1 Introduction

On initial consideration, religion appears to occupy a relatively minor position within the psychoanalytic paradigm. The concept of religion, or more precisely, religiosity in the broadest sense, a term which also incorporates mysticism,¹ is regarded as an archaic legacy from the evolutionary history of humanity.² Freud’s view of religion as an illusion intended to make the hardship of life more bearable is particularly well known. This view especially reflects Freud’s own positioning within post-Enlightenment critique of religion. For Freud clearly sees his psychoanalytic project as committed to a scientific atheism – despite the lingering ambivalence that runs through his work.³ However, taking a second look at the beginnings of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century, a more nuanced picture emerges: religion, alongside myth and art, is understood as an expression of a culture-forming renunciation of drives. That is, religion is acknowledged as a discursive construct resulting from the human capacity for sublimation in the face of demands of the drives that are not necessarily life-preserving.

Behind this lies Freud’s early understanding of the pathologies of psychic life. Unlike from around the mid-1920s onward, Freud initially assumed that the disturbances and pathologies of the psyche, “[…] by making things larger and coarser, can draw our attention to normal conditions which would otherwise have escaped us.”⁴ In other words: the pathologies and disturbances of psychic life are not mere anomalies, but rather offer a coarse insight into the conditio humana – into a human nature shaped by drive life, dependent on others, and thus always co-formed by socialization. In this sense, one can say that although the pathologies and disturbances of the psyche may appear as coarsenings, they are by no means to be understood as general deviations from a norm; rather, they exist within a broadly human continuum of experiential possibility.⁵

It was precisely this kind of perspective that allowed psychoanalysis in its early years to establish an almost seamless transition from therapeutic application to anthropology, leading it to conceive of itself as a cultural theory as well. That such a movement is definitely no one-way street is demonstrated, among other things, by Freud’s engagement with the ethnographic material of his time, from which he drew important conclusions that, in turn, influenced the theoretical development of psychoanalysis – particularly his metapsychology. One need only think of mores, incest taboo, and conscience, which Freud in Totem and Taboo (1913) referred to as culture-forming factors, and which, in their interplay, represent a structural precursor of the super-ego.⁶

But what prompted psychoanalysis, in the years that followed, to alter its attitude toward religion – no longer honouring it as a cultural achievement alongside myth and art, but rather perceiving it as an illusion to be overcome, as Freud articulated most explicitly in The Future of an Illusion?

Westerink points out that the teleological assumptions inherent in Freud’s theory of sexuality led to shifts within psychoanalysis, as these assumptions were undermining its previous approach, namely a “patho-analytical perspective” on human beings. Primarily responsible for this was a methodological reorientation towards a developmental psychology model, which accompanied the further elaboration of Freud’s theories of sexuality and drive. From then on, regarding development, normative assumptions were brought to the forefront when it came to providing insight into psychic life and describing its possible disturbances.⁷ This is not the place to examine in detail the complex development of psychoanalytic theory. What can be noted, however, is that due to the teleological and normative assumptions of the developmental psychology approach, clear distinctions between the “normal” and the “abnormal” came to the focus in the description of psychic life, replacing the previously assumed general human continuum of pathology.⁸ Among other things, this had the effect that religion was no longer recognized as a work of sublimation, but was instead viewed – within the framework of human developmental history – as an outdated stage of cultural history.⁹ This approach is not unique to Freud. Precursors to such a view can already be found in the religious critique and anthropology of the 19th century.¹⁰

One may speculate as to what, beyond the reorientation toward a developmental psychology model, contributed to the far-reaching shift toward viewing religion as a legacy of humanity that must be overcome. Another significant factor was undoubtedly Freud’s effort – an effort continuously haunting contemporary psychoanalysis – to keep pace with the emerging positivist orientation of the natural sciences, to remain compatible with them, and to preserve a certain credibility; that is, ultimately, to gain admission into the canon of the rational sciences,¹¹ also evident in early psychoanalysis’ rejection of occultism and spiritualism. However, Freud’s work retains a certain ambivalence in this regard as well.¹²

Not all psychoanalysts of the following generation felt equally committed to the scientific atheism advocated by Freud. One notable exception is the British psychoanalyst Wilfred R. Bion, even though he worked within the developmental-psychological paradigm of psychoanalysis that increasingly emerged after Freud. Bion made a foundational contribution to the understanding of early childhood development by further developing assumptions from object relations theory and seeking to integrate them into a psychoanalytic theory of thinking and learning. Moreover, his work is clearly inspired by references to religion and mysticism. In his clinical work with patients and their shared experiences, Bion discovers a depth dimension expressed in psychic processes – a dimension that he also sees articulated through religion and mysticism (alongside art and science).

