analysis is that it is questionable whether any-
thing is forgotten in the sense of really disappearing.
The important point about Melanie Klein's idea that at a
very early stage the infant has a phantasy that it is
able to split off what it does not like and evacuate it,
is that it is an omnipotent phantasy; nothing happens,
the situation remains unchanged, the personality remains
unchanged. However, there is now an added layer of this
phantastic belief that something has been got rid of. But
suppose that it is not forgotten, that it simply becomes
part and parcel of an archaic mentality, unconscious
thought - in spite of the contradiction in terms - which
is extremely active.
A surgeon is relatively lucky: he can say, "I think
we could operate to relieve this pain that you are suffer-
ing in your back", because he has decided - although he
doesn't say so - that the patient has a tumour in the
form of a vestigial tail. Or, "Yes, we can operate on you."
Again, he does not say why, but believes that the patient
has a branchial cleft tumour. A surgeon would not be very
popular if he behaved or talked as if he thought that the
patient was a monkey or a fish or an amphibian. So it is
not going to be popular if we psycho-analysts behave as
if we think that the person of forty or fifty or sixty
shows vestiges of states of mind that he thought he got
rid of years ago. He prides himself on being grown up and
on not believing that sort of psycho-analytic rubbish.
So we are back again to this same old problem: what

242 FOUR PAPERS

are we to say? How are we to communicate to a patient?
The surgeon can usually fall back on well-cared for
instruments that have been properly preserved and are al-
ready available in aseptic conditions. What we have to
use is articulate speech; the instruments with which we
are to carry out our surgery are a sort of debased cur-
rency, words which are worn absolutely smooth till they
are meaningless - terms like `sex', `fear', `hostility'
and so on. It is not surprising, therefore, that the pa-
tient thinks the analyst is talking the usual nonsense
when we have to use words which are so debased - and
which are pretty sure to get still more debased in the
future. The alternative to that is to use technical
terms, but that is just as bad because they are indistin-
guishable from jargon, just noises, `learne"d' nonsense.
For this reason I think that each analyst has to go
through the discipline - which cannot be provided for him
by any training course that I know of - of forging his
own language and keeping the words that he uses in good
working order. I do not. think it has to be a particularly
profound vocabulary, or particularly broad - it may be
quite a narrow one - but it is very important that it
should be the one that he chooses for himself. Nobody can
tell you how you are to live your life, or how you are
to think, or what language you are to speak. Therefore it
is absolutely essential that the individual analyst
should forge for himself the language which he knows,
which he knows how to use, and the value of which he
knows - knows so well that he can detect, when he gives
an interpretation and the analysand repeats it with a
slight change of intonation or emphasis, that although it
sounds as if it is a repetition, in fact it is not. This
is where the practice of analysis is so appallingly dif-
ficult: if you say nothing, you leave the patient to as-
sume that he has correctly reported what you have just
said to him; if you do draw his attention to the differ-
ence, you leave yourself open to the accusation that you
are being pedantic and fussy, complaining about what he
has said when he really repeated exactly what you said to
him. You can point out, "You can't have repeated exactly
what I said to you because this is about one and a half
minutes later; time has been passing since I spoke to you,
so what may sound just like what I said, in fact cannot
be. You either understood what I meant - in which case

