At the present time, there is a great debate about intersubjectivity. I wish to remind you in this paper that intersubjectivity is at the core of Bion's psychoanalytical conception. He introduced it progressively and in different manners. I will analyse this evolution in his work. Intersubjectivity became more and more internal to the process of symbolization, which Bion used. I have highlighted three steps as regards the way in which the relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization can be considered. These steps are like three loops of a spiral.

My hypothesis is that there are three types of relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization in the evolution of Bion's work:

- Firstly, intersubjectivity is Bion's workfield but symbolization remains in its classical form to be aware of unconscious processes. This corresponds to a period when Bion was working as a psychiatrist and as a group therapist.

- Secondly, intersubjectivity becomes the manner in which Bion exposes a new way of symbolizing. He then introduces new concepts (alpha function, container-contained relation). The model of a “mother-baby dyad” gives form to this perspective. He was working with psychotics at that time.

- Thirdly, intersubjectivity and symbolization are more closely articulated as symbolization entirely depends on intersubjectivity. It is thus in the field of intersubjectivity that we can think about the position of the practitioner with the new concept of transformation and the new definition of “attention”. The model of this last perspective is groupal and institutional.

Three books have marked this evolution: Experiences in groups and others papers , 1961, Learning from experience, 1962, and Attention and Interpretation, 1970. Each of them is a stage in the evolution of his work.

Previously few brief definitions. “Intersubjectivity” means that something occurs between Subjects. We adopt the definition of Kaës (1993). There is an opposition between “intrapsychic” and “intersubjectif” (Golse, 2002). Therefore “intersubjectif” implies to consider the unconscious dynamic of Subjects, it is not synonymous of “interaction” or “interpersonal”. Classically “symbolisation” is an "operation by which something represents something else for other" (Gibeault, 2002). We will use it in a larger meaning to tell each process of representation, even when there is no yet conscious of an absent object. If firstly the symbol formation has been conceived on a method verbal by Freud (the word represents a thing for another), Hinshelwood (1989) indicates that M. Klein has extended this meaning to the children game. Presently, according to Rene Roussillon (1999), even the formation of "thing presentation" is considered as a primary symbolisation. Bion will help us to consider this evolution between a secondary symbolisation, founded on “word presentation”, and a primitive and intersubjective symbolisation.

Bion was of great help for practice in institutions (Amstrong, 1992). After Menzies (1988) I will take the example of the analysis of the work with babies, but some in nursery. For demonstration I will present a vignette that I will interpret each time from the perspective of the particular relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization.

Gabriel and Mary in the nursery

I used to work as a psychologist in many day-care nurseries twenty-five years ago and I remember a baby and his nurse. Gabriel is nine-months old and he has privileged bonds with Mary, a young nurse. It is a prosaic situation, but it poses a problem for caregivers. When Mary is in his room, Gabriel does not accept his meal from anyone else; when she goes out, he cries behind the door. Mary thinks of him all the time, even when at home. The other nurses tell me their criticisms against her: she should do something to stop it. It is a problem for other babies. When Mary is with them, she is so monopolized by Gabriel that she can't give them enough attention. Above all, it also seems to pose a problem to Gabriel. He often cries and doesn't play in the nursery.

It is not a case of therapy, but this intersubjective configuration is typical for those of us who work in institutions, with babies, children, patients or old people. With the different steps of the meaning of intersubjectivity, we will be able to interpret it in different ways, in different vertices. Each version is correct but each one brings a new meaning.

I. EXPERIENCE IN GROUPS, THE INTERSUBJECTIVITY AS THE FIELD OF SYMBOLIZATION

I will highlight the first relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization with his book "Experiences in groups" published in 1961, but written before this date. Bion presents a theory to explain group mechanisms in a psychoanalytical approach. During this period he was undergoing a second analysis with M. Klein.

