BION'S "TRANSFORMATION IN 'O'" AND
THE CONCEPT OF THE "TRANSCENDENT POSITION"
by James S. Grotstein
INTRODUCTION
Bion, who was to become the awesome explorer of the "deep and formless infinite" of the psyche, first immersed himself in the theories of Freud and Klein and then gradually developed a revolutionary metapsychological metatheory for psychoanalysis. Bion incurred the criticism of his colleagues by daring to investigate faith, spirituality, religion, mysticism, metaphysics, and fetal mental life. His concepts of transformations in L(ove), H(ate), and K(nowledge), as well as ofintuitionisticandsubjective science[Transformations in "0" (Ultimate Truth, Absolute Reality)], constitute an objectiveandnuminous psychoanalytic epistemology.
Bion was preoccupied with the concept of ultimate reality and absolute truth and reoriented psychoanalytic metapsychology into a theory ofthinkingandmeta-thinking aboutemotions. He distinguished the "thoughts-without-a-thinker" from the mind that had to develop in order to think them. I believe that his concept of"intuitionistic thinking"also presumes the presence of a more profound aspect of that mind: Not only did a mind develop to harvest the "thoughts without a thinker," but another aspect of the mind had to originate these "unthought thoughts." I believe that Bion came to a realization that true "thinking" ("dream work alpha" along the dimensions of "L, H, and K") is an unconscious -- if notpreconscious -- act and that what we normally term "thinking" (application of the ordinate and abscissa of the "Grid") is really"after-thinking."
By realigning psychoanalysis with metaphysics and ontology (existentialism), Bion perforated the mystique of ontic "objectivity" implicit to logical-positivistic, deterministic science and revealed its own unsuspected mythology--itsabsolute dependence on sense data. Applying his concept ofreversible perspective,he found myths, both collective and personal, to be themselves "scientific deductive systems" in their own right (Bion, 1992). Mostly, Bion founded a new mystical science of psychoanalysis, a numinous discipline based on theabandonment of memory, desire, and understanding. To Bion, mysticism is "seeing things as they truly are -- without disguise" (personal communication). He was preoccupied with the question of how we know what we know.
BION'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL ODYSSEY INTO THE "DEEP AND FORMLESS INFINITE"
"0" is perhaps Bion's most far-reaching conception. It designates an ineffable, inscrutable, and constantly evolving domain that intimates an aesthetic completeness and coherence. He refers to it by different terms, "Absolute Truth," "Ultimate Reality," or "reverence and awe." When preternaturally personified, it is called "God." The "Keter-Ayn-Sof" of the Zohar Kabbalah translated it as "Nothing" (Scholem, 1960; Bloom, 1983), a designation Bion (1962, 1963, 1965) focused on as the "no-thing." "0" lies beyond the grasp of the external senses and is only experienced by an inwardly receptive sense organ,intuition, Bion's "seventh servant." Intuition is observation's reversible perspective, the latter requiring the senses. A transformation in "0" is attainable only by the disciplined abandonment of memory, desire, understanding, sense impressions -- and perhaps also the abandonment of ego itself. Ultimate Reality is also associated with Bion's "beta elements," Kant's "things-in-themselves," Lacan's "Register of the Real," primal chaos (today we would say "complexity"), and yet, paradoxically, primal harmony and serenity, depending on the maturity of our capacity to be "at-one" with it. The Greeks called it "Ananake"(Necessity).Milton (1667) alluded to it as "the deep and formless infinite" and "the Void," and Blake (1789-1794; Frye, 1947) referred to it as "fearful symmetry" and "frightful fiend." I have dealt with this area of numinousness as the "background presence of primary identification" (Grotstein, 1978, 1979) and as the "Black Hole" (1990a, 1990b).