EVIDENCE 243
there is nothing further to be said about the matter;
either it was correct or it wasn't - or you are now say-
ing something else."
If we attach so much importance to the caesura of
lbirth, then we have to consider what language the full-
term foetus speaks or understands. We are not so far
called upon to analyse full-term foetuses, but we are
expected to analyse grown-up children. People come to us,
probably through despair because they do not in fact
think that much can be done for them, but they are in a
state of turmoil. This state of turmoil is well illus-
trated by Leonardo in his drawings of hair and turbulent
water, but it is not really made clear by him, nor even
by Shakespeare. i think it is made clear by Francis Bacon
who wrote in Novum Organum, `There are two ways, and can
only be two, of seeking and finding truth. The one, from
senses and particulars, takes a flight to the most gen-
eral axioms, and from these principles and their truths,
settled once for all, invents and judges of intermediate
axioms. The other method collects axioms from senses and
particulars, ascending continuously and by degrees, so
that in the end it arrives at the more general axioms;
this latter way is the true one, but hitherto untried.'
To exaggerate the difference between Leonardo,Shakespeare
and other artists, and what Francis Bacon is.driving at
in his statement here, I could resort to Kant's statement,
`Intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without
intuition are empty.'
Our problem is, how are we to introduce the intui-
tions to the concepts, and the concepts to the intuitions?
Putting it another way, how are we to state, in conscious
rational speech, something which can be recognizably mar-
ried to a feeling? I sometimes think that a feeling is
one of the few things which analysts have the luxury of
being able to regard as a fact. If patients are feeling
angry, or frightened, or sexual, or whatever it is, at
least we can suppose that this is a fact; but when they
embark on theories or hearsay we cannot distinguish fact
from fiction. Or, as Freud put it, individuals suffer
from amnesias, and then invent more paramnesias to fill
tlie gaps. It would be so nice if it !vere only patients
who did it. And so fort,inate if we did not. It is just as
1well to bear in mind the possibility that we, as psycho-
analysts, are dealing with a most exta-ordinary thing -

244 FOUR PAPERS

a personality, a character. You cannot touch it, smell it
or feel it, and if you are at all tired and more than usu-
ally ignorant, it is useful to reach out for the nearest
paramnesia that is handy, the nearest psycho-analytic
theory that you find lying about. What if the whole of
psycho-analysis turned out' to be one vast elaboration of
a paramnesia, something intended to fill the gap - the
gap of our frightful ignorance?
To resort to yet another pictorial image, the com-
ment by Beachcomber (J.B.Morton) on the Ship of State -
and I must say it was a very eminent statesman indeed
(Winston Churchill) who talked about `sailing on the Ship
of State'. `It just shows that, whatever else may be
wrong with the Ship of State, there is nothing wrong with
the bilge.' In short, there is an inexhaustible fund of
ignorance to draw upon - it is about all we do have to
draw upon. But let us hope that such a thing as a mind,
a personality, a character exists, and that we are not
just talking about nothing. I must confess that I do feel,
partly I suppose because of my prejudice, that in analy-
sis we are dealing with something, something that is very
difficult to describe. The artists have a great advantage
because they can resort to the aesthetic as a universal
linguistic. The defects of verbal communication were
clearly discerned about two thousand years ago by Plato:
in the Phaedo, describing the trial of Socrates,he points
out what a great disadvantage it is that in spite of the
fact that Socrates and Phaedrus can apparently talk very
accurately and precisely, they are actually using extreme-
ly ambiguous terms. I do not see that we have made much
progress in that regard in the last two thousand years.
If we consider that there is a thing called a mind
or a character, is there any way in which we can verbal-
ize it which is not a complete distortion? The mathemat-
icians talk about `quantum intermediacy', something un-
known in between; we can imagine some sort of screen onto
which these various elements project themselves. For ex-
ample, Picasso paints a picture on a sheet of glass so
that it can be seen from either side. Using my hand, I
suggest something of this sort: look at it from one side;
there is a psycho-somatic complaint; turn it round; now
it is soma-psychotic. It is the same hand, but what you
see depends on which way you look at it, from what posi-
tion, from what vertex - any term you like. But does one

