bion mental void alpha transformation.pdf

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Alpha-transformation, mental void, and edition

JAIME M. LUTENBERG

AbstractThere are patients whose outstanding feature is a particular difficulty in communicating with themselves. According toBion, who reconceptualized Freuds theory, all of us have in our inner world the potential for both producing and blockingalpha-transformations. When they are blocked, beta-elements are formed, which are unable to generate thought. Ourcapacity to think and to think ourselves depends exclusively on alpha-elements. Patients suffering from problems derivedfrom a compensated structural mental void are unable to think. Following Bion, the non-edited would, generally

speaking, be one of the facts that condition the formation of beta-elements. The production of beta-elements transformsthese personalities into functional illiterates. To what extent can we ignore the novelties that these patients present uswith through the production of beta-elements and bizarre objects? I wonder whether the concepts of repetition and re-edition, as they are currently used in the clinical process, are not actually casting a shadow over our minds, thus thwartingour ability to assess the total dimension of this functional illiterate condition. The analysts mind can be the first link in apatients chain of unthinkable thoughts: (1) repetition; (2) embryonic thoughts; (3) the non-edited; (4) structural mentalvoid; (5) functional illiterate; and (6) mental abortions.

Key words: W.R. Bion, alpha-transformation, mental void, edition

The coincidence between this congress on W.R.

Bions work and the 30th anniversary of his Italian

seminars (Bion, 2005) incited me to reread them.Among Bion?s first words, I ran across the following

very striking consideration: the subject I want to

discuss is one which I find very difficult to talk about

in any language (p. 1).

Almost without realizing it, I was facing what I felt

to be a reformulation of the equation Ol K. As

we know, Bion claimed that the analyst?s work is an

inquiry into the transformations in the analytic bond

triggered by the cesura, which links and discrimi-

nates both members of the analytic couple. During

each session, we witness the possibility of a new

mental birth. Now, what is the meaning of mental

birth according to Bion? We might understand thisas a new vertex (or reformulation) of the Freudian

technique consisting in making the unconscious

conscious. Bion has repeatedly shown us that if we

work leaving our conscious level free from memory

(the past) and desire (the future), we situate our-

selves in the best position to be open to the novelties

of each session, thus transforming the cesura into a

sort of creation generator for analyst and patient.

Re-reading Bions Italian seminars also led me to

reformulate my own previous deductions concerning

the concept of edition in analysis (Lutenberg,

1993a, 1996), in particular my connecting his final

statements with those he had expressed in A memoir

of the future (Bion, 1991).1

When I first noted the possibility of editing in

analysis, I expressed the opinion that in every

psychoanalytic process there are moments when

the analytic dialogue is centred on the task of re-

editing, that is, trying to turn the unconscious into

conscious. Yet there are also other moments of this

dialogue when analytic work is based on edition.

Re-reading Bion reminded me that, today, every

analytic dialogue invites us to work permanently

along the lines of edition. From the perspectiveBion developed in his Italian seminars and in other

papers (Bion, 1977), the entire emotional experience

during the session is always an edition.

Correspondence: Jaime M. Lutenberg, Av. Del Libertador 408- 2 8 Fl. Apt B, Buenos Aires Argentina. Tel: '54 11 4811 2753. Fax: '54 11 4811 2753.

E-mail: [email protected]

1 What follows is Bions statement from his Italian seminars on July 8, 1977:

But I would like to be able to say, Please tell me when your optic pits, at

about the third somite, became functional. Tell me when your auditory

pits became functional (Bion, 2005, pp. 23).

International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2009; 18: 8689

(Received 19 June 2008; accepted 20 February 2009)

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis


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Lewin (1939) adds to this concept with his

principle, which states that the whole is different

from the sum of its component parts2

. Each session

is a different whole, a new thing in itself (O).

In this context, we may consider the hypothesis

of re-edition as valid. However, it is also an illusion

of the analyst that does not account for the totality ofthe facts occurring during each session. If we agree

with Bion that the vertex of psychoanalysis is in O

(Bion, 1970), every analytic process undergoes

multiple transformative instances originating in the

link between the psychotic and nonpsychotic parts of

both patient and analyst.

