ABSTRACT
W. R. Bion began his career as a theorist of psychoanalysis with a strongly epistemological approach. In Experiences in Groups the word "sense" occurs some thirty times. In Learning from Experience it is found about a hundred times—very often in phrases such as sense(-)impression(s), sense(-)data, or the "sense of reality", but also, and in particular, in Freud's formulation of consciousness as the "sense-organ for the apprehension of psychical qualities". While Bion seemingly disposes quite hastily of the dimension of "sense", this impression is in fact misleading, because his meaning is not at all clear, as immediately emerges from the continuation of the relevant page. Interpretation should be a narrative, a myth in the sense of the mythopoietic ability to generate new and original representations of the world, almost a poetic text, an understanding that cannot be separated from its sensible expression. Sense refers to a concept of truth as shared emotional truth.