The following contribution is based on the thesis that Bion’s theory of experience and the depth dimension he describes – designated by the sign O – can open a dialogue between religion, mysticism, and psychoanalysis, one that may enrich the perspective outlined in the introduction with important new aspects. Religion is understood neither as a relic of civilizational development to be overcome, nor – as attempted by early psychoanalysis – as part of a universally human pathology. Rather, drawing on Bion’s work, it can be viewed in the spirit of mysticism as a fundamental dimension of human psychic experience in relation to others and the world as such.

Following the introduction the second part (2) of the article introduces the core elements of Bion’s psychoanalytic theory. It discusses his development of Melanie Klein’s object relations theory and outlines his theory of learning through experience. The third part (3) examines Bion’s theory with regard to the depth dimension of experience that eludes verbal articulation, showing how, at this point, an empirical view of psychoanalytic processes gives way to an ontological one. Finally, the fourth part (4) explores this paradigm shift in relation to his concept of O, drawing on elements of the mysticism of John of the Cross. The aim here is to probe the affinities between the two theoretical frameworks. On this basis, a preliminary proposal will be offered for how an alternative relationship between psychoanalysis and religion might be conceived through Bion’s theories.

2 Psychoanalysis as a Theory of Learning and Thinking

Building on the works of Freud and Klein, Bion developed an independent and unique theory of psychoanalysis. His approach is distinguished by taking as its starting point the question of the conditions for psychic development from where it attempts to develop a general theory of thinking. From the mid-1950s onward, he gained recognition through his work with psychotic patients (as well as through therapeutic work with groups), who for a long time were considered untreatable by conventional psychoanalytic methods. These years, in particular, had a decisive influence on his thinking and theoretical development, which found expression in key texts such as Attacks on Linking (1959), A Theory of Thinking (1962)¹³ as well as in the monographs Learning from Experience (1962), Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963), and Transformations (1965) – each of which, in its own way, charted new theoretical territory. Bion did not develop his theory in a continuous or coherent manner, but rather in a sequence of phases that can be traced both through the history of his work and his biography. A particularly significant turning point is marked by Attention and Interpretation (1970), which may be regarded as the onset of Bion’s later theoretical phase.¹⁴

Based on Klein’s ideas which laid essential foundations for the theoretical understanding of infant experience Bion formulated a theory of thinking in the 1960s that elevates the mother-infant relationship to the paradigm of human communication and experience. In her 1946 essay, Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, Klein derived from the infant’s relationship to the mother two configurations of mental experience that reflect fundamental structures of the human psyche and its relational orientation to others: the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position. Both forms of experience represent modes of relationship and contact between the infant and the mother, shaped by phantasy as well as drive life and governed by archaic affects – manifesting for the infant primarily in love and hate. Klein assumes that the newborn, under the influence of both the life and the death drive, turns toward the other – that is, the mother. However, in this early phase, the baby is plagued by unbearable feelings such as pain and tension, which are induced by the anxiety-provoking death drive. The “early ego” finds a way to cope with these indigestible emotions by developing defence mechanisms of projection and splitting. These allow the ego to split off its own destructive parts and project them onto the mother’s breast as the first external object.¹⁵

Bion, however, does not see in these processes – described by Klein in relation to the paranoid-schizoid position – merely unconscious defence mechanisms and phantasies that later resurface and dominate in severe pathologies. Rather, he understands them as a fundamental form of human communication. In this regard, he states the following in Learning from Experience:

Melanie Klein has described an aspect of projective identification concerned with the modification of infantile fears; the infant projects a part of its psyche, namely its bad feelings, into a good breast. Thence in due course they are removed and re-introjected. During their sojourn in the good breast they are felt to have been modified in such a way that the object that is re-introjected has become tolerable to the infant’s psyche. From the above theory I shall abstract for use as a model the idea of a container into which an object is projected and the object that can be projected into the container: the latter I shall designate by the term ‘contained’.¹⁶