The process of symbolization appears in the difference between “work group” and “basic group”. The first uses the secondary process to be in contact with reality. The second avoids reality and the primary process, as a psychotic level of the group, dominates it. The conception of the symbol-formation of M. Klein remains, like Freud, on this bipartition between the conscious system and the unconscious. I am summing up his conception here but it is the main configuration of symbolization, especially in the second part of the book published in 1952 for an issue in honour of M. Klein. Bion has transposed the intrapsychic mechanism used with the individual psychic apparatus onto the group. This bi-partition repeats the difference between conscious / unconscious. "To symbolize" is to use the secondary process, the rational level of personality. The difficulty comes from the existence of the non-rational level, which is dominated by the principle of pleasure.

However this conception is applied to an intersubjective field, in groups. He doesn't quote Lewin's theory but he has here the same conception of a group as Lewin: totality is not the equivalent of the sum of its members. According to Bion, the human being is more a "political animal" (Aristotle) than a "horde animal" that Freud had questioned. So many notions such as valence, group mentality, culture, basic assumption, basic group and work group introduce the specific field of intersubjectivity.

Special attention will be paid to the new concept of a "basic assumption" (BA), which can be considered as a typical intersubjective experience. It qualifies the protomental system (especially in his first paper): motions tend to lead to "acting out" or to a psychosomatic problem. Bion explored this way later with psychotics. Here, the dynamic is not a bipartition: when one assumption emerges, the other two are ready to succeed, and so on... it is a oscillatory movement, by waves, to explain psychic processes. The pairing assumption has a particular place because it can announce the possibility of change. In the same way later the Messiah, the mystic or the new idea will announce the change.

First interpretation: the state of mind of an institutional group in the nursery.

In the nursery, the process of symbolization can be explained by considering that the “work group” consists in taking care of babies, while “basic groups” try to avoid this task.

The pairing of Gabriel and Mary is a concretisation of the “pairing assumption”. The problem, as Bion explains, is that this couple comes to exist "in reality", and that is why there is no place for a new idea of change. Therefore the group is paralysed by basic assumptions, it does not progress. Sometimes, the “dependency basic assumption” becomes more apparent between baby and adult, and between caregivers and me. Sometimes, the “fight-flight basic assumption” is close to emerging when there is criticism of parents, of other nurses, of the administration or of the psychologist etc. There is quite a lot of tensions in the group and the rational organisation does not change, although people have more knowledge about the babies' needs.

The situation improves when this pairing is not consolidated by attacks or by envy, in other words, when pairing becomes a way of dealing with a baby and his problem. So this union can produce a new idea. Gabriel has been for a month in the nursery, he needs his mother. We have discussion about his problem: he is just nine months old and Mary takes the place of his mother. When caregivers are aware of this separation anguish, they stop their disqualification of Mary, and Gabriel feels better.

On this first step of theory, intersubjectivity is the field of a classical symbolization. From this intuition, Bion will go ahead to discover another symbolization, which is linked to intersubjectivity.

2. LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE, THE INTERSUBJECTIVITY AS A PROCESS OF SYMBOLIZATION

"Learning from experience", published in 1962 is a good title to summarize the second psychic-work of the relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization. Experience comes from intersubjectivity, learning presupposes the presence of others. Experiences become the foundation of a process of symbolization; it is a link between symbolization and intersubjectivity.

A new definition of symbolization appears. It results from a period when Bion worked with schizophrenics. He used Kleinian concepts but he needed to create a new concept to explain a special process, namely the alpha function. This type of symbolization takes place before secondary symbolization; that is to say before the bipartition of the two processes of primary and secondary. It is also an intrapsychic process but it depends more directly on intersubjectivity: an object equipped with alpha function has to hold, to contain and to transform what the Subject will thus be able to symbolize. Alpha elements belong to the intrapsychic system but they come from a function, which is working in intersubjectivity links. Classical symbolization was created for problems of neurosis. This type of symbolization occurs when the Subject is not yet differentiated from the object. According to René Roussillon it could be called "primary symbolization". It is quite important for modern clinical situations.

