ABSTRACT
W. R. Bion reflects that from the position of the therapist, it is very difficult to gauge the long-term effect of psychoanalytic psychotherapy upon the patient. Despite uncertainty, Bion observes that “Some people certainly seem to be able to turn the experience to good account”. Bion tempts himself with the fictive hope of certainty. Bion covers his associational tracks, recognising that the analyst’s memories cast forward are themselves only time-binding crystallisations, resistant against the experiential dimension of therapeutic becoming. By circuitous argument, Bion arrives at the centrality of the analyst’s own realisations, not only during a course of psychotherapy, but throughout his lifetime, as ongoing moments of transformation. Bion, certainly, had access to Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy, long past the moment in time and space of his work with Beckett. Bion further comments that analysis may be seen as a series of transformative steps that follow the occurrence of an intense emotional explosion.
