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Mind, Bion and Psychoanalysis: A Nonlinear Dynamic Systems Perspective

Patrick J. Nalbone, PhD

Presented at

EBOR 2016

The Feeling Mind and Lived Experience: Clinical Transformations in Psychoanalysis

Eleventh International Evolving British Object Relations Conference

Sponsored by Northwest Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Seattle, Washington (USA)

October 28-30, 2016

Nalbone 11-1-16 - Mind - A Nonlinear Dynamic Systems Perspective.docx Patrick J Nalbone – EBOR Seattle -2016

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Mind, Bion and Psychoanalysis: A Nonlinear Dynamic Systems Perspective

Patrick J. Nalbone, PhD

EBOR 2016 - Seattle

Introduction:

Mind as a Nonlinear Dynamic System / W.R. Bion as Paradigm Shifter for Psychoanalysis

This paper presents a model of the mind as a complex, nonlinear dynamic system that is subjectively and

phenomenologically experienced by an individual human being. The mind exists both as a self-organizing

whole and a subsystem in a larger context that includes the bioenergetic substrate of the human brain as

well as a sociosymbolic, semiotic system of other minds, language and culture. The paper then explores

how Bion’s ideas about mind and psychoanalytic theory/practice can also be seen through the dynamic

systems lens. Bion was greatly influenced by his diverse readings in science, mathematics, philosophy and

mysticism and his ideas changed dramatically over his career. This paper takes the position that Bion was

also influenced by the over-arching metaphysical paradigm shift toward a nonlinear dynamic systems

perspective underway in the middle of the 20th Century and continuing today. Writings by others in the

psychoanalytic community after Bion, especially those emphasizing an intersubjective, bipersonal

approach and post-Bionian Field Theory, demonstrate the gradual embrace of this information-based,

process-oriented perspective compatible with the model of mind presented. This paper proposes that a

psychoanalysis for the future might integrate Bionian theory and clinical methods with a nonlinear

dynamic systems model also attentive to affective information and mind as an active experience of person-

to-person engagement.

Making It Personal

My goal in this paper is to outline a theory of mind that is also compatible with the way I work clinically.

I believe my efforts in this paper are somewhat similar to what Bion himself strove to do in his later life,

i.e., make his theories compatible with how he later found himself working in practice and as reflected in

his speaking in public. (Ferro 2007, p. 551.)

So I am beginning this paper with remarks about my own approach to practice as it has developed as a far-

from-traditional model of psychoanalytic therapy. I have been greatly influenced by the work of Wilfred

Bion as well as by the many interpreters of his ideas and in particular, James Grotstein. I also have a

background that includes my doctoral studies and my unpublished dissertation, Toward a Conceptual

Model of Thinking from the Perspective of Structuralism and System Theory, completed in 1974. Both of

these vertices are central to my thinking now.


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My clinical work looks something like this: starting each session without memory or desire, I listen to the

other person and allow myself to interact in a fairly unfiltered way. This includes awareness of my own

emotion, body sensations, free association, fantasy and an attitude toward connecting deeply with my

client, allowing myself to be useful as an instrument of change and being open to being changed myself in

return. I regularly and routinely make “mistakes” and aim to learn from them. As Ferro notes, “Bion does

not hide the fact that, in terms of our mental life, we rarely move beyond early infancy and are unable to

tolerate many truths, preferring to make ourselves blind and deaf to them”. (Ferro 2007, p. 552.) I also stay

open to discovery and frequently a path emerges that is improvisational and playful and engenders the

same in my client (Ringstrom, 2001, 2012). At times, I disclose information about myself, if requested

and if I believe it might be useful to them. (Maroda, 2004). I expect at some point through the normal

communication process of projective identification that re-enactment will occur and see it as a way of

bringing the patient’s past into the present and changing what happens for the patient when it does. I am

constantly struck by the frequent experience of moments of shared reverie, the emergence of meaning

across levels of feeling, incidental actions and remarks, subtle nuances in tone and choice of words, all

linked together or un-linked and re-linked as a conjecture/definitive hypothesis cycle readjusts what is the

selected fact in the moment of the session. At risk of the perils of my own self-indulgence and unconscious

narcissistic defenses, I also admit to finding pleasure in our engagement, often delighted in its reciprocity.

I trust that the process itself is already a transformation in O and that each of our inter-related thoughts

without a thinker and the emergence of the unexpected in affect, meaning and insight will bring about a

positive change over time. These ideas are mine only as I have thought them repeatedly through learning

from experience.

I also wish to acknowledge that as I began my research for this paper I discovered the works of many

others who have presented models of mind and psychoanalysis that reflect similar views as my own. My

encounter with this work, notably that of Robert Stolorow, William Coburn, Robert Galatzer-Levy, Donnel

Stern, Antonino Ferro and Giussepe Civitarese, reinforced my belief in the value of this effort and

encouraged me to revisit my past work and articulate my own ideas. Of course, they are not all my own

ideas, so I hope you will bear with me. As Bion has noted, “it’s a novel paper because it has been written

by a particular person.” (Bion, in Aguayo and Malin, 2013, p. 42.) And if there is a “vague feeling of

dissatisfaction that one has heard this sort of thing before”, my hope would be that what you have heard

this time will be somewhat digestible. (Cf, Bion.)