If we base our considerations upon the cesura,

each session will stand as a new thing in itself.

This new synchronic whole will give rise to an

edition and only one and also to a new vision

of psychoanalytic truth: the truth of the relation-

ship (verdad vincular), which is different than other

truths.I will discuss here my personal conceptualization

of the structural mental void and of the potential

edition of those new mental elements inhabiting the

mental void. I will do so with the expectation of

starting a dialogue on the concept of alpha-transfor-

mation. My review of the ways in which the three

concepts interrelate will be very brief and open to

discussion.

Synthesis of the concept of mental void

(structural and emotional)

During my clinical experience, I regularly observed

that behind the silence of certain patients there was

only that sheer psychic silence, void. This observa-

tion led me to an in-depth investigation of mental

void whose conclusion was (cf. Lutenberg, 2007)

that we should differentiate structural mental void

from emotional void. The structural mental void is a

non-structure that has a virtual existence. It is

located deep down in the defensive secondary

symbiosis and in autism. It is a primitive defensive

organization secondarily compensated by different

psychopathological structures that neutralize and

hide it. Consequently, we will not encounter a

positive mental void in clinical work.

Symbiotic links ordinarily represent the most

common form of a successful and balanced com-

pensation of mental void. It is precisely the symbiotic

link that houses the virtual structure described here.

Only when individuals undergo physical or mental

separation from those objects or institutions with

which they were previously fused is the clinical

evidence of mental void revealed in its dramatic

turbulence.

Normal perinatal symbiosis is the postnatal matrix

where human beings start (or continue) their mental

development. For the newborn, such a link consti-tutes an undifferentiated psychosomatic whole that

serves as the basis for its mental transformations.3

The traumatic rupture of normal perinatal symbiosis

during the first year of life gives way to a compensa-

tory secondary symbiosis. Yet this secondary sym-

biosis perpetuates a narcissistic feebleness that leads

to a marked fragility in the face of frustration.

Mental void is the hiatus (split) arising within the

mind between the symbiotic background and its

narcissistic structure. From a metapsychological

point of view, we may postulate that mental void

comes to stand as a conceptual figure in the virtual

space between symbiosis and narcissism.New psychopathological structures emerge from

the secondary struggle against the feeling of terror.

There appear also new traumatic fixations asso-

ciated with the polymorphic nature of the secondary

defence against mental void. That is why, in our

clinical experience, we may find a range of comple-

mentarities between mental void and neurotic or

psychotic structures.

In different instances in the development of a

personality, there may appear different alternatives

concerning the relation containerl contained.

The most critical moment for the mind occurs whenthe total link situation requests the creation of

different expansions of the capacity for reverie and

a greater flexibility of the containment function

(see Bions comments in Cogitations, February 1971,

pp. 2424).

Emotional void (feeling of void) is a conscious

feeling of inner hollowness, of having nothing inside.

That which is missing refers to emotions, sensa-

tions, affects, and everything deriving from these.

The analyst must be able to differentiate the feeling

of void from the feeling of sadness or depres-

sion. Emotional void may or may not be tied to

structural mental void.

Structural mental void is a phenomenon that affects

only a split portion of the whole mind. The empty

portion leads a life conditioned by the personality of

2 Gestalt theory claims both that the whole is more than the sum of its

parts, and that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. There is a

huge conceptual difference between more and different.

3 Ashley Montagus book Touching: The human significance of the skin

(Chapters 2 and 3) was very helpful to me in reference to perinatal

symbiosis and the continuity between intrauterine and extrauterine lives.

He mentions there the neotenia phenomenon and says, quoting

Bostock: Human gestation actually comprises an intrauterine phase or

uterine gestation, and an extrauterine phase or extero-gestation . . .

[which] finishes when the child starts crawling . . . and would last as

long as uterine gestation (that is, nine months each).

Alpha-transformation, mental void, and edition 87


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the individual (or institution) with which the subject is

fused. We are dealing here with an amazing, para-

doxical form of alienation of which the subject is

completely unaware. The different parts that form the

mental void demand to be edited in the analysis

according to particular technical procedures.

