ABSTRACT
Bion reminds us that to be human is to suffer. Suffering is inevitable and formative. Suffering also interacts with who we are to create who we will become. The degree to which we are able to suffer could almost be equated with the degree to which we display our humanity. Mental pain is distinctively different from physical pain, yet the two are related, as our bodies reflect our minds, and our minds influence our bodies. Bion again says of this: “the analytic experience (is) to increase the patient’s capacity for suffering even though the patient and analyst may hope to decrease pain itself”. This chapter, based on Bion’s Paris conference, uses a clinical example of a woman who could not suffer her pain and who became psychotic as a means of avoiding it. Analysis for her was a continual process of desperate symbiotic attachment to the analyst while attempting to avoid the truth of her experience.