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Space, Time and Reality: From Classical Metaphysics to the Age of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

When Freud proposed his Project for a Scientific Psychology in 1895 he adhered to a metaphysical model

that viewed Reality as dependent upon the existence of irreducible units of three-dimensional matter

propelled by forces of energy, travelling along linear pathways in space and time.

For Freud, first a neuroscientist, this meant that mind could be explained in terms of the human brain being

an organic form of matter, and that neural action, instinct and drives were the primary source of mental

experience and behavior. This Newtonian-Euclidian model has also been the prevailing model of science

throughout the 20th century. It remains the hallmark of research conducted today, although we are in the

midst of a period when a more encompassing meta-theoretical paradigm shift is changing the conversation.

This shift is pertinent to a new perspective of mind in that it challenges the classical model as “a

privileged, hegemonic master discourse...built upon a fantasized objectivist epistemology and reductionist

framework that is far removed from the human condition.” (Mills, p. 24.)

The roots of this change actually go back to the late 19th century, most notably with Henri Poincaré’s

(Poincaré, 1908) mathematical modeling of nonlinear dynamic systems equations and formulations by

others seeking to rectify shortcomings in classical metaphysics. One result was the replacement of the

traditional notion of three-dimensional space and time as the fourth dimension, with a model that combines

them into a single continuum known as spacetime. (DiSalle, 2006). This allows uniformity in calculations

applicable both at supergalactic and subatomic levels while probabilistically accounting for uncertainty.

However, it requires the additional factor that these calculations are dependent on the relative position of

an observer and implies that the existence of time, space and physical reality may altogether not be

provable, but are bi-products generated by the mind of the observer. This reversible perspective is a

radical departure from the more widely accepted belief about Reality. Using our binocular vision we can

now imagine as well that mind is not simply generated one-directionally from physical reality, but perhaps

the other way around and back again.

From a phenomenological point of view, perception is a primordially intentional process by which the

organism acts upon the world as an object itself among objects interacting continuously and reciprocally.

This was the view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964), who also considered consciousness an emergent

phenomenon of an integrated mind-body “becoming” a “being in the world” (Heidegger, 1927), and a self

as an operational gestalt (Kohler, 1947) or whole among other wholes in the world.

Now the questions we must ask at this point is “what is it that is being perceived” and “what is being done

by the mind that is co-acting upon this ‘what’ of objects, the ‘qualia’ that is the ‘stuff’ of the world?” The

answer seems to elude us because there is no separation of perceived and perceiving, no observable

“outside” completely separate from the observer.


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Instead we have an integrated, reciprocal process that produces a perceived or registered binary difference

(Derrida, 1973). It is not static, but an active process that reveals a difference in figure vs. ground (a

caesura) and generates a gestalt or whole distinguishable from its parts. It is the registration of influence

from one part of any system to another part resulting in a causal change. In thermodynamics, it is

information, the difference between entropy and a movement away from entropy toward an organization of

separate parts into interrelated systems. For a living organism it is how it acts upon and within the world. It

is an equiprimordial, phenomenological experience of an embodied organism resolving the uncertainty as

to whether a difference exists: is something the same or is it not? -- and then operationalizing that

information as a choice, either yes or no. A “difference” in this context is an emergent bifurcation (Priel

and Schreiber, 1994) generated by the perceiving-experiencing process itself. It is “the difference that

makes a difference” (attributed to Gregory Bateson, 1972). For Bion (Bion, 1961, p. 153; Lopez-Corvo, p.

305;), it is a valency. For example in a group where each individual has an involuntary valency for a

particular Basic Assumption, be it dependency, fight/flight, or pairing, and then acts upon it. (Lawrence,

Bain and Gould, 1996, p. 3).

It is also the dialectic emergence that Hegel (1977) referred to as Aufhebung and as Maxine Anderson has

so beautifully noted, a process about how

…the growth of the mind goes from quiescence to disturbance to rigidly bounded polarization to

more softly bounded newness which can be reintegrated into a newly enriched self”. (Anderson,

2014, p. 5.)

Fundamentally, it is how the emergent Self/Mind distinguishes itself from its unique Umwelt (von Uexküll,

1937).

This is a model that addresses ontological and epistemological issues as to the nature of mind. It is also a

model that I am characterizing as a nonlinear, dynamic open system. At this point, it is essential to outline

what is meant by a system, what its organizing principles are and also the role of information in our

understanding.

Organizing Principles: The System of Systems .

The idea of a fundamental set of organizing principles was first proposed by W. Ross Ashby (1962) who

noted:

…a system is ‘self-organizing’ in the sense that it changes from ‘parts separated’ to ‘parts joined’.