Edition

The word edition has been coined to differentiate

the task described above from that of re-edition. If

we agree that the core of the psychoanalytic experi-

ence entails investigating the cesura (Bion, 1977),

that is, the fluid exchange of interpersonal and

transpersonal emotions in each session, the metaphor

condensed in re-edition may be replaced. Here

and now with me, like there and then may become

here and now between us, unlike with anybody

ever . . . neither in the past nor in the future.

The particularity of this viewpoint lies in the factthat, working in analysis within the synchronic level,

we include a synthesis of the three diachronic levels

of the psychoanalytic bond, namely (1) the dia-

chrony of the history of the analytic bond as a whole;

(2) the diachrony of the prehistory and history of the

patient; and (3) the diachrony of the prehistory and

history of the analyst. Such inclusion of the diachro-

nic levels in their articulation with the synchronic

level takes on a different meaning if we connect it to

Lewin?s principle, according to which the synchro-

nic whole is different from the sum of its diachronic

components.Concerning edition and the ways in which analysts

can put interpretations into words, I found it useful

to complement the concept of cesura with the notion

of interface.4

Interface refers to the technical

link between the computer and its user.

According to Bion, edition corresponds to the

transformation into alpha-elements of all those parts

of thought which are ejected out of the mind under

the form of beta-elements. From a semantic point of

view, transference edition refers to the vicissitudes of

a total process whose function is to give rise to the

mental birth of all those aspects of the patients

personality that had remained outside the dynamic

area of their mind. Such areas were engulfed in

symbiotic links (defensive secondary symbiosis) or

deeply embedded in their secondary autistic de-

fences. The structural mental void underlies both

forms of defence.

Edition: technical specificity of the concept

For Freud, the one who thinks pre-exists

thought itself; thoughts are the aim of the drive.

For Bion, thoughts pre-exist the thinker. Thought is

the specific stimulus for the thinking apparatus. To

edit the non-edited, the analyst must be able to

grasp, using his own insight, all those thoughts thathave no thinker. The task of transference edition

confronts us with unknown terror.

Summing up, edition includes two core compo-

nents, technically speaking. The most important one

is creating the specific mental structure (reverie

function) able to house (contain) the thoughts to

come. It is like building up the printing structure

for future editions. The other component refers to the

contents to be edited, that is, the process of trans-

forming into alpha-elements both the ejected beta-

elements and the bizarre objects created by them.

Edition is configured following a special syntaxthat combines several elements:

1. verbal free associations, dreams, and the

patient?s nocturnal hallucinations;

2. all the consequences of the defensive use of

massive projective identification;

3. the patients free body associations (Lutenberg,

1993b);

4. the patients various acting-out manifestations;

5. the analysts countertransference, which in-

cludes dreams and bodily resonances;

6. all possible forms of attacks on linking (either

verbal or presented as attacks on the setting)(cf. Bleger, 1967; Bion, 1967).

Summary

There are patients whose outstanding clinical feature

is their difficulty in communicating with them-

selves; Freud dealt with this problem throughout

his work. Yet it was Bion who reconceptualized it

with his hypothesis that all of us have in our inner

world the potential for both producing and blocking

alpha-transformations. When blocking occurs, beta-

elements result, which are unable to generatethought. Our capacity to think and to think our-

selves depends exclusively on alpha elements.

I believe that patients suffering from problems

derived from a compensated structural mental

void are unable to think many of their own

thoughts (Lutenberg, 2007). This is due to the

fact that their ego is split into several isolated portions.

One of these portions is the psychotic part of the

personality, described by Bion.

Following Freud, we might consider the non-

edited in the context of what is clinically desig-

nated as repetition beyond the pleasure principle.

4 This is a term originated in the field of information technology and

formulated by Negroponte in his 1996 book Being digital. Negropontes

approach helped me to rethink the concept of cesura (Bion, 1977; Freud,

192526). It also led me to include in my conceptualizations Libermans

contributions to communications theory (Liberman, 1976).

88 J. M. Lutenberg


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Following Bion, we would include it among those

facts that condition the formation of beta-elements.

However, the mental production of beta-elements

also gives rise to an active emptying of the mind.

