The turn to intuition
from Knowing and Dreaming to Being in-tu-it
Keywords:
Bion’s intuition, In-tu-it (intuit), Psychoanalytic ontology, Unrepressed and unrepresented unconscious states, A spectrum of analytic Oneness, At-one-mentAbstract
Intuition, which is widely defined by Kant’s definition as the contact with reality without the brokerage of rational thinking, was brought back by Bion to the psychoanalytic vocabulary. The present paper focuses on Bion’s term of intuition as presented in his late writings, and particularly in his controversial paper “Notes on Memory and Desire” (1967), which powerfully expresses Bion’s radical requirement to suspend memory, desire, awareness of sense impressions, and even understanding, in order to prevent any “hindrance to the psychoanalyst’s intuition of the reality with which he must be at one”. In this way, the analyst enters with the patient into intuitive contact and being-at-one-with an innermost disturbing psychic reality that the patient, on his own, is unable to bear. The author expands on the fundamental significance of this ontological-intuitive approach of being in the experience, rather than an epistemological one when working within unrepressed and unrepresented unconscious states, which are closely connected to Bion’s and Winnicott’s late writings on mental catastrophe and early breakdown, and the massive defense organizations constructed to protect against them. The clinical illustration describes being In-tu-it (intuit) the patient’s unknown, unthinkable and non-communicating psychic reality, and the slow becoming of a lived, new emotional experience.
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