Caesura: A Close Reading Seminar of Bion’s Text

Overview

Presenter: Avner Bergstein

Leaning on Freud’s statement that “there is much more continuity between intra-uterine life and earliest infancy than the impressive caesura of the act of birth allows us to believe”, Bion further elaborates the notion of caesura as a pivotal concept in his thinking. The caesura of birth serves as a metaphor for all that is concealed from our view. Moreover, this concept tries to address the barriers that might be erected in the psychoanalytic encounter, which are often so impressive that we are unable to see beyond them. Perhaps first and foremost is our tendency to be engrossed in the sensuously visible, in verbal communication itself, which is so impressive that we get caught up in it, hence blinding ourselves to unrepresented and unrepresentable psychic reality. The insights developed in Bion’s Caesura seem to be at the very core of his clinical work. This paper underscores the significance of working in the immediacy of the here and now with the prospect of expanding one’s capacity to tolerate contact with reality in transit, in the unfolding present. Furthermore, this paper highlights the realization that approaching the patient’s logic, requires the analyst to penetrate, or transcend the caesura of their logic, or the logic of the conscious, finite, awake mind, and give their imagination an airing – so as to encounter a different logic, seemingly irrational, or perhaps ‘anti-rational’.

This event will offer content related to COR’s webinar series that begins in February: Trauma, Guilt and Reparation. A Psychoanalytic Approach to Clinical Work with Severely Traumatized Patients with Heinz Weiss. Participants are encouraged to attend both events, however this is not a requirement.