An example is the embryo nervous system, which starts with cells having little or no effect on one

another, and changes, by the growth of dendrites and formation of synapses, to one in which each

part’s behavior is very much affected by the other parts. (Ashby, 1962, p. 266.)


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THROUGHPUT(TRANSFORMATION)

FEEDBACK

OUTPUT(POSITIVEFEEDFORWARD)

INPUT

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BOUNDARIES

What appears to hold the system together is a state of equilibrium, a dynamic tension between parts or

between the system and its environment of which itself is a part. (Ashby, p. 258.) Ashby further proposed

that the organizing properties “are not intrinsic to the thing but are relational between observer and thing.”

They are dependent upon the location of the observer and represent the uncertainty of the observer. As I

see it, there is no reductive definition of “organizing principles” or a fundamental property equivalent to a

“particle” in a materialistic model. Instead we have principles and properties that are “the-thing-in-itself,”

(ding an sich, Kant, 1784) active in the ongoing alternation of bifurcation and joining that manifest the

emergent whole that is the system, along with the recognition of the role of the observer.

With that above consideration, then in a discussion of a “system of systems,” we start with the acceptance

that “the map is not the territory” (Korzbyski, 1933, p. 58), and what we have is a representation, or a

model. We start with the definition of a system as a self-organizing whole consisting of parts that are also

systems reciprocally interacting with each other and the whole. A significant feature of the system of focus

is that it is greater than the sum of its parts (von Bertalanffy, 1968) and that difference is due to emergent

qualities. Systems are hierarchically organized in interdependent relationships with the overall contextual

relationship having a regulating function in terms of the distribution of resources and value placed toward

a purpose or goal. Systems display the differentiation and specialization of parts and increasing

complexity. Systems have definable boundaries, and the interaction among parts can be described as the

exchange of information, sometimes along with matter and energy, through porous boundaries in an on-

going process. This is often depicted with a model, showing a system organized in terms of information,

with input, throughput (or transformation) and output. Output then becomes feedback, either negative or

positive (also called feed-forward). This is an on-going, reciprocal process between subsystems, the whole

and the external environment with recursive loops linking the systems through time-dependent phase-

states and a multiplicity of repeated bifurcations and syntheses.

See Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1. Basic System Model


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Figure 2. Systems Under Transformation with Interlocking Feedback Loops

System boundaries can either be nearly closed, or more often, open. Closed systems tend to be

deterministic and the change within is describable in linear equations, whereas open systems are more

readily described with nonlinear equations that stochastically account for uncertainty and the emergence of

novelty. With living systems, a closed system is one that dies as resources are expended and entropy

occurs. At the other end, far from equilibrium, when the system’s purposiveness or teleology is severely

influenced by external attractors, there is higher risk of uncertainty as a system moves toward chaos, a

catastrophic change in Bion’s terms. When the system exhibits a steady state or dynamic equilibrium

(container-contained ♀ ♂), it maintains itself through adaptation.

This is the over-arching model I am applying in this paper to mind, biological models of the brain and to

psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This system of systems is what I am also referring to as organizing

principles, and what I believe Grotstein, in reference to Bion’s thinking, meant by the truth instinct, truth

principle or truth drive, associating it with faith, Godhead and being the ultimate thing-in-itself of the

noumena. (Grotstein, 2004 and 2007, pp. 52, 60, 79, 80, 139.)

Information Changes Everything

Information can also be considered the-thing-in-itself and in this discussion it requires radical

reconsideration of our common-sense view of Reality as consisting of three-dimensional space and of time

as a fourth dimension. Instead we are introducing the subjective experience of the individual perceiver-

observer deriving information and making meaning that cannot be directly observed. Furthermore, as

noted previously, it challenges the idea that mind is something solely derived from the physical and can

ultimately be understood completely through any closer, more reductive observation of the mechanisms of

the brain. It suggests in fact, that the only premise that makes sense is the other way around. As the

physicist Max Planck put it,

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot

get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, (is)

postulating consciousness. (Planck, 1931.)

P h a s e - S t a t e s


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So if it is not simply matter first, or brain first and then mind, what then is mind? I propose that mind is a

subjective, phenomenologically experienced abstraction, a system interacting in a context with two other

systems:

• the bioenergetic system, the world of energy and matter, including the neural substrate and

• the sociosymbolic system, a semiotic system of language and culture, and the systems of signs and

representational models carried by information.

See Figure 3.

Figure 3. Mind as a System in Interactive Relationship with

the Bioenergetic and Sociosymbolic Systems

Figure 3 shows the three systems theoretically interacting to form a single, ontological and epistemological

system in a simplified way. It further depicts each system structured hierarchically with “nearly

decomposable” levels of complexity, open and shared boundaries and constantly emerging bifurcations.

Bifurcations between systems translate into informational equivalence and input to another system. In this

shared context, continuously changing, a change in one system can influence change in another system and

vice versa, even when one is physical and energetic and another is abstract and contextually informational.

Clinically it can be represented when we conjecture psycho-somatogenic change or somato-psychogenic

change, or their interactive, simultaneous and cyclical occurrence.