Bion studies the role of verbal thought with psychotics. Normally language is used to communicate and also to be conscious of internal and external realities. But sometimes it is used as an act. Bion noticed that it occurs particularly when a schizophrenic arrives at a depressive position after a period of hard work: thus he is afraid to be conscious of his madness and he regresses to schizo-paranoid position and to acting out.

According to S. Freud (1911), who wrote that thought was originally unconscious, Bion infers that it must be primitive thinking. He describes ideograms, a matrice which makes links between senses or sensorial impressions. It is in contradiction with the classic idea that there is no psychic organisation with the unconscious, with the principle of pleasure and the primary process.

In the same way, he points out that the "psychotic part" of personality does not make a difference between conscious and unconscious, and between the wake state and dream. With his paper "On hallucination" (1967), he observes that the organs of the senses can expulse perception instead of receiving it. The mechanism of the split that M. Klein has studied concerning objects can also concern a part of the psychic apparatus.

Hanna Segal had showed that in psychosis the symbol formation was replaced by "symbolic equations", the concrete object is put into the place of the symbol. According to Bion (Hinshelwood, 1989) we can distinguish these pathological symbolic equations from situations where the alpha function allows a normal projective identification, a real process of symbolisation emerges.

It is important to notice that this hypothesis of alpha function results from a confused intersubjective situation. A membrane is defective between the patient and the psychoanalyst, and between the conscious and the unconscious. It constitutes a double differentiation both intra and inter-psychic. André Green (1982) has advanced the concept of "double limit" to name this mechanism.

Bion draws up the metaphor of a mother-baby dyad to explain how the alpha function metabolizes non-psychic elements, i.e. beta elements. A baby expulses beta element, that he cannot think, and its mother has to receive them and "digest" them. The mother has to contain them in her mind in order to give them meaning and to return these elements transformed; she has to transform a-sane into psychic elements that are significant and emotional. In this way the baby is able to think and to have dreams. In this perspective "to symbolize is to create alpha elements".

Bion makes a distinction between the link of Knowledge (K) from the drive bonds, Love and Hate (L and H). The primary symbolization has always to be approached with this drive background (the oscillation Sp – D). The origin of K link is the mechanism of projective identification; it is called the relation container-contained. When M. Klein insists on the projection to evacuate that is split outside the mind, Bion considers a more normal way to use projection as a communication, like a mother with her baby.

Second interpretation: in the nursery the double limit into the couple and into the group

The intersubjective problem of Gabriel and Mary is a trouble of symbolization. At first sight, Mary does not manage to contain Gabriel's helplessness. Her response cannot digest his difficulties, and she cannot provide him with a good enough attachment. However it is more complicated. The problem of Gabriel also depends directly on all the caregivers. Mary's capacity of reverie also depends on her situation in her team group. According to our first interpretation it is a “work group”, so we can consider that there is an alpha function of this team group (the gamma function of Claudio Neri, 1995).

To contain Gabriel's difficulties, the team has to contain the couple Mary-Gabriel. There is a double membrane, which is simultaneously defective inside this pair and outside it, into the nursery. Limits between persons are confused, between Mary and Gabriel, and between this pair and the rest of the group (Mary and the other caregivers, Gabriel and the other babies). The situation improves when Gabriel's anxieties and Mary's desire are received and contained. The alpha function of the work group creates a double limit into this pair and into the group.

The first interpretation was a help to localise the problem and to describe the atmosphere of the group. This second interpretation can explain the way to symbolize more precisely. “Pairing assumption” is a nodal point, which can articulate intra and interpsychic elements.

In 1962 Bion distinguishes between the “thought” and the “thinking apparatus”. He observed that a new thought calls for a new apparatus to be thought. It is a revolution in the conception of knowledge that will be at the heart of the third step I will develop.