EVIDENCE 245
look at a character from any direction at all? I cannot
see how this problem is to be solved except in the prac-
tice of analysis, and except by the particular analyst.
It is no good anyone trying to tell you how you look at
things, or from where you look at things - no one will
ever know except you.
Let us take flight into fantasy, a kind of infancy
of our own thought. I can imagine a situation in which a
nearly full-term foetus could be aware of extremely un-
pleasant oscillations in the amniotic fluid medium before
transferring to a gaseous medium - in other words, get-
ting born. I can imagine that there is some disturbance
going on - the parents on bad terms, or something of that
sort. I can further imagine loud noises being made be-
tween the mother and the father - or even loud noises
made by the digestive system inside the mother. Suppose
this foetus is also aware of the pressures of what will
one day turn into a character or a personality, aware of
things like fear, hate, crude emotions of that sort. Then
the foetus might omnipotently turn in hostility towards
these disturbing feelings, proto-ideas, proto-feelings,
at a very early stage, and split them up, destroy them,
fragment them, and try to evacuate them. Suppose this
caesura takes place and the infant is subjected to the
trauma of birth, and the further trauma of having to ad-
just to a gaseous medium. I can imagine the foetus being
so precocious, so premature that it tries to get rid of
its personality to start off with, and then after birth -
still being highly `intelligent', if that is the correct
term - is able to learn all the words and phrases which
people consciously use. In the very severe, very obtru-
sive situation such as the one I have in mind, that per-
son learns well the difference between right and wrong;
the M'Naghten Rules (the governing decision as to crimi-
nal responsibility of the insane) present no difficulty
whatever. But as far as he is concerned he may preserve a
mind at the deeper level which knows nothing about that,
but which might nevertheless have well-established feel-
ings of guilt. I have been amazed to see the way in which,
if you make a faintly disapproving sound to a baby, it
will wince as if it had been subjected to an almost in-
tolerable accusation. Has the baby a kind of well-estab-
lished `conscience'? What is one to call it? I have in-
vented terms for my own private purposes like, `sub-thal-

246 FOUR PAPERS

amic fear', meaning the kind of fear that one would have
if no check on it at all was produced by the higher
levels of the minti. A patient may in fact be subject to
tremendous feelings of fear. I remember one who was quite
articulate, in fact articulate enough to make me think
that I was analysing him rather well. Indeed the analysis
did go extremely well, but I was beginning to think that
nothing was happening. However, the patient checked all
that. After one session he went home, sealed up all the
crevices throughout his room, turned on the gas, and per-
ished. So there was my highly successful analysis - a
very disconcerting result indeed, and no way of finding
out or learning for myself what exactly had gone wrong,
excepting the fact that it had undoubtedly gone wrong.
Supposing we are in fact always dealing with some
kind of psychosomatic condition. Is it any good talking
to a highly articulate person in highly articulate terms?
is it possible that,if feelings of intense fear, self-
hatred, can seep up into a state oF mind iT, which they
can be translated into action, the reverse is true? Is it
possible to talk to the soma in such a way that the psy-
chosis is able to understand, or vice versa?
It would be useful if we could formulate our own im-
pressions about this before giving them an airing. It is
important to recognize that there is a world in which it
is impossible to see what a psycho-analyst can see, al-
though it may be possible for some of those who come for
analysis to realize that we see certain things which the
rest of the world doesn't see. We are investigating the
unknown which may not oblige us by conforming to behavi-
our within the grasp of our feeble mentalities, our
feeble capacities for rational thought. We may be dealing
with things which are so slight as to be virtually im-
perceptible, but which are so real that they could des-
troy us almost without our being aware of it. That is the
kind of area into which we have to penetrate.

