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It is the author's belief that psychoanalytic interpretations of unconscious phantasies, rather than discrediting them vis-à-vis reality, actually reinforce and substantiate their functioning. Following Bion, it is his belief that all psychopathology can be considered to be id pathology, that is, pathology that results from an inadequate transformation of "O," Bion's term for the Absolute Truth about Ultimate Reality (infinity, chaos). Normally, dreaming/phantasying acts as a containing contact-barrier between consciousness and the unconscious. Psychopathology is a testimony to a failure in the containment-dreaming-phantasying-contact-barrier continuum. Rather than defending against the libidinal and aggressive or destructive drives, an individual defends against the "truth instinct," which emanates from evolving "O." Dreaming and phantasying are first conducted for the infant by its mother, who, in a state of reverie, "dreams" him and "becomes" him in a non-Cartesian mode of knowing him and his pain. This process is repeated by the psychoanalyst.
Know, then, unnumbered Spirits around thee fly,
The light militia of the lower sky:
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box and hover round the ring.
-Alexander Pope, "The Rape of the Lock"
THE YEAR 1897 WAS A WATERSHED IN FREUD'S CONCEPTION OF psychoanalysis. That was the year in which, in a letter to his confidante, Wilhelm Fliess, he revealed that he had discovered the presence and importance of unconscious phantasy (Freud, 1897). Three years later he published his epochal Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900). Since then and until recent times, dreaming and its fraternal twin, phantasy, all but dominated the way in which analysts thought and practiced. Today, things have changed. Because Freud all but neglected the relevance of environmental factors, (except insofar as they evoked the responses of the id in cases of trauma), current analysts, save Kleinians, have reacted to that polarity by reassessing the importance of the fostering or nonfostering environment of the analysand and the impact of good versus damaging or of depriving relationships on his developmental legacy. As a result, the importance that was accorded to unconscious phantasy has significantly declined.
Bion was one of the few major analysts who maintained an evenly balanced perspective on the importance of the internal and external worlds. Bion stands out because of his elaboration of yet a third...