3. ATTENTION AND INTERPRETATION, THE SIMULTANEOUS DEVELOPMENT OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND SYMBOLIZATION

The third model of psychic-work of relation between symbolization and intersubjectivity comes from "Attention and Interpretation" (1970). It is an integration of the two preceding models. Intersubjectivity is the field of symbolisation (first model), it is the way to a primitive symbolization (second model) but also it determines the manner of symbolizing. The symbol has the character of an establishment, this model has an institutional or a trans-psychic dimension. As for his private life, we know that Bion decided to leave his responsibility in the British Psychoanalytical Society and to leave London for a new country, California.

Bion tries to go beyond the psychoanalyst experience. This experience could become resistance to his listening, to his attention to the patient's sufferings, and to receiving unknown elements. Experiences are formed into models, which constitutes an attractive focus for the attention. They are marked by the satisfaction of the analyst, even if they are just sensorial satisfactions. In order to avoid the negative impact of the experience, Bion promotes a discipline to eschew his desire, his memory and his understanding of the patient. It is an ethical point of view because it indicates in which direction the practitioner ought to work.

The attention was defined by the link and the capacity of reverie, now it is also an "intuit" to catch the container-contained link. It was a factor of mind, now it becomes also a state of mind. The training of the infant observation according to the method of Esther Bick (1964) makes this discipline work: each time the observer knocks at the family's door, he has to receive the whole state of mind of the family by eschewing his previous knowledge of this family.

The concept of "transformation" is the link between intersubjectivity and symbolization. It is a concept for the practice, like the alpha function. It is a sort of extension of the transference concept: in transformation the movement of transference is located about his framework and in direction of the type of symbolization to be carried out - neurotic or psychotic, secondary or primitive (Grinberg, 1972).

This third model is based on the quality of the establishment that is a type of “Janus”: on the one hand it has a containing function, on the other hand it is a resistance.

The symbol can work as an establishment. As a container it depends on perceptions and on the common sense of a community. It depends on a group, more precisely on what is established in this group, through the members of the group. It is a sort of "normal" meaning, which results from common perceptions in a culture. The dictionary gives us details of this convention. Bion learnt History at University, firstly he had introduced basic assumptions from the model of the working of the different civilisations (Bleandonu, 1990), and he continues to point out the importance of this characteristic of human being.

Sometimes a symbol meets a contained, which transforms it. The new idea has to make its place in the establishment, in the shared mind of a society, of a group or of a person. This new perception requires the creation of an apparatus to receive it. This new vertex is initially not compatible with the other ones. Thought does not belong to anyone and each change is a risk of catastrophe. It destabilises the establishment. In this perspective “to symbolize is a revolutionary act”.

The dynamic of change is near the first time of the period of group experiences. Bion is close to S. Freud (1921) who explores mass-psychology: "primitive-mass" (Primitive Horde) is like an origin, which impulses movements under each organized-mass, namely each institution. If primitive-mass can destroy institution, however Bion exposes a paradox that the change presupposes the contact with this primitive part.

So Bion (1970) makes a new interpretation of the "scientific myth" of Freud:

1) At the Origin there would be no difference between God and Man. It corresponds to the first Freudian stage: the father is omnipotent and he possesses all females.

2) After, a separation between God and Man is established. The difference between omnipotence and reality is established, a work group can exist. It corresponds to the brothers' convention after the murder of the Father.

3) The third stage, a mystic is in communion with God, with the Origin of the group, the point “O”. His new idea destabilizes what was established. It corresponds to the Freudian narration (Freud, 1926) where a poet relates to his group the story of a father killed by his sons. This stage will be able to allow an internalization of the law (with Freud) or the creation of a thought with Bion.

Freud demonstrated paternal transference, Bion a more archaic transference by developing a psychotic version of the Freudian myth. Freud explains symbolization with a secondary problematic and the repression; Bion explains the symbolization in a more primitive and narcissist way. The psychotic remains closed to a privacy symbol, he is in a private communication with God. He cannot share with another the common meaning of a symbol. Freud principally advances an intrapsychic theory, Bion introduces a more intersubjective viewpoint.