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD JOB

When two personalities meet, an emotional storm is cre-

ated. If they make sufficient contact to be aware of each
other, or even sufficient to be unaware of each other, an
emotional state is produced by the conjunction of these
two individuals, and the resulting disturbance is hardly
likely to be regarded as necessarily an improvement on
the state of affairs had they never met at all. But since
they have met, and since this emotional storm has occur-
red, the two parties to this storm may decide to `make
the best of a bad job'.
In analysis, the patient comes into contact with the
analyst by coming to the consulting room and engaging in
what he thinks is a conversation which he hopes to bene-
fit by in some way. Likewise the analyst probably expects
some benefit to occur - to both parties. The patient or
the analyst says something. It is curious that this has
an effect - it disturbs the relationship between the two
people. This would also be true if nothing was said, if
they remained silent. I often do remain silent, hoping to
see, or become aware of, or observe something which I
could then attempt to interpret - I usually leave the
initiative to the patient if I can. The result of remain-
ing silent, or of intervening with a remark, or of even
saying, "Good morning", or, "Good evening", sets up what
appears to me to be an emotional storm. One does not im-
mediately know what the emotional storm is, but the prob-
lem is how to make the best of it,how to turn the adverse
circumstance - as I choose to call it at the moment -
to good account. The patient is not obliged to do that;
he may not be willing or able to turn it to good account;
his aim may be quite different. I can recall an experi-
ence in which a patient was anxious that I should conform
to his state of mind, a state of mind to which I did not
want to conform. He was anxious to arouse powerful emo-
tions in me so that I would feel angry, frustrated, dis-
appointed, 50 that I would not be able to think clearly.

248 FOUR PAPERS

1 therefore had to choose between `appearing' to be a
benevolent person, or `appearing' to remain calm and
clear-thinking. But acting a part is incompatible with be-
ing sincere. In such a situation the analyst is attempt-
ing to bring to bear a state of mind, and indeed an in-
spiration, of a kind that would in his opinion be benefi-
cial and an improvement on the patient's existing state
of mind. That interference can be resented by the patient
whose retort can be to arouse powerful feelings in the
analyst and to make it difficult for the analyst to think
clearly.
In war the enemy's object is so to terrify you that
you cannot think clearly, while your object is to con-
tinue to think clearly no matter how adverse or frighten-
ing the situation. The underlying idea is that thinking
clearly is more conducive to being aware of `reality', to
assessing properly what is real. But being aware of real-
ity may involve being aware of the unpleasant because
reality is not necessarily pleasing or welcome. This is
common to all scientific inquiry, whether of people or
things. We can be in a universe of thought, a culture, or
even a temporary culture, of such a kind that we are sure
to suffer the pain of feeling that our universe is not
conducive to our welfare. To dare to be aware of the
facts of the universe in which we are existing calls for
courage. That universe may not be pleasing and we may be
disposed to get out of it; if we cannot get out of it, if
for some reason our musculature is not working, or if it
is not appropriate to run away or to retire, then we can
be reduced to other forms of escape - like going to sleep,
or becoming unconscious of the universe of which we do
not wish to be conscious, or being ignorant, or ideal-
izing. `Escape' is a fundamental cure; it is basic. The
infant, unwilling to be aware of its helplessness,
ideal-izes or ignores. (I use `ignores' as the process
requisite to reaching `ignorance'.) It also resorts to
omnipotence; thus omnipotence and helplessness are in-
separably associated. The tendency is to 0bJ~cLt~~f omni-
potence in the person of father or mother, "or god or god-
dess. Sometimes it is made easier by a physical inherit-
ance such as good looks: Helen of Troy could mobilize
great powers through her beauty, as we know through Hom~��
- `Is this the face that launthed a thousand ships and
burned the topless towers of Ilium?' Much the same thing

