ABSTRACT
The Tree of Life is the Tree of Faith. But let’s not underestimate the importance of intuition, which plays an important role in psychoanalysis, emphatically with W. R. Bion, who has resonant links with Kabbalah. Bion says that in “pathological” splitting it is much harder to change states than in “normal” splitting. Bion wrote of a destructive force that goes on destroying after everything is destroyed, feeding off destruction, tending towards pure destruction. Double tendencies: building, undoing building. Sigmund Freud’s life drive building unities, the death drive dismantling. Bion’s grid looks more like a graph, with vertical and horizontal elements, a mathematical feel. Bion envisions a back and forth between chaos or fragmentation and organisation. Bion associates alpha elements with storing and digesting experience, working with experience. Bion suggests the analyst free associate repeatedly to aspects of mythic narratives and images to keep intuition/alpha function in good repair.
