Contemporary Psychoanalytic Developments

A Presentation by Dr Terence Nice Winter 2017

• A Presentation by Dr Terence Nice

• Lecturer in Psychological Therapies
• 2016
 Klein 1882-1960

• The Ubiquity of Unconscious Phantasy

• The Infant’s Inherent ability to Relate to
Objects
• The duality of the Life and Death Instincts
 Klein: The Oedipus Complex -
Freud’s Universal Conflict

• Klein delivers a psychoanalytic theory of development which

builds upon the legacy of Freud. It is a theory that is primarily
concerned with the internal primitive anxieties and
unconscious phantasies of the individual, spanning a
developmental spectrum from young infant to adult.

• Like Freud, Klein emphasises the Oedipal complex and the Life
and Death instincts of Eros & Thanatos. However, she places
particular value upon aggressive impulses, in addition to
acknowledging the significance of libidinal drives.
 Bion: A Brief History
• Bion was born in Mathura, North West Province, India
• Educated at Bishop’s Stortford College  in England
• At the outbreak of World War I he served as a tank commander in France
where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DS0)
• Later, he studied history Queen’s College Oxford (1922) and medicine at
UCL
• Bion was attracted to psychoanalysis and trained at the Tavistock Clinic in
London
• When war broke out again he entered the Royal Army Medical Corps
• He carried out group work in Northfield Hospital for those suffering with
‘shell shock’
• He developed Klein’s PS/D positions in association with Hannah Segal and
Herbert Rosenfield
• Bion spent his twilight years in California but returned to Oxford shortly
before his death
 Bion reconfigured psychoanalytical work
through emotional functioning, philosophy,
science and mysticism. His understanding of the
human mind does not start from a classical
Freudian position, but from a theory of thinking
and a new conception of the unconscious as O
which = ‘A Deep and formless Infinity’.

Bion is best known for the work stemming from his

psychoanalysis of patients in psychotic states, by building on
and expanding Klein’s concepts of projective identification and
the two positions, paranoid-schizoid and depressive, in dynamic
equilibrium, and by introducing the notion of Container-
Contained (♀ ♂); and by elaborating a theory of thinking with
emotional experience at its core (Chris Mawson/MKT: 2012)
 Bion’s Key Ideas
• Container-Contained (Mother contains projections of infant; she
metabolises them in order to give them back in a palatable form )
• Projective Identification – a way of expelling part-objects and
forcing them into others? A form of communication? A primitive
unconscious process?
• A Theory of Thinking: Alpha and Beta Elements
• Beta elements (unmetabolized psychic/somatic/affective
experiences )
• Alpha elements (thoughts that can be thought by the thinker – the
thinker needs a body to think a thought)
• Beta elements (raw experiences) can be translated into alpha
elements through alpha function
• Alpha function can be conceived of as akin to the mother’s
capacity to contain the primitive and raw experiences of the infant
• The capacity to think is brought about by connecting to the mind
of another – the unthinkable thought is known
 Projective Identification
• Klein (1932) describes the infant’s primitive aggressive phantasies
attacking and invading the mother’s inside
• For Klein projective identification is defined as a ‘particular form of
identification, which establishes the prototype of an aggressive
object relation’ (Klein, 1952)
• We can conceive of it as a process of splitting of the object, the ego
and the expulsion of part objects into the figure of an other. For
example, I am unhappy about an unconscious conflict in myself and
feel angry, envious or guilty. I push these bad feelings into another
person in order to rid myself of them. This denial is followed by a
particular form of identification and I attack the other believing
these feelings are invoked by them – domestic violence?
 Bion’s Beta and Alpha-elements
• ‘Beta-elements are not amenable to use in the dream
thoughts, but are suited for use in projective
identification. They are influential in producing acting out.
They are objects that can be evacuated or used for a kind
of thinking that depends on manipulation of what are felt
to be things in themselves as if to substitute such
manipulation for words or ideas’ (Bion, 1962; p.6)
• Beta-elements are stored but differ from alpha-elements
in that they are not so much memories as undigested
facts, whereas the alpha-elements have been digested by
alpha-function and thus made available for thought’
(Bion, 1962, p.7).
Ogden’s Thoughts on Projective Identification

