ABSTRACT
Wilfred Bion has been among those writers who have been most clear and explicit about the differences between normality and abnormality, a difference he has expressed so sharply in his distinction between each person's psychotic and non-psychotic personalities (1957). It is this distinction which is essential for the formulation of the aims of psycho-analytical treatment and of the criteria for the termination of treatment. Psycho-analysis thus leads to an ethic which may slightly modify the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant. The sign of normality is that the individual wills not only his own survival but the survival equally of all mankind. A society whose political, legal and social institutions were based upon such a precept would in turn reinforce the psychological health of its members. It is phenomena which are directly observable in psycho-analysis in the meanings to be interpreted from the patient's associations, dreams, behaviours in terms of the realities of his or her working relationship with the analyst.
