Explorations of Bion’s O: Mysteries and Misconceptions of the Transcendent Mind

Wilfred Bion’s concept of O is his most mysterious idea, representing absolute truth and the mind necessary to apprehend it. Not surprisingly, it is also his most controversial idea, for it reflects infinite, unknowable, ultimate reality – all ideas that, like O, cannot be defined in logical terms. However, Bion views this esoteric O as central to clinical work, calling it “the central psychoanalytic perspective”. In a way O is a more transcendent version of the Unconscious, and Dr. Reiner will examine similarities and differences from Freud’s view of the Unconscious as a receptacle for repressed and unwanted feelings and thoughts.

Bion associates O with mysticism, and skepticism about O is often based on the idea of mysticism as traditionally religious and so antithetical to science. It is therefore important to examine Bion’s particular use of the word, “mystical”, for as he states quite clearly, “Mystics appear in any religion, science, time, or place”. The mystic, for Bion, is a “genius” or “exceptional person” in any field, who is capable of creative vision and new ideas.

Dr. Reiner will present and discuss several papers from her book, Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind, using poetry, art, literature, and religion to help provide different perspectives on what Bion means by O. She will also present a clinical chapter from her book, Of Things Invisible To Mortal Sight: Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein (Karnac, 2016), that reveals how early emotional trauma sometimes leads to profoundly intuitive states in patients. and how to deal with these clinically. While these early traumatic states may give access to creative intuitive states reflective of O, we will look at how these differ from the evolved states of mind described by Bion

Session 1
O: Bion’s Truth Instinct
This session addresses:

 – Introduction to O, drawing on experiences of philosophers, poets, and artists like Matisse who said, “In art, the truth, the real, begins when one no longer understands anything…”

 – Bion’s idea that O must be reached by “suspending memory, desire, and understanding”.

Session 2
The Spiritual Aspect of Being

This session addresses:

– God as a reified object versus God as metaphysical experience (O).

– Freud’s idea of religion as neurosis.

– Religious traditions through the lens of science.

– The infant as mystic.

Bion’s introduction of a spiritual perspective to psychoanalysis was not to bring religion to psychoanalysis, but to clarify the ways in which psychoanalysis, as a science of the mind, is a science of spiritual proportions.

Session 3
Ferenczi’s ‘astra’ and Bion’s ‘O’: A Clinical Perspective
This session addresses:

 –Ferenczi’s idea of how early trauma can lead a child to a kind of wisdom and psychic intuition.

–The clinical need to differentiate a patient’s dissociative states from his or her creative, intuitive gifts.

 –Working with patients’ intuitions about the analyst.