ABSTRACT

In large gatherings at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Tavistock Clinic there was a certain disquiet in the audience about Wilfred Bion's demeanour and his silence. This chapter talks about some different quotes are: Being analysed traumatic; Morality is basic; Pretending to care, beginning to care; observation; Questions and answers; Vogue; Being callous; and on collateral circulation: where the real trouble lies. Being analysed traumatic is the first sentence of the first of the Tavistock seminars. It was the year of the record-breaking heatwave and drought, and the videotape of the seminars shows Bion wearing a short-sleeved, open-necked shirt rather than his usual long-sleeved shirt, bow-tie and jacket. The invariable outcome of analytic work was to show that this obscure sense of guilt derived from the Oedipus complex and was a reaction to the two great criminal intentions of killing the father and having sexual relations with the mother.