Third interpretation: pacts and denials in the nursery and the Origin of the Institution.

The intersubjective problem of Gabriel and Mary has a transubjective dimension. This banal situation is difficult to contain because it is against the establishment of working behaviours and nursery habits. The norm was: "it is forbidden to be attached to a baby", but everyone denies that, and this phenomenon occurs frequently. Why? There is a type of common denials between caregivers and parents about baby's separation anxieties and about the importance of love link with baby. Denials concern the perception of anxiety and desire:

- Gabriel cries because of separation. His environment does not manage to realise the origin of this behaviour. Adults deny the importance of mother's separation. On the other hand, there is between Mary and her mother a tacit relationship, no word about separation but a similar difficulty to evoke it.

- The emotional engagement of Mary is too excessive, and it disturbs the team establishment. She is young, it is her first job after the professional school, and her colleagues do not support her. There was no meeting to think about this situation, everybody seems afraid of this implication.

These shared denials are like the "denial pacts" of René Kaës (1995). The Establishment has to contain the impact of the mystic, of the new idea. This nursery has to contain this pair, which disturbs. This pair is dangerous because it affects the foundation of the nursery as an institution, its mythic Origin. The myth of the Crib says that a woman saves and takes care of a baby, which might die or be damaged. To be in contact with the Origin, the point “O”, is dangerous, such as an omnipotent act, because there are lots of Love and Hate inside it and because it is a transgression. The rules of the foundation of nurseries tell us that it is forbidden to steal a baby. But isn't it what Mary does?

The excessive attachment between Mary and Gabriel evokes a transgression and this mythic origin. Returning to this Origin can destabilise the establishment, which has originally contained these violent and intense emotions. Returning to the Origin is however a necessity because the team needs to integrate more Love drives in its group, to improve its organisation and its practice. So the risk of change is catastrophic. When Gabriel's anxieties of separation were recognised and when Mary's desire was no more disqualified, the situation finally improved. After hard and long intersubjective thinking in the teamwork (that has implied more of one person and has touched deeply the capacity of thinking of everybody) the Love links between Mary and Gabriel bring goodness into the group and make it stronger; a new form of practise is established, a new establishment appears, until the next change and so on.

This risk of change explains that there is an oscillation in institution from the "status quo", nothing moves, to the crisis, everything moves.

Intersubjectivity and symbolization are closely articulated in this third perspective because an intersubjective process is at the root of the symbol, which is defined here as a convention shared by a human community. The model of the mystic and of the institution in a group takes the place of the model of mother-baby dyad. In a similar manner, modern physics took the place of classical physics after criticising its frame. This last model underlines the background, the frame of the dyadic model of mother-baby.

This way to think intersubjectivity with Bion is not closed; I just hope to have shown how rich it is to sustain our clinical practice, especially in groups and institutions. Actually it is also a necessity to face the different conceptions of intersubjectivity in psychology and psychoanalysis. Bion's works make us possible to consider a new form of symbolisation, which is beyond word presentation and which concerns the whole non-verbal communication.

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ABSTRACT

The author analyses Bion's works evolution in regard to the relation between intersubjectivity and symbolization. Three books mark this evolution: Experiences in groups , Learning from experience and Attention and Interpretation . Firstly intersubjectivity is the field of symbolisation, secondly the condition of it and thirdly the cause of it. The more intersubjective work is the same of the primitive issues of symbol formation. The same vignette, each time interpreted, illustrates in a nursery these three progressive manners to consider intersubjectivity.

Translators Denis Mellier and Regis Mauroy

DENIS MELLIER ,

Ph D., University of Lyon, Reader, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, member of the French Society of Psychoanalytical Group Psychotherapy (SFPPG), trainer of infant observation according to E Bick (AFFOBEB). 

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