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The Signification of Information in Living Systems

Biosemiotics, a recent extension of semiotics, the science of signs, postulates that all living organisms

exhibit information transfer and coding within and between different levels of organization and

complexity, including molecular and chemical levels and the genetic coding of DNA. This is not a

representational process, but more simply, involves equiprimordial mechanisms that translate

phenomenological differences as information that result in causal changes. These are evident as self-

organizing principles in all systems and appear to operate with intentional, goal-oriented behavior, also

referred to as purposefulness, or teleology. Mind is an example of this at a higher level of complexity. It

both non-representationally processes information generated out of the body’s neural substrate, life-

functioning and on-going sensory perceptions and incorporates the abstract, representational semiotic signs

of language and culture within the unconscious and conscious field of human interpersonal interactions.

Its internal, agentic models are both representational and phenomenological and dynamically linked to the

rest of Reality. Mind is a continuous, reciprocal transformation in O.

In this semiotic theory, meaning generation makes use of signs that are representations of objects in the

world and of other signs. Signs are made of two parts: the signifier and the signified (de Saussure, 1916;

Lacan, 1957; Barthes, 1968). The signifier is the formthatthesigntakesandthesignifiedistheconcept

towhichitrefers.For example, a real rose would be the signified and the word “rose” is the signifier. The

sign is the combination of the two. They are often depicted as a mathematical formula, or an active function,

with the signifier as the numerator and the signified the denominator: See Figure 4.

Figure 4. Semiotic Sign with Signifier and Signified

Sometimes this process is accompanied by the deterministic, linear movement of matter and the

measurable transmission of energy. Universally, as a cyclical process, it involves the transfer of

information across boundaries and the preservation of structure in a nondeterministic, but

predictably patterned way. (Bion: clouds of probabilities in López-Corvo, p. 58.) For human

beings it occurs from the beginning with the commensal, interdependent relationship of the mother

with the newborn infant, and probably even before that at some developmental moment when the

new human is still in utero. (Pickering, p. 202.)


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Metaphor and Metonymy as Forms of Semiotic Structuring

When we speak semiotically about signifiers and signifieds and their incorporation into signs, it is

important that we think of these as abstract forms and not reductively as constant physicalist units.

Another way to think about signifiers, signifieds and signs is to use the terms metaphor and metonymy.

These are familiar as poetic and aesthetic terms in language and the arts. In biosemiotics they are also

considered the two basic, polar, comparative, non-representational constructs operating in living

organisms. Lacan (1957, 2002) saw them as the equivalent of condensation and displacement,

reciprocating precursors to thought and language in the unconscious. With Bion, metaphor would be

associated with the depressive position (D) and metonymy with the paranoid-schizoid position (P-S).

Metaphor, in semiotics is a comparison of unrelated representational constructs, while metonymy

compares already-related constructs. They both result from bifurcations and emergent differences that

then synthesize into meaningful wholes. In psychoanalytic practice metaphor is generally viewed as a

subsuming paradigm that includes metonymy without distinction. It is used both consciously and

intentionally in making interpretations, and unconsciously in responsive dialogue, with each individual

creating meaning and insight.

What is important to understand here is that metaphor and metonymy do differ and find expression both in

words and relational dynamics, and are also part of the non-verbal dance of transference-

countertransference, projective identification, reverie, play and enactment. These are not only linguistic,

representational forms, but also, proto-mental and physical, embodied transactions dense with information

and meaning where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Anna Aragno (2009) writes

articulately about this aspect of mind in psychoanalytic practice, and makes this point:

I believe that the central mechanisms in metaphoric thought provide the preconditions for subsequent

semiotic structuring; that they, in fact, define our uniquely human form of ideation and that this

originates and evolves, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, in our anatomical, biological, and

neurological constitution. (Aragno, 2009, p. 31.)

Antonino Ferro and Giusseppe Civitaresse (2015) emphasize that metaphor has multiple meanings as well.

They suggest that metaphor is a more comprehensive agentic mechanism (Bandura, 2001) and allude to

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of

…a dynamic continuity arising between consciousness and the spatiotemporal parameters of

experience of the world (time and space not being containers within which the individual moves,

but instead being born together with him)... (Ferro and Civitaresse, p. 2.)


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From a biosemiotic perspective, we have brain behavior and sociosymbolic systems operating according to

equivalent or isomorphic organizing principles, i.e., structuring processes that register differences

emergent in an informational field or system. We can then imagine that in the development of an

individual human being a multiplicity of new and gradually tested sensory-perceptions and actions are

registered and repeatedly restructured as phase-state shifts, and eventually present as a constant

conjunction (Bion, 1992, p. 13.) that enables successful movement and interacting with the external world.

This can be understood as a relatively stable, phenomenological “best-fit” nonlinear equation that enables

the living body to interpret the ongoing perception of encounters with the field and act upon that data.