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD JOB 249

can apply to the male who can be fortunate enough to be
Paris or Ganymede9 whose ability to achieve omnipotence
was facilitated by their physical legacy, their physical
capital. The body can be brought j�n to the un-
pleasure of the miiid; reciprocally, t]ie m'iin$A/ can be
brought in to redress the unpleasure of the body. The
basic assumption of psycho--analysis is that the `function'
of the mind can be used to correct the fal1~a2cl0u5 solu- 1)4\'~~1l.
tions which I have briefly sketched. But~s~~e~~imes a cos-* ~�~f~1p~*1'1
metic power is not enough; the S0lut~0~~(t0 which such a
person has been tempted has not;in fact been robust ~3'il"1i
enough or durable e o meet the further exigencies ~*?/�l,r ;~j;
of existence For example, if a soldier is given author- ../jJr;
ity by virtue of his physical appearance, the facts of
waging war may impose a burden on cosmetic beauty that it
cannot carry.
I would make a distinction between existence - the
capacity to exist - and tlie ambition or aspiration to
have an existence which is worth having - the quality of
the existence, not the quantity; not the length of one's
life, but the quality of that life. There are no scales
by which we can weigh quality against quantity, but exist-
ence is to be contrasted with the essence of existence.
The fact that the patient, like the analyst, is still in
existence is not adequate; this inadequacy is inseparable
from the drive responsible for the existence of the two
people, analyst and analysand, in the same room at the
same time.
This paper I claim to be scientific, but I do not
think you are likely to agree that it merits being so
categorized, for I shall continue with a series of state-
ments for which I have not a shred of factual support.
They are these: the Self that the psycho-analyst observes
- the analyst having the same characteristics - has,
according to tile embryologists, some growing objects
which they call the cortex and medulla of the adrenals.
Those names are given to these structures as soon as they
assume a pattern that is observed in different individ-
uals at different times and dates. These bodies in course
of time become functional and produce a chemical sub-
stance which is concerned with aggression, or fighting,
or flight. I prefer to be less precise and to exclude any
element of direction by saying that the adrenals do riot
provoke fight or flight, but provoke `initiative'. The

250 FOUR PAPERS

terms that I use - fight, flight, initiation - would be
appropriate if the object being observed had a psyche. To
get over the difficulty, the obstacle to progress that is
presented by my lack of intelligence or knowledge,I shall
resort to imaginative conjectures in contrast to what I
would call facts. The first and most immediate of these
imaginative conjectures is that the adrenal bodies do not
think, but that the surrounding structures develop physic-
ally and in physical anticipation of fulfilling a func-
tion we know as thinking and feeling. The embryo (or its
optic pits, auditory pits, adrenals) does not think, see,
hear, fight, or run away, but the physical body develops
in anticipation of having to provide the apparatus for
filling the functions of thinking, seeing, hearing, run-
ning away, and so on. Since I cannot know - and am most
unlikely to have the necessary intelligence in the course
of my ephemeral existence - I try to convey to the body
politic these groping towards intelligence in case my own
anticipations lead to the contagious and infectious com-
munication of these conjectures which may in due course
become real-ized.
So far I am only discussing the physical body as if
it anticipated functions which would later on come to
pass, but which would already have a bodily equipment
suitable for serving the purposes of a particular func-
tion that we call `psyche'. This is what I name a'physic-
al anticipation', a bodily anticipation making possible
the later functional operation of a mind. I am borrowing
from psychology in order to describe a physical matter;
later I borrow from a physical matter to describe some-
thing psychological.
I now turn to the problem of communication within
the Self. (I dislike terms that imply `the body' and `the
mind', therefore I use `Self' to include what I call body
or mind, and `a mental space' for further ideas which may
be developed. The philosophical statement of this approach
is Moplsm.) When we are engaged on psycho-analysis in
which~ro4b~servation must play an extremely important part -
as has always been recognized in.a scientific inquiry -
we should not be restricting our observation to too nar-
row a sphere. What then are we observing? The best answer
that I know is provided by the formulation in Milton's
introduction to the Third Book of Paradise Lost.1 When
the patient comes into the consulting room the analyst