For Bion, the concept of projective identification is linked to a form of intersubjective dialectic, as projection and introjection imply a reciprocal process between ego and object (the breast). As Hinshelwood rightly observes, Bion first articulated this perspective in his key text Attacks on Linking, thereby laying the groundwork for the insights found in Learning from Experience. In this work, he places the unconscious process of evacuating unprocessed mental content – that is, projective identification – distinctly at the centre of his reflections on psychic development (container-contained theory, C/Cd). The mother-infant relationship – more precisely, the exchange of “not digested” (preconceptional) emotions and experiences in the sense of Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position, as it transitions toward the depressive position – is thus regarded as the prototype of human communication.¹⁷ A central foundation of this form of communication is the rudimentary psychic process of expelling undigested elements, which – through interaction with an other (the container, understood similarly to Klein’s concept of the breast) – are to be transformed into mentally accessible constructs: the transformation of so-called beta-elements into alpha-elements (which are essential for representation and thinking). These are then reintrojected by the infant along with the alpha-function of the container, whose crucial role lies in making “raw material”, that is, sensory impressions and emotional experiences, accessible to thinking and thus to learning. This process of transformation, which unfolds in the exchange between infant and mother, is closely linked to the container’s capacity for reverie¹⁸ and takes place – following Freud’s conception of the primary process – under the influence of love, hate, and the epistemophilic instinct as the force in search for knowledge.¹⁹

The metapsychological elaboration of the mother-infant relationship into a container-contained model (C/Cd) also shapes the therapeutic perspective on the dynamic between analysand and analyst. The psyche of the analyst, capable of reverie, is meant to enable the transformation of the analysand’s inexpressible and “undigested” emotional experiences (beta-elements) into new possibilities for thought. In doing so, Bion expands Kleinian theory by introducing an interpersonal dimension of attachment. Bion is convinced that the human being is inevitably dependent on the other – not merely for the satisfaction of needs. Rather, the other is required in the way the analyst functions within the therapeutic situation: as a mediating link between the analysand’s conscious and unconscious mind, so that learning from experience can take place. This, in turn, integrates the emerging psyche of the infant into the social realm, initiating mental growth.²⁰

3 On the Depth Dimension of Human Experience – O

While Bion’s interest in mental growth at the beginning of the 1960s is primarily to be understood in terms of the transformation of indigestible beta-elements into mental constructs – a process he refers to as transformation in K (K standing for Knowledge) – this focus shifts at the latest with the publication of Attention and Interpretation (1970), which marks a turning point regarding the question of learning through experiential exchange. Bion no longer asks primarily which psychic mechanisms – that is, which conditions and structures of the psyche – are necessary and contribute to the possibility of a shared reality at all; this had previously formed the basis of his epistemological approach. Instead, he now asks what it actually is – in its formlessness and originality – that takes place in every human situation and experience, and is transformed under the various aspects of thinking, understanding and knowing. This significant shift in perspective has often been described by commentators as Bion’s ontological shift, which led him beyond the epistemological framework of his adaption of Kleinian theoretical elements.²¹ Put differently, the focus is no longer on adjusting to a shared and intersubjectively mediated reality in the sense of Learning from Experience, but – particularly with regard to psychoanalysis – on the confrontation with not-knowing: with that depth dimension which, for Bion, constitutes the true factor of mental growth, yet remains unknowable: O. With this view, Bion opens a new perspective for psychoanalysis on the numinous, which, in the various traditions following Freud, was largely neglected. Too much effort had been devoted to keeping psychoanalytic discourse compatible with the exact sciences. There were considerable reservations about engaging in serious discussion with religion and mysticism.²²

