Psychoanalysis and science:

considerations based on the work of Wilfred R. Bion

Abstract

The author highlights the scientific nature of psychoanalysis using the work of Bion, who showed that this science lacks an abstract formulation for its scientific deductive system that would still be too closely associated with the narrative forms of the Oedipus myth and tragedies, which hinders the recognition of their invariant aspects that are not linked to their characters (which would be better perceived as models for what Freud learned). Bion sought, through his Grid and the postulation of elements of psychoanalysis, to highlight the invariants of the Oedipal situation in an abstract way that would enable not only the recording of emotional and psychic states that are not sensuously apprehensible, but also the anticipation of psychoanalytic objects not yet discovered. The existence of these abstract preconceptions is fundamental to the development of our science. The perception of psychoanalysis as a scientific activity does not exclude that it can also be done in an aesthetic way, as he did in his book A Memoir of the Future. Every great scientist also needs to be a visionary and for many, what they capture and formulate mathematically is an aesthetic experience.