ABSTRACT
Psycho-analytic procedure pre-supposes that the welfare of the patient demands a constant supply of truth as inevitably as his physical survival demands food. O is the term that W. R. Bion used to refer to the moment-to-moment existential reality that each of inhabits by virtue of reader's existence. To the extent that O is in some part unknowable, it is an epistemological conjecture that would seem at first glance to have little immediate relevance to clinical psychoanalysis. Bion's caution is based upon the belief that words and verbal formulations are inadequate to fully convey or describe the psychoanalytic object or the subtleties of emotional experience. The concept of O places at the heart of psychoanalytic practice and theory the paradoxical value of the enigmatic and the unknowable and underlines the importance—and even the necessity—of "negative capability" for long periods of time in the pursuit of existential truth.