When Bion distances himself from the psychoanalytic field’s belief in (objective) science, he does so in part with reference to Kant and his critical philosophy. Bion points to the proximity he sees between the depth dimension he designates as O and Kant’s Ding-an-sich.²³ This is meant to underscore that human beings, through the activity of the intellect, have no discursive access to the sphere designated by O. Only through an intuitive moment – one that suspends all previously intellect-guided coordinates – can contact occur, enabling a transformation in O that goes far beyond the earlier transformation in K, initiated through learning and manifest in knowledge. The level of knowledge (K) is not destroyed in this process, but is temporarily suspended or transcended. Bion emphasizes that this can be a deeply unsettling experience, as the ego’s frameworks for self-orientation are destabilized – an experience that may, at times, bear the features of a psychic catastrophe with an unpredictable outcome. In such a situation, the ego activates defence mechanisms to shield itself from the anxiety of not-knowing. Most notably, the retreat into already familiar concepts serves to fill the emerging void and to mitigate the turbulence that arises within it.²⁴ In this light, O presents the ego with an uncontrollable challenge – one it must nevertheless face if it wishes to surpass its limits and grow, or rather, to gain depth itself – a depth that, to sharpen the point somewhat, can be thought of as transcendence.

The ontological character of Bion’s reorientation has had a significant impact on therapeutic practice: Freud’s archaeological model – particularly with regard to his conception of the unconscious – recedes into the background in favour of an orientation towards the present moment. The aim is no longer merely to uncover repressed material or to interpret affectively charged and internalized object relations. Since both the analysand and the analyst participate in O during the session, the goal is instead to come into contact with these transformations in the here and now. One could say: whereas Freud’s primary concern was for psychoanalytic treatment to restore the patient’s capacity for love and action by enabling insight into their “illness” and thereby dissolving symptoms, Bion places at the centre of his work the possibility of self-knowledge regarding one’s own Dasein – made possible through transformations in O. However, with one crucial qualification: such self-knowledge rather resembles a kind of self-loss, since genuine understanding for Bion begins only where rigid self-images and the roles and concepts a person constructs about themselves in relation to others begin to dissolve. The depth dimension signified by the letter O is not the object of knowledge or learning in the conventional sense. Rather, it is absolute reality, and, according to Bion, it can neither be possessed nor appropriated – one can only become it. In this, Bion implicitly introduces a new conception of the human being – one that resonates with theoretical currents in postmodern philosophy, even as it echoes Socratic undertones (“Know thyself”).

Especially in Attention and Interpretation (1970), the limitations of a psychoanalytic model of learning with respect to O are clearly outlined. Here, Bion methodologically approaches modes of inquiry that recall the path of apophatic theology, the “via negationis”. It is striking that Bion’s theoretical innovations not only introduce many terms unusual for psychoanalysis, but also draw heavily from a distinctly religious vocabulary. It is therefore not surprising that the symbol O has proven to be a point of contention and disagreement – raising for many the urgent question: Is Bion introducing the religious into psychoanalysis, or is he merely drawing on analogies to serve his theoretical purposes?²⁵ This question becomes even more pressing given the opacity and obscurity that characterize Bion’s writings at first reading – they demand from the reader a high degree of frustration tolerance and a willingness to endure not-knowing. One might even say that his texts themselves invite readers into a direct encounter with O.

In order to grasp the core problem of this discussion, it is advisable to take a closer look at one of Bion’s enigmatic statements about O – a passage that has been widely debated in psychoanalytic circles – and the conclusions he draws for psychoanalytic practice. In Attention and Interpretation, Bion writes the following about O:

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 formlessness 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.²⁶

What stands out at first is that Bion, in referring to O, merely states that this notation points to an event or occurrence that is not discursively definable; it is neither calculable nor predictable in advance, and thus it is also absent from the discourse of language – indeed, it is itself a kind of “no-thing”. Bion’s statements regarding O are therefore not to be understood ontically, as referring to a given thing or factual condition, but rather point to the way in which O is encountered, without explaining what it is.²⁷ This is made clear in the passage cited above, in which Bion states that O “can be ‘become’ but […] cannot be ‘known’.” The only access to O is through its evolution, that is, only the consequences that follow from it allow, retrospectively (and phenomenologically), for a sense of what O might be.