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD JOB 251

needs to be sensitive to the totality of that person; it
should, for example, be possible to see a flush on the
face as a physical manifestation of the blood system, as
well as being able to hear the words which that person
utters as a part of the operation of the vocal muscula-
ture - not particularly emphasising the activity of the
voluntary muscles, nor yet particularly the sounds which
are created by the vocal cords and the vocal apparatus,
but rather the total thing.2 Or, putting it differently,
the analyst needs to be able to listen not only to the
words but also to the music, so that he can hear a remark
which is not easily translated into black marks on paper,
which has a different meaning when it is made in tones of
sarcasm, or in terms of affection or understanding, or by
a person who has actual experience of authority - though
the words might be the same in each instance. For example,
it might be possible to think in terms of an ideal world,
a Utopia, as Sir Thomas More did, and to write it in
terms which can still be understood by those who care to
read his book. In the analytic session there is a differ-
ence when words are spoken by an analysand who is a man
of authority, accustomed to wielding authority. When he
talks about some ideal constituLion, what he has to say
will be different from the same words said by a person
who has no such power and no such authority.
What I am saying may appear to be painfully obvious.
My justification for saying it is that the obvious is so
often not observed, namely, that which is the difference.
So I think that it is worth while mentioning these obvi-
ous facts - otherwise they will not become the object of
scrutiny on which any kind of scientific progress depends.
When I say `scientific' in this context, I mean the pro-
cess of real-ization as contrasted with the process at
the other `pole' of the same concept, ideal-ization, the
feeling that the world, the thing, the person, is not
adequate unless we alter our perception of that person or
thing by idealizing it. Real-ization is doing the same
thing when we feel that the ideal picture which we pre-
sent by our statement is inadequate. So we must consider
what is the method of communication of Self with Self.
A great deal of work has been done in studying the
central nervous system, the para-sympathetic and the
peripheral nervous apparatus. But we have not considered
the part that is played, if any, in the communication of
252 FOUR PAPERS

thought, or the anticipation of thought by the glandular

system. As tuberculosis of the lung can be communicated,
say, with the lymphatics of the lower limbs, so perhaps
the thoughts whic[i we are accustomed to associate with
the cerebral spheres could likewise be communicated to
the sympathetic or para-sympathetic, and vice versa. Such
a conjecture could account for t[ie peculiar state of af-
fairs when a patient says that he is terrified or is very
anxious, and has not the slightest idea what about. We
are familiar with using free associations for purposes of
interpretation; I wonder whether it is also possible to
use or to tap these communications before they reach the
cerebral spheres, before they reach the area which we re-
gard as conscious or rational thought. Can any part be
played in all this by what I have called `imaginative
conjectures'? I would also add `rational conjectures';
that is to say conjectures which seem to be linked with
reasonable activity or the activity which has a ratio.
Compare this kind of thought with that which communicates
itself in tossing and turning in bed when we are asleep
and are having what we describe as a `restless night', or
with the patient who talks about having catarrh or rhin-
itis. Anatomis1=s call a part of the brain the `rhinenceph-
alon' - as if they think there is such a thing as a nose-
brain. I understand from the embryologists and physiolog-
ists that the sense of smell is a distant receptor in a
watery fluid - sharks and mackerel provide a model of
that long-distance receptoz*. But the human being has to
carry some of this intra-cellular fluid into the world
after birth where the fluid is not watery but gaseous.
The watery fluid, instead of being an asset, can become a
liability; the individual can complain of rhinitis and
difficulty in breathing. Or a patient may complain of an
inability to stop the flow of tears - another excretion
of fluid which has its uses; it can irrigate the eyeball
and wash away dust and dirt, but an excess blinds the
patient with tears.
At the risk of being monotonous on the one hand, and
on the other of appearing to be changing the subject, I
propose now to repeat the essence of what I have been say-
ing. Suppose we regard being asleep as being in a particu-
lar state of mind in which we see sights, visit places,
and carry out activities which are not usually carried
out by us when we are awake - although there can be activ-