It operates as an experiential algorithm and then gradually, when the capacity to symbolize occurs,

becomes the confirming experience that matter is solid and time is relatively measurable, and results in

representation with the concepts of time and space and the common sense notion of Reality. Again, as

noted previously, if Reality cannot be separated from the observer, but is a simultaneous function of the

observer’s action, then what we normally and conventionally assume to be Real, i.e., the existence of a

world made of three-dimensional objects, matter moving in time through space, existing outside of

experience, all comes into question.

Let us now take one step further and briefly consider how this paradigmatic shift affects our understanding

of a neuroscientific view of brain and mind.

Neurosciences: Atomistic vs. Connectionist Models

Historically, in neuroscience we have seen two types of models:

• “Atomistic” models that try reductively to locate mental processes in a specific part of the brain.

and

• “Connectionist” models that look for connective patterns such as “neural networks” to explain

mental phenomena.

Neither approach has adequately found a way to locate or replicate the phenomena of an individual

thought. In spite of revolutionary advances in technology that allow the precise investigation of minute

brain activity, scientifically and empirically, we remain completely at a loss as to how or where a given

emergent thought, memory or emotion manifests or how we generate subjective meaning via physically

observable linear pathways. At the same time, there is an array of remarkable work in neuroscience

research going on today and we can always learn more from these approaches. For example, recent work

by Hobson, Hong and Friston at Harvard, postulates that real-world perceptions acquired in awake states

are re-encoded during sleep and that the brain has a “virtual reality generator” that tells itself a story about

what is probably real and continues to test this paradigmatic story in subsequent interactions in the real

world. This work is consistent with the idea that the human brain creates its own model of reality using

innate organizing principles such as those needed to construct a workable three-dimensional time-space


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model of the physical universe. It is always a subjective model, both dependent on the individual brain and

each individual’s unique experiences in a constantly changing world. This research is not proposing there

is an actual physical component in the brain that is this generator, but only that the brain manifests these

phenomena via organizing principles that are equiprimordial, i.e., existing as basic principles always

present. (Hobson, Hong and Friston, 2014; see also Friston, 2010).

It also is a model that assumes isomorphic congruency with each test comparing the similarity and

difference between the virtual reality generator, or a “black box” (Hooker, 2011) version and the new

versions of the external raw data. This is similar to Bion’s Alpha function (processing Beta elements and

making a comparison using K and –K in a dynamic tension). The isomorphism is also understood to be in

the degree to which the changing versions display properties generally found in nonlinear dynamic

systems.

Whose Bion is It?

A central goal of this paper is to explore the notion that psychoanalysis, as considered from a

contemporary Bionian perspective, is structurally isomorphic with that of a nonlinear dynamic systems

model generally and also of mind and that an integration of these could enhance psychoanalysis as an

evolving theory and in its practice for the future. We all know that upon first reading Bion that what he

says often both makes perfect sense and leaves one simultaneously in awe and doubting we fully

understood what he meant, or what we understood was what he meant. One perspective is that each

reader always interprets Bion’s work differently. Edna O’Shaughnessy has suggested, from a Foucaldian

(Foucault, 1997,1980) viewpoint that there is both a potential for “widely different readings of Bion to

multiply” and a “need to return attentively to his texts and read them as a thrift barrier to the proliferation

of any meaning we might just fancy.” (O’Shaughnessy, 2005, p. 1527.) For me, O’Shaughnessy’s

preference, in Bion’s terms, should be considered a rigid motion transformation, or a closed-system

perspective. Bion’s body of work itself suggests he intended to generate ambiguity and would

recommend that the reader, like the analyst, should suspend memory and desire and routinely see each

encounter anew. Likewise, he would also refer to thoughts without a thinker as thoughts that come to a

thinker but basically are not owned by the thinker and are, in a sense wild thoughts, emerging from the

noumena of O. (Bion, 1967)

Another perspective is that Bion actually struggled to find a cohesive and unsaturated language, a neutral

language (Kuhn, 1962, 1970, pp. 125-127), to describe the concepts he saw as evolving and emerging,

rather than he had in mind a specific theory he wished to produce. His writing was more likely for him a

transformation to and from O always changing. He emphasized the importance of the careful selection of

words to represent ideas, at times in an attempt to instantiate his theory in the metaphorical language of


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common sense materialism and positivism, and at other times choosing to create a mystical sense about

what could not be directly known but only conjectured. Likewise Bion sought a scientific framing for his

ideas as he did with the Grid and its mathematical notations and a method for empirically observing dyadic

exchanges in clinical practice. All of these are pertinent to our understanding of Bion’s work and in

particular his theoretical modeling of mind and psychoanalytic practice.

I am taking the view that what Bion was thinking, and that what he meant to say will always be subject to

interpretation. My view is that Bion’s work represents his own personal development as a mind and a

theoretical thinker in the context of a larger scientific revolution, in Kuhn’s terms, along with a global,

cultural, semiotic shift in a rapidly changing Zeitgeist during his lifetime. The most significant factors in

this were the gradual paradigm shift away from classical metaphysics toward the metaphors of nonlinear

dynamic systems theory throughout his career (Torres, 2013) and in the last twenty years of his life in an

emergent Postmodernist metanarrative, as described by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition, published

in 1979, the year of Bion’s death. (Neri, 2003).