Two aspects are often overlooked in discussions of O, particularly in the context just mentioned. First, Bion never claims that by invoking terms like absolute truth or the infinite, he is reintroducing something “religious” into psychoanalysis. He merely states that with O, he is introducing a non-discursive sign into psychoanalysis – one that has traditionally been represented by the aforementioned terms: absolute truth, godhead, and infinity. O “is not” God; rather, it points toward a dimension of experience for which language is insufficient. At the same time, this does not mean that it is impossible to translate something of this experience through a particular kind of work – that of transformation. Bion conceives of this act of translation, among other things, as a kind of short-circuit between experience and action in and through language. He refers to this as the “language of achievement”.²⁸ It is not O itself, but the contact with O and the experience that unfolds from it that is translated – something Bion envisions as a kind of performative realization of O.²⁹

Second, it is often missed that Bion’s reference to the representations of O – the godhead, the infinite, or absolute truth – primarily alludes to a dynamic understanding of being as becoming, in contrast to a static notion of being. This resonates with ideas found in process philosophy, particularly that of Alfred N. Whitehead, as well as in the philosophy of life of Henri Bergson – philosophical currents with which Bion also engaged.³⁰ A hasty accusation that sees in Bion’s references to religious terminology merely a descent into obscurity overlooks the subtle allusions embedded within them – references that are, in fact, helpful for understanding what Bion seeks to articulate in his later work. It must also be remembered that this is ultimately an effort to rethink the psychoanalytic situation of experience. Bion is convinced that the treatment – meaning the living encounter between analysand and analyst – must involve a contact with, and a transformation in, O. Therefore, O forms the nucleus of the entire process. In this regard, Bion notes in Attention and Interpretation: “No psychoanalytic discovery is possible without recognition of its [O] existence, ‘at-one-ment’ with it and evolution.”³¹

According to Bion, neither the mere memory and working through (of a conflictual past and its associated sedimented object relations experiences) on the part of the analysand, nor the evenly suspended attention (gleichschwebende Aufmerksamkeit) that Freud proposes as a central instrument of the analyst’s technique, is sufficient for an encounter with – or a transformation in – O. Bion’s demand is therefore more radical and concerns, first and foremost, the attitude of the analyst. In his view, the analyst must free themselves from all memories and desires, because: “The exercises in discarding memory and desire must be seen as preparatory to a state of mind in which O can evolve.”³² All preconceived knowledge must be set aside or let go of, and any anticipation of what is to come must be avoided. Rather than falling back on conceptual frameworks and familiar interpretive patterns, Bion emphasizes the analyst’s “negative capability”³³ – the capacity to endure a state of alert waiting and to tolerate uncertainty. In other words, a suspension of reflection must be borne. The uncertainty that arises in this state must be sustained despite emerging doubts, until O occurs and something finite emerges from the infinite – something that then evolves into new transformations, mediated through the reverie of both analyst and analysand, as previously described in relation to the C/Cd model. Bion’s demands go so far – and this is particularly striking in contrast to other psychoanalytic schools such as Freud, Klein, or Lacan – that, in order to come into contact with O (in the respective analytic session) and to participate in its unfolding, the analyst must expose themselves to a state of hallucinosis.³⁴ From here, from the lively and vibrant field of a protomental reality, interpretations are to arise – without rigid reference to the past or to what is anticipated.³⁵

4 Dark Night and Mental Growth

Bion frequently turns to mysticism, on the one hand to demonstrate how the absolute reality he designates as O has already been spoken of, and on the other hand to highlight the insights mysticism offers into how an encounter with this dimension may be possible. Alongside Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), the great German mystic of the Middle Ages, and occasional references to Jewish Kabbalah, Bion’s engagement centres especially on John of the Cross (1542–1591), one of the most important figures of Spanish mysticism in the early modern period.³⁶

In the preface to the publication of the transcript of Bion’s 1965 lecture Memory and Desire in the Complete Works, editor Chris Mawson offers an intriguing observation – one that is not only of general interest, but especially helpful in clarifying Bion’s reference to mysticism in connection with his call for the restriction of all intellectual (knowledge) points of orientation in therapeutic work. Mawson notes that Bion owned a copy of John of the Cross’ The Ascent of Mount Carmel, which – alongside The Dark Night – is considered one of his major writings. In this volume, Bion marked a specific passage that is highly significant for understanding what he means by the analyst’s “negative capability”. This passage corresponds closely with the demand to abstain from memory and desire – in other words, it provides a central instruction as to what must be fulfilled, or more precisely, relinquished, in order to favour and enable a contact with, and transformation in, O.³⁷ The passage marked by Bion in Ascent of Mount Carmel reads as follows:

Since our purpose here is to set forth the teaching that will lead the soul forward in contemplation toward union with God – for which all sensible means and exercises of the faculties of the soul must be set aside so that God may effect divine union in the soul by His own doing – it is fitting to proceed in this way: gradually relieving the soul’s faculties […], so that space may be made for the infusion and illumination […], since their capacity is unable to attain such a lofty endeavour […].

