Thoughts without a thinker

Bion’s notion of wild thoughts, or thoughts without a thinker, presented western culture with a profound reversal in the understanding of how thoughts came to be. The concept "thoughts without a thinker" describes the mind at work at levels beyond the familiar signs and symbols. The recognition of mindfulness and significance existing beyond our ordinary reach of realizations and communications directed Bion further and intensely into a serious questioning of the meaning of words and beliefs and practices. He makes this point clear in his essay "Taming Wild Thoughts" (1997), in which he suggests that it is very difficult to find the origins of meaning in the individual and in the culture. He says,

If we are concerned with physical diseases we have to learn the language the body talks. The human animal, unlike other species, can lie and has probably had a good deal of practice at lying and misinforming from a very early stage because feelings of guilt precipitate a proliferation of a capacity to lie and deceive.

(Bion, 1997, p. 35) He goes on to suggest that we probably do not know where to look for the origins of these wild thoughts, which are not yet tainted with rationalizations against the truth. He points out that there are a lot of tempting places to look:

We are so familiar with psychoanalytic theories that we tend to forget the basic points so much so that it is difficult to say what they are. Sometimes we hear of analysis in a way that we think what a wonderful time we are having wandering amongst the weeds plucking the wild and beautiful flowers, but not getting anywhere near to disturbing the sleep of the sleeping beauty – the wisdom that lies fast asleep somewhere in the thickets, somewhere buried, not only literally under the mounds of the Ziggurat or the site of Ur of the Chaldees or Knossos, but what about the Oracle of Delphi? Is that voice in any way audible?

(p. 37)