ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author shows how W. R. Bion has tried to account for the spirit being missing in psychoanalysis, and how through a careful distinction of the patient remembering a sensuous object from the patient desiring a non-sensuous one, it may be recovered. So Bion proposes that “references to God” do not always betoken processes which “betray the operation of ‘memories’ of the father” but only when his “open mind to the mental phenomena unfolding in the psychoanalytical experience” shows him that “the patient’s relationship with God was disturbed by sensuously desired models”. The coincidence of the ancient practice with Bion’s ideas suggests a body of potential psychoanalytic knowledge latent in cultures that have had longer to gain experience than the century of psychoanalysis. The chapter talks about several instances of manifestations of the spirit that Dr Gordon points out is missing from contemporary culture.