Now, since it is indeed true that a person must come to know God more by what He is not than by what He is, one must advance toward Him by withdrawing from all that can be grasped through natural and miraculous perception – to the utmost degree possible – rather than by clinging to it.

Accordingly, we will now treat the faculty of memory in the same way: lifting it beyond its natural limits and boundaries, and raising it above itself – meaning, renouncing all clear insight and tangible possession, in the highest hope of the incomprehensible God.³⁸

A first glance at the text reveals the methodological inspiration Bion may have drawn from it. Although the spiritual instructions of John of the Cross clearly emerge from a confessional-religious framework, Bion nevertheless finds a great deal already prefigured that resonates with his own innovations in psychoanalysis. In order to clarify Bion’s references, it may be helpful to briefly contextualize the terminology used by John of the Cross, as it presupposes a certain familiarity with the Christian tradition of contemplative spirituality in which he stands. Both The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night are to be understood as spiritual guides, and by no means to be regarded as scholastic treatises, intended to lead the human being toward union with God – a phrase that closely aligns with Bion’s concept of “at-one-ment”.

The central concept in the mystical theology of John of the Cross is undoubtedly that of the Dark Night. It serves as the title of one of his major works and, on the other hand, as the central motif of a poem in which the mystical experience is described – a poem that is placed at the beginning of both of the aforementioned texts.³⁹ In his mystical teaching, John of the Cross outlines a path to God that departs from what are typically considered the reliable avenues of both perception (of the senses) and intellectual activity. What is perhaps even more striking is that he does not rely on religious beliefs in the sense of firmly established and handed-down convictions. On the contrary, his concern is that the God-seeker open themselves to the spiritual path of personal experience; that’s what really matters to him, personal commitment. Along this path, the God-seeker are shaken in their most fundamental assumptions – particularly those about what they believed they already knew about themselves and about God. What God ultimately is – as the central reference point of experience – remains shrouded in silence on the path John describes, as is characteristic of negative theology. Thus, in the passage cited earlier, he writes: “a person must come to know God more by what He is not than by what He is.” Neither imagination nor understanding (as the capacity for knowledge) are sufficient to approach God. Language fails before God and His reality – at least in its naming and sense-making function. God can only be spoken of negatively; yet this kind of speech does not result in rational knowledge. John of the Cross, in his mysticism, stands firmly within the tradition of apophatic theology, and at the same time takes a clear stance against all forms of ecstatic piety that claim to grasp God through visions or similar phenomena – in short, through images.⁴⁰ As the cited passage demonstrates, he instead calls for “withdrawing from all that can be grasped through natural and miraculous perception” in order to enter the mystical path; only the soul that is prepared to do so can experience the union with God.

The withdrawal of the soul and the mystical path begin with the night of the senses – a letting go of all sensual attachments. It marks the first of three nights (with the third already pointing toward union with God through the transformación por amor) that await the person in search of God. The nights described by John are to be understood as purifications of the soul, each bringing distinct experiential qualities and comprising both an active and a passive dimension.⁴¹ In summary, however, they all represent an “abyss of faith”,⁴² insofar as faith is understood as something pre-given and already acquired, in the sense of taking something to be true or “believing” in something. John’s mysticism departs from such a notion of faith; it is to be seen as an absolute risk, an exposure to the unknown (the Other) through the relinquishing of all certainties.

The dark night of the senses concerns the sensory part of the soul. As John of the Cross puts it, it is about relinquishing the “appetites for worldly possessions”⁴³ – setting aside those perceptions that are attached to worldly desires. The second night is even more radical than the first. It concerns the spirit, initiating not only a turning away from the world, but a turning away of the person from themselves. In this stage, the purification of the soul’s three faculties takes place: reason, memory, and will.

