Aesthetic Dimension of the Mind: Variations on a Theme of Bion [Paperback]

Reading this book is heavy going,but persistence and effort will.I believe,be rewarded for those who have any interest in Klein's and Bion's ideas and their potential usefulness in clinical work and thinking depth psychologically about human activities.The style and syntax can be unnecessarily taxing and there is repetitiousness,but this can be a great help to the uninitiated.

On the whole I would sum this often interesting,if dense,book as a prolonged meditation on Bion's belief or hypothesis that truth is a nutrient for the mind and its development, while lies are toxic.Klein's crucial contribution to my mind is the idea that loss and pain are central to human growth and maturity and the work of mourning is necessary at every stage of life; and this involves facing one's loving as well as destructive feelings about self and others,i.e.,facing and staying in contact with truth about oneself and others; this is painful and much ill health results from efforts to numb,somatize,transfer to someone else, act out, or otherwise AVOID this pain. A kind of morality can be recruited in this effort to evade truth=pain=nutrient of the mind.The author mentions Brecht's play Galileo Galilei, in which, when Galileo invites the Cardinal to look through the telescope, the latter answers that first they have to discuss whether the use of the instrument is right or wrong! This is reflective of the kind of " ego-destructive " superego that tends to develop in a situation where "maternal reverie" has not been available to help the infant "detoxify" primitive emotions and other proto-mental elements(the BETA elements) and develop the capacity to think about thoughts and external reality; people can have thougts without an appreciable capacity to THINK them and develop them by learning from (emotional) experiences.

Another vital nutrient for the mind is "real emotional contact"; however,this involves "turbulence" which is painful and the attempt to avoid this can lead to the deployment of an " exoskelton" or a wall .preventing the "digestion" or processing of emotional experiences (the ability to mourn), leadind to a poor sense of identity.lack of vitality:" these are persons who do not manage to find themselves".

Becoming one with oneself( AT-ONE-MENT ) is opposed by emotional forces purporting to be omnipotent and omniscient; they become incorporated into a primitive superego which usurps the functions of the ego, i.e., contact with reality and regard for facts. This superego is experienced as a persecutory internal critic. There is an exaltation of a " moral " outlook without,however,respect for facts and truth( a good contemporary example of this may be the fanatical religious terrorists.

"Growth towards...wisdom involves ...making choices of methods to deal with mental pain:evasion or modification".The former leads to destructive tendencies.

One of the more interesting chapters is 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the author mostly deftly applies the models or hypotheses of Bion to analyze this classic movie which makes for fascinating reading and deepens our understanding.At times, however,a forced quality enters the effort, as though she had lost sight of Bion's caution against using models and theories in a SATURATED sort of way; this,I think, would be rigidifying the models, thereby losing respect for facts that may not fit.

For although Bion's ideas came from philosophy,including eastern philosophy( the notion of "O",the ultimate unknowable reality or VOID),mysticism, mathematics( catastrophe theory),literature and poetry(Keats' negative capability).he was firmly rooted in clinical experience and his work is pervaded by a healthy British empiricism and a deep allegiance to facts and truth.Although his style and thinking are abstruse,he is always dealing with concrete realities.Facts and truth can be intolerable; as the Jack Nicholson character puts it in the movie A Few Good Men:"(We=)you can't take the truth".

As an illustration.I saw a patient who was going through a breakdown with all the usual mixed symptomatology that clinicians are all too familiar with;while thinking of the usual steps of helping thsi person, I was aware that there was,behind the pleas for "help",an unspoken appeal for something which was much more simple,yet more complicated and conflict-laden to deal with.I could not,for various reasons,manage to address this issue,instead doing the usual things,i.e.,medication and referral for therapy.Despite an apparent agreement to this plan, there was a violent reaction and rupture of any vestiges of a sense of collaboration.It appears,to simplify things a great deal, that the patient wanted a face saving way to extricate herself from a situation that was turning out to be too much, and required a medical statement for this.If she had been truthful about it, it would have put me in a situation where to be truthful would have been to the detriment of the patient.The society we live in and the system we are in,are not necessarily supportive of honest and truthful and honest communication.

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