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD JOB 253

ities which we carry out when we are awake which are
reminiscent of dreams; people say that they go to a place
to which they have always `dreamt' of going, speaking
metaphorically. The change from the state of mind in
which we are when asleep (S-state) to that in which we
are when awake (W-state) is reminiscent of the change
from watery fluid to gaseous fluid, pre-natal to post-
natal. We have a prejudice in favour of the W-state:
people, without hesitation, talk about having had a dream,
often meaning that therefore it did not really happen.
But I would say that that is a prejudice of a person who
is in favour of the voluntary musculature, who does not
attach importance to where he can go unless he can do it
by the use of his' voluntary muscles. We do not hear much
about the places we visit, the sights we see, the stories
we hear and the information which is available when we are
asleep - unless we translate it into being awake.
Who or what decides the priority of the W-state over
the S-state? My question may appear to be somewhat ridicu-
lous. But I shall exaggerate it by changing its form and
saying: who or what decides the state of mind of a man
who says, as reported by Hanna Segal, that anybody would
recognize that the person playing the violin is really
masturbating in public? That is a point of view; it is
clear enough; there is not much doubt about its express-
ion. Why is it that we take it for granted that a person
is really playing the solo part in the Brahms violin con-
certo and that this view is the correct one, superior to
the view of the person who knows that the soloist is in
fact masturbating in public? From that vertex, can the
psychotic patient put up a claim when opposed by the view
of the `sane'? Would it be possible for a psychotic to
say, `Poor fellow - he thinks it is the Brahms violin con-
certo - a typically sane point of view. Quite wrong of
course, but he is unfortunately sane"? This point is more
obscure when I say that the W-state, and the story about
what we did when asleep, is as depicted when wide awake.
What of the psycho-analyst who thinks that the account of
the story told by a person who is awake deserves inter-
pretation in order to reveal a meaning other than the
perfectly simple, straightforward account of the events
if they are considered to be factual descriptions of fact-
ual events? After all, what is wrong with the factual
event when the person is asleep? In what way is this the

254 FOUR PAPERS

incorrect view? In what way should we throw our votes in
the scale? For the W-state, when we have subjected the
experience that we have when asleep to wake-work? Or for
translating, according to psycho-analytic theory, the
events of the day or the events of conscious thinking,
into some other form of thinking which is done by the
process of dream-work? In other words, what about the
process done by the wake-work to translate the events,
the places we have been, the sights we have seen when
asleep, into the language of a person who is awake? What
work would be necessary to translate the state of mind of
the person who sees that the violinist is masturbating in
public into the terms used by the people who think it is
Brahms violin concerto? Is that work reasonably called a
`curative' activity? Certainly any work which was done to
translate the state of mind of the person who thinks that
it is a Brahms violin concerto into a state of mind of
the person who thinks that the individual concerned is
masturbating in public would not be considered to be a
cure; on the whole the majority vote would seem to be in
favour of the view that such a person had deteriorated,
had suffered a misfortune as a result of his analytic ex-
perience.
If the S-state is regarded as being worthy of re-
spect equally with the W-state - the arbitrium being im-
partial - then where one went, what one saw and experi-
enced, must be regarded as having a value which is equal-
ly valid. This is implicit when Freud, like many pre-
decessors, regards dreams as worthy of respect. So we can
say that the wake-work should be considered as equally
worthy of respect as is the dream-work. But why is the
state of mind of being awake, conscious, logical, regard-
ed as having `our wits about us', but only if it is half
our wits? How awful when you find a maggot in your apple!
Not so awful as finding half a maggot in your apple. So
we find that only having half our wits about us is a dis-
covery that is most disturbing. It is one reason why
there is a division of opinion as to whether to have all
our wits about us, or to get back to having only one half
- the wakeful, conscious, rational, logical. Only that
kind of mathematics that is generally accepted by the
majority, the prevalent culture, the social, civil, domi-
nant fashion, is regarded as valid.
Suppose we respect equally both states of mind, or