• Ogden (1992) argues, as did Bion, that projective identification is

one of the most important psychoanalytical constructs, but it is
poorly understood and loosely defined
• ‘through projective identification the projector has the primarily
unconscious phantasy of ridding himself of unwanted aspects of
self; depositing those unwanted parts in another person; and
finally recovering a modified version of what was extruded’
(Ogden, 1992; p.11)
• Projective identification bridges the intra-psychic with exterior
reality providing an inter-subjective link or inter-personal bridge
• He breaks it down into three schematic phases, which he
describes as follows.
 Three Phases
• Phase I: ridding oneself of parts of the self including
internal objects either because that part of the self
threatens the integrity of the self or because a part
of the self requires protection in the agency of an
other
• Phase II: the projector exerts pressure on the
recipient to behave in a way that is congruent with
the unconscious projective fantasy – projective
identification does not exist unless there is some
form of interaction between projector and recipient
 Three Phases
• Phase III: In this phase the recipient experiences the self as
part of the projected unconscious phantasy
• For the recipient it is a new set of feelings different from the
projector
• According to Ogden (1992) these feelings may approximate,
but they are not identical.
• The recipient is the author of his own feelings. If the author is
able to tolerate the projected feelings and processes them,
then a new set of feelings, thoughts and representations can
exist without damage to self or other
• The new set of feelings and thoughts can be made available
for re-internalisation through interpersonal interactions – a
new interpersonal schema
 W. R. Bion on Thinking
K&0

• What happens when two minds meet?

• What does it mean to have a mind that is
fragmented and fractured or no mind at all?
• What happens in our minds?
• Are wild thoughts projected into bizarre objects?
• Is K a special kind of psychoanalytical knowledge?
• How can we know the unknowable 0?
 Bion’s Ideas – Abstract and Opaque?

What kind of Truth? The Unconscious or

Absolute Truth? the unthinkable?

Without
Memory or
Truth and
Desire Falsehood
That which
is knowable

The Grid
That which is
PsychoA
Knowledge not knowable

Mathematical? Mysticism?
 W. R. Bion on Groups
Bion believed that there was little difference
between individual and group functioning –
processes such as PI continue to operate

My impression is that the group approximates too closely, in the

minds of the individuals composing it, to very primitive
phantasies about the contents of the mother's body. The
attempt to make a rational investigation of the dynamics of the
group is therefore perturbed by fears, and mechanisms for
dealing with them, which are characteristic of the paranoid-
schizoid position. The investigation cannot be carried out
without the stimulation and activation of those levels... the
elements of the emotional situation are so closely allied to
phantasies of the earliest anxieties that the group is compelled,
whenever the pressure of anxiety becomes too great, to take
defensive action (Bion, 1955, p. 456). 
 Bion’s Groups
To accomplish Flight-Fight
the goal of the Pairing
group Dependency
In any group
there is always
present two
groups

The Basic
The Work Assumption
Group Group

SplittingExclusion Bullying
 Psychotic Moments – Bion: ‘The mind grows through
exposure to the truth’

• Are there any socio-cultural variables that may explain the diagnosis or
misdiagnosis of psychosis?
• Power?
• Western Discourses?
• Authoritative Relations?
• Cultural Beliefs?
• Language?
• Difference?
• Marginalization?
• War & Brutalization?
 The Psychotic in Despair
‘The Psychotic is in despair, imprisoned in his
bizarre universe. In analysis psychotic patients
discharge a barrage, out of contact with either
themselves or the analyst who is experienced as a
murderously punitive object . Their frail grasp of the
normally distinct states of being awake, dreaming,
hallucinating, perceiving, phantasy and reality
makes for a confused, confusing and sometimes
delusional transference’(O’Shaugnessy, 1981)
 Scribblings of the "seemingly" Insane

• Black slimy books, black slimy words

Black slimy fingers cramed them into a black slimy worlds
In my cracked up mind those slimy black words sunk in
This is how the end will begain

Blackbird sitting on my windowsill

Wait for me to seal the deal
Those black slimy words soon accumulates
They become black slimy books, my imagination stimulates

The black goat waits outside my window patiently

As the black sheep walks around aimlessly
The black slimy books have now become blood slimy pictures 
Seen through my mind's eye with stricter
It was all becoming the perfect blood slimy mixture

The black goat has now donned his crown

He beckons me to come on down
To stand beside him on the earths ground
The blood slimy pictures are now a blood soaked movie in my head
That plays over and over and over, till I'm filled with blood soaked dread

So I seal the deal with the blackbirds blood

Emotions overwhelms me like a torrential raging flood
Then the emotions are suddenly gone with a thud
So if you are reading this you might see why
I left with the black goat, so dont you cry
Maybe I'll be back as time goes by
Note found in the same room 
As the rocking drooling fool, Chanting about the coming doom
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 Glossary

• Delusion: A false idea or belief

• Delusions of Grandeur: A false idea of being famous, noble,
highly important.
• Hallucination: The apparent or alleged perception of an
object not actually present.
• Psychosis: A severe mental derangement esp. when resulting
in delusions and loss of contact from reality.
• Psychotic Anxiety: A primitive and severe form of anxiety not
adapted to reality.
• Psychotic Depression -Some people who have severe clinical
depression (sometimes called major depressive disorder)
experience hallucinations and delusions. They are said to have
psychotic depression.
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