Dev IV: Loss, Mourning, Transformation

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 1st Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Ann De Lancey, PhD
Janet Soeprono, MD

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November 11, 2022 — Experiencing what is Lost in Words

[27 pages]

Bion often addresses the paradoxical nature of the relationship between language and truth whereby linguistic expression is the path by which truth can be glimpsed at, while at the same time it hides and distorts it. In a trance-like state, Bion seems to try and seize the multidimensional, elusive truth through the multitude of characters portrayed in his book A Memoir of the Future.  Bion drew a parallel between psychoanalytical and mystical states of mind. Mystical thinking maintains that truth is hidden from the senses, from language and from thought. It is concerned with the unknown, concealed, and zero-ness. Bion borrows words such as God and Godhead, to try and depict an emotional truth, or ultimate reality, existing beyond the possibility of human knowledge and consciousness. Throughout the Memoir the characters of P.A. and PAUL/PRIEST (representing both religion and the mystical tradition) come to realize the affinity between them.

Avner Bergstein’s paper explores this affinity, suggesting that the mutual work of analysis facilitates the development of an intuitive, mystical capacity in both analyst and analysand.

Avner Bergstein, M.A. is a faculty member, and a training and supervising psychoanalyst with the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. He works in private practice with adults, adolescents and children and has worked for some years at a kindergarten for children with autism. He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters elaborating on the clinical implications of the writings of Bion and Meltzer.

Bergstein, A. (2018). “The Ineffable.” in Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Reading A Memoir of the Future. Ed Giuseppe Civitarese, pp120-146