ABSTRACT
Wilfred Bion has used, like a metaphor, the myth of Palinurus as narrated by virgil, in order to emphasize the stubbornness present in many therapists during the act of listening to patients. Bion compares the pilot’s stubbornness with the analyst’s inclination to cling to classical positions present in medicine, such as taking a clinical history in order to provide a classified diagnosis, thereby contaminating listening with previous memories and desires about the patient, such as the intent to cure or to understand. Bion implicitly describes listening as a situation where the analyst, similar to Tiresias’s blindness, must free himself from any preconception. The “act of faith” represents an action of courage and self-assertiveness, and a belief that whatever the analyst is thinking while listening to the patient’s material might be relevant to the understanding of the unconscious side of the discourse.