I am postulating that these two currents worked together to influence Bion and were not conscious

transformations. Instead they were contextual changes in the larger world. All of us today likewise have

been, and still are, participants in this multi-level process. As you listen to me speak, or read this text, a

similar process is manifest as an emergent phenomenon in our individual minds and bodies.

Psychoanalysis itself, its theory and practice, may also be considered part of this transformation in which

Bion himself most likely understood he was also participating and basically receiving and transforming his

thought with O, from within and from without, reciprocally and constantly experiencing physically and

emotionally as well as with conscious thought.

Organizing Principles In Systems and Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis Present and Future

Psychoanalysis is at a crossroads, a transformation that involves emotion, decision and action (Bion in

López-Corvo, p. 76). It can change and find a path that considers the changes occurring around it. It is

not realistic to think it can remain the same, bound to the 20th century, or revise its theory and practice,

under pressure, to conform to reductionist and empiricist “evidence-based” behavioral models. A new

model that is emerging is one integrating biosemiotics and nonlinear dynamic systems theory with

traditional psychoanalytic notions from different schools of thought including Bionian Object Relations

Theory, Bionian Field Theory and a bipersonal, intersubjective, phenomenological-contextual perspective.

This paper is intended only to suggest how these models might evolve. In my view there is a correlation,

an isomorphism in structure and process, between many of the properties that characterize nonlinear

dynamic systems theory and elements of Bionian theory. This can be found in his writings as well as in

the work of others who have maintained Bion’s relevance within our constantly changing Weltanschauung,


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our worldview as psychoanalytic thinkers and clinical practitioners (Coburn, 2000, 2002; Shane and

Coburn, 2002; Stolorow, 1997a, 1997b, 2002, 2013; Ferro and Civitarese, 2015; Galatzer-Levy, 1995,

2006, 2016; Seligman, 2005; and Stern, 2015). Figure 5 illustrates this isomorphism in a table comparing

Bionian concepts with properties of nonlinear dynamic systems.

See Figure 5.

(See also Appendix A for a more comprehensive version comparing a larger number of properties and terms.)

Bionian Psychoanalytic Terms

(as an Integrated Theory)

Properties of

Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

IneffableRealityofO Thewholeisgreaterthanthesumofitsparts

Projectiveidentification� Information-bearing,reciprocalfeedbackloopsbetweenphase-statelociofcommunicationinafieldorcontextualsystem

Alphafunctioning� Anequiprimordialprocess,themovementtowardorganization/negativeentropy(awayfromchaos)

CatastrophicChange Asubversionoftheorder orsystemofthings

Chaos andfar-fromequilibriumtransformations

Figure 5. Isomorphic Organizing Principles:

Comparison of Bionian Psychoanalytic Concepts with Properties of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

I also believe that Bion was always searching for a way to integrate his ideas into a model that would

adequately represent them scientifically as a system. Bion’s Grid (Bion, 1965) was his version of this that

incorporated levels of complexity, coordinates and vertices within a dynamic template. Figure 6 is my

own elaboration of the Grid in a way that operationally suggests the isomorphism between Bion’s

psychoanalysis and the organizing principles of nonlinear dynamic systems. (For comparison, see Sandler,

P., 2013.) See Figure 6.


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See also Appendix B with annotations describing nonlinear dynamic system qualities.

Figure 6. WR Bion’s Grid Reconfigured as a Nonlinear Dynamic System.

My view is that there is isomorphism between Bionian psychoanalysis and nonlinear dynamic systems

because the organizing principles of each draws upon the same Reality in a commensal way. If we

intentionally apply this in conceptualizing the field of engagement with clients it will enhance our

understanding of the human experience and help us in our work with those who come to meet with us.

The models presented in this paper are only intended to be suggestive. As Coburn has noted, in pursuit of

a comprehensive picture, “a researcher could fill volumes” (Coburn, 2000, p. 754).

Given the limits of this paper I am going to close by focusing on the concept of projective identification as

a way of further illustrating the isomorphic conjecture. Projective identification is a process that represents

a fundamental form of communication in human beings and operates according to organizing principles

that are describable both in psychoanalytic language, in the language of nonlinear dynamic systems theory

and in biosemiotic terms (Stiles, 1997).