This second night is described in the third book of The Ascent of Mount Carmel. It elaborates on the restriction of memory. John is not concerned with destroying the three faculties of the soul, and thus the effectiveness of the spirit (as a higher level of the soul), but rather with leaving them “[…] behind and in silence so that God Himself may effect divine union in the soul. As a result, one has to follow this method of disencumbering, emptying, and depriving the faculties of their natural authority and operations to make room for the inflow and illumination of the supernatural.”⁴⁴ Bion expresses a similar view regarding the suspension of memory and desire. Only where emptiness arises can God – or more precisely, the divine, in its love, which signifies a promise, an absolute yes to life and to unceasing becoming – be poured in. If, however, the soul is filled with images and ideas, whether of itself, the world, or God, no union can take place. The emptying of the senses and of the mind is an absolute prerequisite for the transformative experience of union with the divine. One of the most interesting aspects – perhaps something Bion noticed and drew inspiration from – is that John of the Cross holds that along the mystical path, that is, through the purification experienced in the various nights, the virtues of faith, hope, and love gradually take the place of the soul’s faculties: faith replaces the cognitive capacity of understanding, hope takes the place of memory, and love that of the will.

This raises the question of how John of the Cross’ mysticism can be understood in relation to Bion, and what considerations come into play in doing so. It should not be hastily claimed that Bion, through his references to mysticism in general – and to John of the Cross in particular – is introducing mysticism (and by extension, religion) into psychoanalysis. It is therefore accurate to say, as Mawson does, that Bion makes a psychoanalytically informed mysticism conceivable, rather than developing a mystical psychoanalysis, as he has often been accused of doing. Nonetheless, the question remains to what extent Bion’s references are limited to analogies.⁴⁵

If one examines the passage marked by Bion more closely, it can be concluded that – analogous to the purificatory process of the night of the senses and the night of the spirit – he likewise calls for the withdrawal of sensory and intellectual capacities on the part of the analyst. In order to come into contact with O, the analyst must relinquish their knowledge of objective givens – namely the material usually drawn upon for interpretations – in the sense of memory: whether personal memories or recollections related to the analysand and prior sessions. Such memories would prematurely stifle the still-emerging O and its inherent openness (its unsaturated moment). The same applies to desire (“Wunsch”), which Bion understands as a mode of longing that aims at objectification – that is, at what is already known or expected. Like John of the Cross, Bion views the suspension of both memory and desire as a prerequisite for a transformation in O, which, for Bion, depends on the “at-one-ment” of analyst and analysand in O. This means that both the God-seeking person described by John and the analyst (together with the analysand) in the therapeutic situation can only by taking the risk of suspending self-reflection and personal self-positioning in the world (in knowledge) undergo a profound experience and transformation.⁴⁶

As if Bion’s references were not already a crossing of the Rubicon for some of his colleagues, he adds yet another theoretical component to the renunciation of memory and desire – one that is helpful for understanding the stance he calls for. In Attention and Interpretation, he writes the following:

It may be wondered what state of mind is welcome if desires and memories are not. A term that would express approximately what I need is ‘faith’ – faith that there is an ultimate reality and truth – the unknown, unknowable, ‘formless infinite’. This must be believed of every object of which the personality can be aware: the evolution of ultimate reality (signified by O) has issued in objects of which the individual can be aware. The objects of awareness are aspects of the ‘evolved’ O, and are such that the sensuously derived mental functions are adequate to apprehend them. For them faith is not required; for O it is.⁴⁷

