ABSTRACT
W. R. Bion characterizes psychic murder as moral violence. The conviction that the object is nothing itself acts as a coercive demand that the object be more and less than what is possible. The psyche becomes entangled in the reductionistic misuse of basic categories and functions, for example, space, time, causality, and definition. Bion stresses the moral component of causal thinking as especially destructive of experience and imaginative reflection on experience. A moralizing attitude may pervade causal thinking and act as the link between objects or between parts of the patient’s or analyst’s constructions. Emphasis on thinking as inhibiting action draws attention away from the problem of constituting productive primary process work. In Bion’s words, “If persecutory feelings are strong the constant conjunction of elements can lead to a naming of the conjunction with intent to contain it, rather than mark it for investigation”.
