ABSTRACT
This chapter comments on Wilfred Bion's theories and his personality. The acceptance of mental pain is contrary to the search for the pleasure principle, and this is the central point in Bion's theory of development. He said that development consists of a change in motivational category, from a wish for immediate pleasure and the avoidance of mental pain, to a category that implies the emergence of the truth and the wish for emotional growth. In supervision A3 Bion's split, or cut, seems to be an attempt to introduce the possibility of changing the compulsion to repeat the same pattern. He adds another dimension to the analytic process, namely, that analysis should not be restricted solely to the unconscious level. In this supervision, Bion refers back to the analyst suggesting that in specific moments he might say to the patient that he would be walking in one street and all of a sudden he heads to another one.
