ABSTRACT
Bion harboured misgivings about the available methods of communication that put down on paper what psychoanalytic practice is for people who are not participating in an actual session. Writing is a predominantly material act outside the psychoanalytic setting. As such, it has built-in limitations when the purpose is to communicate the immateriality that happens uniquely in that living setting. Psychoanalysis is in itself a practical activity. It was born from practice: empirical findings and empirical needs gave birth to it. Psychoanalysis is nourished and oxygenated by practice. Lack of practice pollutes psychoanalysis with a priori and ad hoc pseudo-theorising indistinguishable from hallucination. Practice-in-itself is the raison d’être of any practical activity—which is born from real, truthful, natural human needs: clinical and surgical medicine, gardening, cooking, artistic and sporting endeavours. The problem of communication is neither specific to nor typical of psychoanalysis: attempts to communicate aspects of the know-how in a good-enough way are doomed to failure. An alternative which can overcome—at least partially—the failures in communicating at least a part of the know-how that characterises practical activities is provided by a living experience with people who have already 14experienced them. Experto crede—trust someone who has experienced it—as Horace said.