Historically projective identification has its origins with Melanie Klein (Klein, 1946), who herself drew

from Freud’s notion of projection, meaning an individual’s externalization of interior mental objects,

whether “good” or “bad”, onto another, as a means of self-regulation. In Klein’s original version, the infant

unconsciously projected unwanted or troublesome internal objects onto the mother who received them and

contained them. This was also considered the basis for transference and countertransference in the analytic

dyad as well. As such it was seen as a linear process by which an action by the patient (transference)

resulted in a reaction within the therapist (countertransference) who received the patient’s projections

unconsciously and acted as if those qualities were part of his/her own internal system. Unlike Freud’s

model, however, Klein’s was the beginning of a bipersonal model upon which Bion further elaborated. In

that transition Bion pursued the development of transference-countertransference bi-directionally between


15

an analysand and the analyst and also incorporated an elaboration of Klein’s Paranoid-Schizoid (P-S) and

Depressive (D) Positions as occurring in both parties. Bion also eventually added a Transcendent

Position. Although Bion’s original perspective was aligned with Klein’s, gradually he saw a reciprocal

process in which transference and countertransference were mirroring equivalents and part of a single

dynamic system. Projective identification is the process that contains this pattern.

In a previous paper (Nalbone, 2008) I linked projective identification to Bion’s notion of catastrophic

change and made this comment:

In this view catastrophic change is a quality, or property, inherent in the dynamic nature of O. It is

a quality, among others, that can be known by experience, but not easily recognized by human

minds, as the necessary quality for differentiation of the observing mind from O. It can only be

understood from the larger context of a constant flux of which it is only one stage in a process that

includes attraction and joining preceding the catastrophic change. It is one aspect of a

transcendent overview, symbolically represented with the graphic image of the Mobius strip and

incorporating the P-S ↔D positions. Projective identification is the process of the mind’s

engagement in this dynamic transformation and the concept of the container-contained is the

analog of projective identification in analytic therapy. (Nalbone, 2008, pp. 2-3.) See Figure 7.

Figure 7. Projective Identification within a Model of Catastrophic Change as a Nonlinear Dynamic System

What I wish to emphasize here is how projective identification is not only a component of a larger system,

but also as a subsystem it isomorphically displays the same organizing principles found at every level in


16

the larger system. With these organizing principles we see a pattern of temporarily stable phase-states,

mental objects, and selected facts (Poincaré, 1908; and Bion, 1962, p. 72) within a system (e.g., an

individual client and/or a therapist), open, diffuse boundaries (psychic-physical-energetic-informational)

through which information about meaningful transitions in conditions such as phenomenologically-

experienced sensory registration, internal phantasy and symbolized representations, (transformation of

Beta elements by Alpha function) are transmitted, received, re-contextualized and semiotically transformed

into new meaning and then reciprocally returned and exchanged repeatedly.

This can also be seen as an adaptive process such as identified by Piaget (1970), with assimilation and

accommodation and his Structuralist viewpoint of development through play, imitation and dreams. It is

also the coupling of two independent near-chaotic systems that synchronize through interlocking feedback

loops to establish a new dynamic equilibrium. In Bion’s terms this is a container-contained (♀ ♂)

relationship and the selected fact is the transition from the chaotic of the P-S position to a balanced outlook

(Bion, 1959, p. 313) to D, the Depressive position.

Given the limits of this paper, I regret I am not able to expand this discussion with clinical examples to

better illustrate this. Instead, I enthusiastically recommend the recent work of Ferro and Civitarese (2015)

who speak to the future of psychoanalysis with their sensitive and insightful clinical vignettes and

inspiring interpretations of Bionian Field Theory with an understanding of nonlinear dynamic systems

theory. I wish also to invite others to consider entering this conversation with their own models of mind

compatible with this new direction and clinical material that illustrates these ideas as well.

***


17

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APPENDIX A

Isomorphic Organizing Principles: Comparison of Bionian Psychoanalytic Concepts (as an Integrated Theory)

with Properties of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems (a work in progress; not all cells completed)

Bionian Psychoanalytic Terms (as an Integrated Theory)

Properties of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems

Catastrophic change - an event producing a subversion of the order or system of things;

Chaos and far-from equilibrium transformations.

Contact barrier – a cross-over between the unconscious and conscious, as a metaphoric neuronal synapse or any connection between Alpha-function elements that facilitate a transformation in O, or defenses, that prevent transformation; operates in both directions

Boundaries between whole systems, their parts and the environment

Projective identification Information-bearing, successive, reciprocal feedback loops between phase-state loci of communication in a field or contextual system

Splitting, caesura Bifurcations naturally occurring in a constantly changing field-ground relationships which manifest emergent properties

Ineffable Reality of O The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Grid –instrument for classifying and understanding psychoanalytic statements of analyst and analysand

Map, not the territory, of linear and non-linear dynamic equations in 4 or more dimensions, combined with semiotic metaphors of relationships and meaning.

Selected fact - • A phase-state, relatively stable subsystem part of a whole. • Semiotically, a Sign, consistently representational in a context with other signs in system such as language, culture, history or a memory, an object with meaning among objects.

Transformations in (and toward) O • With Non-linear dynamic equations of probabilistic transformations among complex systems within the larger open system of Reality. • With linear, deterministic equations describing subsets of closed systems with predictable outcomes.