According to Bion, coming into contact with O requires something akin to an act of faith – an act that allows for being exposed and for the capacity to endure uncertainty. This is not about belief in something (something objective), but rather that the phenomena themselves, the objects, and the possibility of perceiving and processing them mentally, point toward O. However, much like in the second night described by John of the Cross, these are understood only as negative inferences – “this is not it” – with respect to the divine. Their value lies in the fact that they evolve from O. In keeping with the apophatic radition of mysticism, Bion emphasizes that in order to achieve “at-one-ment” with O – a possibility he sees as always present in the therapeutic session between analysand and analyst – all certainties must be relinquished. The “at-one-ment” that Bion envisions here – again in analogy to the mysticism of John of the Cross – is by no means to be understood as a static moment. Rather, it is a continual immersing into and re-emerging from O, a dynamic process that transforms one’s view of the world and causes it to appear in a new light: perhaps richer, more dynamic, and – following the spirit of the second night – more hopeful.⁴⁸ It is fair to say that all three nights of John’s mysticism find their counterpart in the psychoanalytic process as conceived by Bion. The first two nights, each in their own way, suspend all relation to the world and temporarily deprive the God-seeking person of their self-location within it. The third night brings the longed-for union – but this union is neither a fusion nor a complete dissolution. Rather, it represents an extraordinary form of relationship with the Absolute, one that, within the mystical tradition, is often expressed through the metaphor of love. In this sense – and this is what Bion acknowledges and finds particularly compelling – the mystical experience does not offer a meaning-based answer, for there is no ultimate referent.⁴⁹ Rather, it is a living relationship with the Unknown, with the godhead, which – as Meister Eckhart puts it – is born within the human being.⁵⁰ The godhead remains dark and unfathomable, even if some form of (immediate) relationship to it may be possible. Everything that follows from this relationship remains subject to becoming. To do justice to the unceasing becoming of the godhead, one must relinquish both memory (retrospectively) and desire (prospectively). For both modes of reference carry with them their own preconfigured and limited forms of knowledge, and are thus incapable of corresponding to the emergence of O and its emanative unfolding.

It is accurate to say that Bion finds in apophatic mysticism certain methodological elements that he can make fruitful for his theory of psychoanalysis. However, his aim is not to integrate a religious system into his theory. Rather, his approach to mysticism itself raises the question of what religion is, if it is not understood merely as an institution or a system of belief. His adaptation of John of the Cross’ mysticism draws especially on its practical elements, which – through their radical nature and departure from traditional religious thought – are without precedent. Mysticism, in this sense, turns against all idolatry, and it is precisely this aspect that Bion finds compelling.

5 Conclusions

This contribution has shown that Bion’s reference to mysticism – although, as demonstrated, he consistently treats O from the perspective of psychoanalytic practice – indirectly draws attention to a resource present within religion: namely, that religion, in its traditional rites, practices, and (written) testimonies, has preserved a hint to a dimension of experience that ultimately refers to something unavailable to the human being, yet which continually lets them be. Whether one refers to this dimension as the numinous or the godhead, for Bion, these are merely representations of an already shared (but incomprehensible) and open reality. Bion’s psychoanalysis, and his fruitful borrowings from mysticism, open up a discussion – yet barely held – that goes beyond Freud’s view of religion. At its centre is not the question of the pathological dimension of religion, nor of religion as a stage in human development to be overcome, but rather the question of the living experience of reality itself.

Bion’s dimension of experience is by no means concerned with mere ecstatic states; rather, the transformations in and arising from O are grounded in a fundamental feeling of awe.⁵¹ This awe before the numinous, as Bion describes it, has nothing to do with the usual accusation against the Father-God, as Freud presents it in reference to his primal horde theory in Totem and Taboo. For – and in this Freud is right – this Father-God is an illusion, a projection of the human being; he is not the numinous. That God is a human idol, a construct born under the sway of memory and desire, out of fear of primordial becoming and the departure into the open.

In mysticism, Bion sees a turning away from religion’s attempt to form an image of the numinous that conforms to our whims and childlike longings. What is at stake here – and Bion emphasizes this repeatedly from various perspectives – is a relationship with an absent object, one that can neither be possessed nor controlled. Yet this absent object is nothing other than ultimate reality itself, which the human being cannot have, but only be and become – and this, perhaps, constitutes the greatest challenge on the path of mental growth. In contrast to Freud, Bion does not view religion as an archaic remnant of human history. Rather, he sees in it – understood in the mystical sense – an encounter with O that has left all images behind.⁵² “Probably,” Bion concludes – though, as has been tried to show, he insists on maintaining a distinction between psychoanalysis and religion – “it is the religious mystics who have come closest to giving expression to the experience of O.”⁵³

O…