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD JOB 255

many states of mind whatever they are: then what state of
mind shall we choose for interpretation? Verbal action?
That is an everyday problem. In our present culture it is
not thought correct to make a rhapsodic response, an im-
mediate abandonment of the screen between impulse and
action, translating the impulse direct into action with-
out any intervening delay. It is considered to be equal-
ly incorrect to prolong thought to the point at which the
action is so delayed that it either does not take place
at all, or thinking becomes a substitute for action. When
virtually instantaneous action is called for, it is like-
ly to precipitate a response that is rhapsodic, impulse
direct to action without any intervention of thought.
Freud described Two Principles of Mental Functioning; I
suggest Three Principles of Living. First, feeling;
second, anticipatory thinking; third, feeling plus think-
ing plus Thinking. The latter is synonymous with prudence
or foresight ~ action.
A man has much muscular activity: when awake, he
says he has had a restless night. Where did he go? What
did he see? Who was he? What did he do?Should the W-state
prevail and be accorded superiority?Should he respect the
state of mind which was associated with so much physical
activity? What is certain is that that physical activity
which the patient has experienced is unmistakable whether
he or his analyst recognizes it; he often admits, unwill-
ingly, that he is tired.
Perhaps the problem can be approached more easily by
projection. Let us consider it not in each one of us in-
dividually, but by regarding it as a problem of the body
politic. Can we then locate in the community the origin,
the source, the emotional storm centre? In my experience
it is always caused, or associated with, or centred on a
thinking and feeling person who can make his Self infect-
ious or contagious. To take a gross example, Shakespeare;
it is said that the English language has never been the
same since. I have asked why we go to hear scientific
papers. If you want to be reminded of people and the way
they behave, do you choose a Shakespeare play, or do you
come to an alleged `scientific' paper by me? I will not
embarrass you or myself by pressing such a question, espe-
cially as I do not have to pronounce a solution to that
problem. It does, however, have a long history extending
to periods before Shakespeare, or indeed before modern

256 FOUR PAPERS

English existed. It appears to have agitated the Arians,
though they were mostly concerned with the problems of
material existence and conquest. I do not think it is
oversimplifying to say that even from the earliest
periods of human history of which we have any record -
the Rig Veda - there appears to have been a need to de-
velop what we now call a `philosophy of thinking'. But a
philosophical discussion about the ancient wisdom of the
Rig Veda and the other Vedanta (ancient Hindu scriptures)
became tainted with hostility, as did the philosophy of
the Greeks in the time of Plato and Socrates.3 It became
so feared and disliked by the authorities that the Em-
peror Justinian closed the philosophical schools. But he
was too late: a germ of philosophical thinking escaped to
Edessa in Babylonia and was again suppressed. But then,
owing to the spread of Christianity by virtue of the em-
ployment of the Greek language, the language of the phil-
osophers began to be studied again as an incidental off-
shoot of the study of Christianity. To cut a long story
short, it was again locked up in Byzantium until the fall
of the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. These lost
wisdoms were then released and broke out to create the
virulent emotional turmoil that we know as the Renaissance
Wisdom seems to have this capacity for survival by
changing its route and then reappearing in unexpected
places. Galen established the rights of observation and
became authorized, respectable (just as Freud is today)
and an authority with which to suppress inquiry. Anatomy
was not then studied by looking at the human body, but
Leonardo, Raphael and Rubens studied the body, and as a
result of this emergence amongst the artists, the anatom-
ists too began to observe the cadaver, physiologists to
study the mind.
Will psycho-analysts study the living mind? Or is
the authority of Freud to be used as a deterrant, a bar-
rier to studying people? The revolutionary becomes res-
pectable - a barrier against revolution. The invasion of
the animal by a g~e1>r~�m1*, or `anticipation' of a m~afflsior.E
accurate thinking, is r~1*?��P<~ed by the feelings already in
possession. That war has not ceased yet.

MAKING [HE BEST OF A BAD JOB 257

REFERENCES
 `Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III
So much the rather thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

2Donne, The Second Anniversary

Her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought.

~Plato, Dialogues - Theaetetus

Socrates: My art of midwifery is in general like

theirs; the only difference is that my patients are
men, not women, and my concern is not with the body
but with the soul that is in travail of birth. And
the highest point of my art is the power to prove by
every test whether the offspring of a young man's
thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and
truth. I am so far like the midwife that I cannot
myself give birth to wisdom, and the common reproach
is true, that, though I question others, I can my-
self bring nothing to light because there is no wis-
dom in me.

~Milton, Lycidas
Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse...