ABSTRACT
The desire for knowledge, as one of the fundamentals of the human situation, is bound to play a great part in psycho-analysis. Mary Chadwick linked the instinct for knowledge with the oral component instinct and with the wish for a child. The child's desire for knowledge is directed to the world that surrounds the child, the world of sense impressions. In Wilfred Ruprecht Bion's work the impetus for knowledge is the desire to grasp what, in fact, is unknowable-the truth. The ultimate truth exists, whether it is discovered or not; the awareness of its existence is one of the elementary experiences of the mind. The desire for knowledge demanding the possession of everything without concern for the object is greed and arrogance and its self-destructive results lays open the stupidity that is behind the desire for knowledge at all cost.