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Thoughts without a thinker, the manifestation of The Thing in Itself, proto-mental systems

• Bifurcation points that “designate the emergence of several new and stable solutions.” (Priel/Schreiber)

• Semiotically: binarism, the “difference that makes a difference”

• F in O, or Faith in O • Clouds of Probabilities

Acceptance of uncertainty and Reality as an integrated probabilistic system vs. deterministic system that is unfathomable

• Attraction and joining (preceding catastrophic change)

Attractors in Chaos Theory;

P-S ↔D positions (Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive Positions) as inter-related mechanisms

• P-S fragmented, dispersed uncertainty cloud, involving splitting

• D - movement toward an agglomeration of “elementary particles” onto Beta elements; an integration of objects

….

Container-contained • Equilibration and dynamic equilibrium, steady state.

• Boundaries in systems, interactive parts hierarchically arranged.

• Interdependence and interaction between parts of a whole system; by means of reciprocal and recursive loops.

Messiah In Chaos Theory a “strange or non-strange attractor” that either stabilizes or destabilizes a system in flux.

Alpha functioning An epi-primordial process, the movement toward organization, negative entropy (away from chaos)

Bizarre objects “Strange attractors,” potentially destabilizing Beta elements, raw unprocessed sensory data, the Thing in Itself, O, noumena

Phenomenological experience and perception of the observer relative to his/her position in Reality as a space-time continuum

Transcendent Position Steady-state behavior, dynamic equilibrium tolerant of non- severe perturbations in a system

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Language of Achievement, Man of Action • Capacity to tolerate uncertainty by evolved complex systems that maintain secure boundaries, while increasing exchange of energy, matter and information with external environment.

• Semiotic nature of complex systems able to transfer information across boundaries and re-contextualize to form new signs with novel meaning.

Causality (various explanations): constant conjunction, imaginative conjecture, circles (suggesting Mobius strip) and circular argument

• Linear-deterministic causal pathways vs. stochastic models of non-linear dynamic equations involving uncertainty and prediction of outcomes.

• Assessments of teleology or purposefulness

Nameless terror, nameless dread, -K (not knowing)

Uncertainty, non-linearity and chaos or entropy, dissipative structures

Basic Assumptions and Group mentality - instinctual behavior, biological signal anxiety, operating in groups as proto-mental activity, thoughts without a thinker, and herd behavior, and The Establishment as a basic form of group-think.

• Dynamic interaction between subsystems generating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

• In Bio-semiotics: information-carrying sign-constructs interacting, biologically, phenomenologically and mentally between different systems and system levels.

The Basic Assumption of Dependence - individual’s need to be protected, nourished, and cared for by another. It assumes the availability of another

Hierarchical order and interdependence in systems between parts and subsystems, differentiation of parts in an evolving complex system

The Basic Assumption of Fight-Flight Biological Signal anxiety as a bio-semiotic valence threshold, a bifurcation with emergent meaning.

The Basic Assumption of Pairing: associated with a messianic figure, messianic idea (Absolute Truth), a mystic figure, and negative factors such as claustrum, -L, -K and H, and “no breast”

• A biological, conjunctive process, a synthesis or convergence between attractors in two different systems to form a new system as parts.

• Bio-semiotic shifting of signs, signifiers and signifieds

Order in the system of things Hierarchical ordering of differentiated parts of a whole into subsystems; semiotic structure of signifier/signified = sign

Reversible perspective - alternative points of view seen by individuals using different logical, scientific deductive systems, experiences vs. interpretation; a splitting of time and space

• Non-linear, multidimensional pathways and reciprocating, recursive feedback loops, across a space-time continuum.

• Morphostasis (non-adapting forces moving toward entropy)

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APPENDIXB

Multi-axis,Multi-DimensionalPerspectiveofWRBion’sGridReconfiguredasaNonlinearDynamicSystem

Dimensions(SubjectivelyObservedbyanAgenticMind):• Horizontal(Y)axis:thoughtswithoutathinker• Vertical(X)axis:themindthatthinksthem(Grotstein)• Temporal-Thesystem'sevolutionovertimetracesapath(aphase-statetrajectory,past-present-

future).Ø Synchronically(atonepointintime)whenrepresentingacell-cubeorasetofcellsconsidered

concurrentlyvs.Ø Diachronically(e.g.,acrosstime,andwhenusedasananalyticnotationaltoolorinregardto

MemoryandDesire)and

WithinaBionianField(Intersubjectively)NOTVisiblyIllustrated-butconsideredconceptuallyinsideanygivencuberepresentinganypointalongallaxescombinedandincluding:

Ø Analysand-Analyst(transference-countertransference)interactions(withinacell-cube-selectedfact-phase-state)

Ø Networksofinter-lockingfeedbackloops(ProjectiveIdentification)asemergent,unconscious-preconscious-conscious,semioticsubsystems.

Note: Original directions of Grid’s X and Y axes have been inverted to accommodate the addition of the temporal dimension depiction from left to right and to maintain a consistent interpretation of interaction.

Adapted from: Bion, WR. Transformations: Change from Learning to Growth. Basic Books, NY 1965.

mind, bion and psychoanalysis: a nonlinear dynamic systems ... · mind, bion and psychoanalysis: a...

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