Whenever massive projective identification avoids

thinking thoughts, a series of other functions are

swept along as well. The main ones are the capacityfor consciously registering feelings and perceptions

(visual, tactile, and aural capacities) and the ability

to pay attention. The preservation of these capa-

cities depends on the subjects ability to tolerate

frustration.

The production of beta-elements transforms these

personalities into functional illiterates. This word,

which refers to the mind, implies a sort of semantic

foreignness different from the foreignness derived

from repression. In functional illiterates, the very

production of words turns into a thing in itself,

which is foreign even to them.

The clinical process with severely disturbed pa-

tients poses the following question: To what extent

can we ignore the novelties that these patients

present us with either through their complex resis-

tance or through the production of beta-elements

and bizarre objects? I wonder whether the con-

cepts of repetition and re-edition, as they are

currently used in clinical practice, are not actually

casting a shadow in our minds, rendering us unable

to evaluate the full dimension of the functional

illiterate condition we observe.

The analysts mind can represent for the patient

the first link in a chain of unthinkable thoughts.Transference symbiosis reproduces and homologates

within the analytic bond both primal and

secondary symbiosis. The first corresponds to the

extrauterine gestation period, and the second devel-

ops as a defence against psychic traumas of that

same period (mental abortions). Symbiotic trans-

ference opens our way into embryonic thoughts,

all of which are virtual. They can become real

only after patients succeed in weaving their missing

mental fabric on the basis of alpha-elements.

The equation mental abortionsl edition

represents a synthesis of the point of view I have

developed in this paper.

Translated by Silvia Feld, Marco Conci, and Judith Filc

References

Bion, W.R. (1967). Second thoughts. London: Heinemann

Medical.

Bion, W.R. (1970). Attention and interpretation. London: Tavistock

Publications.

Bion, W.R. (1977). Two papers: The grid and the caesura. Rio de

Janiero: Imago Editora.

Bion, W.R. (1991). A memoir of the future. London: Karnac.Bion, W.R. (1992). Cogitations. London: Karnac.

Bion, W.R. (2005). Italian seminars. London: Karnac.

Bleger, J. (1967). Simbiosis y ambiguedad [Simbiosis and ambi-

guity]. Buenos Aires: Ed. Piados.

Freud, S. (192526). Inhibition, symptoms and anxiety, SE 20,

75175.

Lewin, K. (1939). Field theory and experiment in social psychology.

London: Tavistock.

Liberman, D. (1976). Comunicacion y psicoanalisis [Communica-

tion and psychoanalysis]. Buenos Aires: Alex Editor.

Lutenbeg, J. (1993a). Repeticion: reedicionedicion [Repetition:

re-editionedition]. Revista de Psicanalisis de APA. Numero

especial: La repeticion [Monographic issue: Repitition], 89110.

Lutenberg, J. (1993b) La asociacion libre corporal [Free body

associations]. Revista Psicoanalisis de APdeBA, 15, 26795.Lutenberg, J. (1996). La edicion en el analisis [Edition in

analysis]. Revista Zona Erogena, 31, 3536.

Lutenberg, J. (2007). Mental void and the borderline patient. In

A. Green (Ed.), Resonance of suffering (pp. 89120). London:

International Psychoanalytic Library.

Montagu, A. (1971). Touching. The human significance of the skin.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Negroponte, N. (1996). Being digital. New York: Vintage.

Author

Jaime M. Lutenberg is a medical doctor and

psychiatrist, and has an MA in psychoanalysis. He is

full member of the Argentinean PsychoanalyticalAssociation (APA) and the International Psycho-

analytical Association (IPA). He is a training teacher

at the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the APA

and on the Masters in Psychoanalysis course, and has

given seminars at various psychoanalytic institutions

in America and Europe. He is the author of the

following books: El psicoanalista y la verdad [Psycho-

analysis and truth] (1998), La ilusion vaciada [The

empty illusion] (1999), Rigoletto, un drama actual

[Rigoletto, a still relevant drama] (2000), El vaco

mental[Mental void] (2007), and Teoria de los vnculos

en psicoanalisis [Theories of links in psychoanalysis]

(2008). He has published over 40 papers in different

journals in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, and also in the

International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

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