BION AND PHANTASY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2024-2-2-13Keywords:
Bion, Klein, phantasy, psychoanalysis, unconscious phantasy.Abstract
Abstract. This paper was presented as a report at the International Seminar of the Kharkiv Psychoanalytic Society and the Faculty of Philosophy of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University “Unconscious Phantasy” on 20.09.2021 and later published in a modified form as a chapter in the book “W.R. Bion as a Clinician: Steering Between Concept and Practice” (Routledge). In this paper, the author shows how the Kleinian idea of the unconscious phantasy emerged and developed in clinical work and how Melanie Klein’s initial concept and John Rickman’s contribution influenced Wilfred Bion’s clinical thinking and technique of the unconscious phantasy. Unconscious phantasies are focused on relationships with objects and can be objects that are felt within us – ideas in the mind and sensations in the body, including through personification. The psyche is these unconscious phantasies with imaginary objects colored by specific emotions inherent in those relationships. These unconscious phantasies are essentially the meanings we give to perceptions and sensations – and then to memories, ideas, and everything else in our mind that we can play with. Therefore, in clinical work the narrative in this very moment that occupies the patient’s psyche, their unconscious, is essential. A fascinating aspect of psychoanalysis is the consideration of how one psyche, made up of unconscious phantasies, interacts with another psyche, also made up of its phantasies. Bion, with his background in group work, was particularly interested in and sensitive to how these two areas of phantasy interact with each other. How do these two individuals influence each other’s inner worlds and achieve a short-term role change or a long-term personality change? The author summarized that the goal of psychoanalysis is to enable a person to better distinguish between these representations in the psyche and the reality of what perceptions may actually be telling them. There are also other narratives – somewhere beyond this one – that our principle of reality drives us to find.
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