Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Grotstein. 179 The symbol O stands for ‘Origin’ with its roots in Platonic ideal forms that
offer an ontological dimension shaping the practice of psychoanalysis. 180 O can never be
attained or captured in words or images, yet is central to both being human and belonging in
the Cosmos, linking O to Godhead, ultimate reality, truth and ‘spiritual substance, so
elemental that we can say nothing about it’ (Bion 1965: 139). 181
Bion illustrates his work from the Christian mysticism of St. John of the Cross and Meister
Eckhart paralleling the mystic encounter with the void and formless infinite also possible in
the psychoanalytic encounter. Yet Bion’s understanding of mysticism is not that found in
conventional religious contexts. The mystic in Bion’s writing serves a vital function in
groups and societies by introducing new ideas or patterns, often in the face of hostility from
established groups. While the mystic claims direct contact with or being-at-one with God/O
in a form of transformation, they also evolve the ‘messianic idea’, which exists
independently of O. In Christian terms the mystic captures their experience in words of an
encounter with God (by presence or absence), yet for Bion the thought O, and the thinker,
are always separate. The thought O exists without the necessity of a thinker to think it,
‘God in the Godhead is spiritual substance, so elemental that we can say nothing about it’
(Bion 1965: 139) so Bion evolved a ‘thoughts without the thinker’ explanation for the
179 Symington equates God with O, understood in a universal sense, where ‘the spiritual is woven then into the
very fabric of what we do as psycho-analysts’ when accompanied by a generosity of spirit (Symington 2008).
180 The role of the analyst is to ‘focus his attention on O, the unknown and unknowable … in so far as the
analyst becomes O he is able to know the events that are evolutions of O … the interpretation is an actual
event in an evolution of O that is common to the analyst and the analysand’ (Bion 1970: 27).
181 ‘I shall use the sign O to denote that which is the ultimate reality represented by terms such as ultimate
reality, absolute truth, the godhead, the infinite, the thing-in-itself. O does not fall in the domain of knowledge
or learning save incidentally; it can be “become”, but it cannot be “known”. It is darkness and formless but it
enters the domain K when it has evolved to a point where it can be known, through knowledge gained by
experience, and formulated in terms derived from sensuous experience; its existence is conjectured
phenomenologically’ (Bion 1970: 26).
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