Who 1s the Dreamer

Who Dreams the Dream?

Volume 19
Relational Perspectives Book Series

Copyrighted Material
 RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVES BOOK SERIES
STEP HE N A . MITC H Ell AND L EW IS ARON
Series Editors

Volume 1 Volume 10
Rita Wiley McCleary N eil J. Skolnick and David E. Scharff,
Conversing with Uncertainty: editors
Practicing Psychotherapy in a Fairbairn, Then and Now
Hospital Setting
Volume 11
Volume 2 Stuart A. Pizer
Charles Spezzano Building Bridges: Negotiation of
Affect in Psychoanalysis: Paradox in Psychoanalysis
A Clinical Synthesis
Volume 12
Volume 3 Lewis Aron and
Neil Altman Frances Sommer Anderson, editors
The Analyst in the Inner City: Relational Perspectives on the Body
Race, Class, and Culture
Volume 13
Through a Psychoanalytic Lens
Karen Maroda
Volume 4 Seduction, Surrender, and
Lewis Aron Traniformation: Emotional Engagement
A Meeting of Minds: in the Analytic Process
Mutuality in Psychoanalysis
Volume 14
Volume 5 Stephen A. Mitchell and Lewis Aron,
Joyce A. Slochower editors
Holding and Psychoanalysis: Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence
A Relational Perspective of a Tradition

Volume 6 Volume 15
Barbara Gerson, editor Rochelle G. K. Kainer
The Therapist as a Person: The Collapse of the Self and
Life Crises, Life Choices, Its Therapeutic Restoration
Life Experiences, and Volume 16
Their Effects on Treatment Kenneth A. Frank
Volume 7 Psychoanalytic Participation:
Charles Spezzano and Action, Interaction, and Integration
Gerald J. Gargiulo, editors Volume 17
Soul on the Couch: Spirituality, Sue Grand
Religion, and Morality in The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and
Contemporary Psychoanalysis Cultural Perspective
Volume 8 Volume 18
Donnel B. Stern Steven H. Cooper
Unformulated Experience: Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility
From Dissociation to Imagination and Limit in Psychoanalysis
in Psychoanalysis
Volume 19
Volume 9 James S. Grotstein
Stephen A. Mitchell Who is the Dreamer
Influence and Autonomy in Who Dreams the Dream?
Psychoanalysis A Study in Psychic Presences

Copyrighted Material
 Who 1s the Dreamer
Who Dreams the Dream?

A Study of Psychic Presences

James S. Grotstein

~ THE ANALYTIC PRESS

2000 Hil lsda le, NJ Lo ndon

Copyrighted Material
Copyright © 2000 by The Analytic Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form: by photostat,
microform, electronic retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

The chapters in this book have appeared elsewhere and are reprinted here in modi-
fied form by permission of their publishers: ch. I-Contemporary Psychoanalysis (1979,
15: 110-169) and rev. in Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? A Memorial to Wilfred R. Bion, ed.
J. Grotstein (1981, Beverly Hills, CA: Caesura Press); ch. 2-lntegrating One-Person and
Two-Person Psychologies:Autochthony Versus Alterity in Counterpoint. Psychoanalytic
Quarterly (1997,66:403-430); ch. 3-Matte-Blanco Today I: Mainly Clinical, Special Issue of
Journal of Melanie Klein and Objea Relations (1997, 15:631-646); ch. 4-lnternational Journal
of Psycho-Analysis (1978,59:55-61); ch. 5-Journal ofAnalytical Psychology (1998,43:4-68);
ch. 6-Journal ofAnalytical Psychology ( 1997, 42:47-60); ch. 7-Journal ofAnalytical Psychology
(1997,42:585-611); ch. 8-American Journal of Psychoanalysis (1997,57: 193-218); ch. 9-
American Journal of Psychoanalysis (1997,57:317-335); ch. IO-Bion's Transformations in
"0;' Lacan's "Real" and Kant's "Thing-in-ltself":Towards the Concept of the Transcendent
Position. Journal of Melanie Klein and Objea Relations (1996, 14: 109-142.)

Published by The Analytic Press,lnc.

101 West Street, Hillsdale, NJ 07642
www.analyticpress.com

Typeset in Adobe Palatino by CompuDesign, Chariottesville,VA

Indexed by Leonard Rosenbaum, Washington, DC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grotstein,James S.
Who is the dreamer who dreams the dream? : a study of psychic
presences I James S.Grostein.
p. cm.-(Relational perspectives book series; v. 19)
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 0-88163-305-4
I . Psychoanalysis I. Title II. Series

BF I 73.G756 2000
150. 19'5-dc21
00-036273

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

Copyrighted Material
 CONTENTS

Foreword - Thomas H. Ogden VIl

Preface xv
Acknowledgments xxxiii

1 The Ineffable Nature of the Dreamer 1

2 Autochthony (Self-Creation) and Alterity (Cocreation):
Psychic Reality in Counterpoint 37
3 A Fearful Symmetry and the Calipers of the
Infinite Geometer 59
4 Inner Space: Its Dimensions and Its Coordinates 83
5 Psychoanalytic Subjects 101
6 Internal Objects 143
7 The Myth of the Labyrinth 189
8 Why Oedipus and Not Christ? - Part I 219
9 Why Oedipus and Not Christ? - Part II 255
10 Bion's Transformations in 0 281

References 305
Index 329

Copyrighted Material
 About the Author

James S. Grotstein, M.D. is Professor of

Psychiatry, U.C.L.A. School of Medicine,
and a Training and Supervising Analyst at
the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute
and at The Psychoanalytic Center of
California.

Copyrighted Material
 FOREWORD
Thomas H. Ogden

In reading about this book, and now attempting to speak about it, I feel
a bit like humble Dante being guided through the underworld by Virgil.
The wonder, the marvel, the splendor, and the terror of the unconscious
as portrayed by Grotstein is reminiscent of Dante's portrayal of the
underworld in The Inferno. Grotstein brings to life for the reader the
excitement that Freud must have experienced as the imminence of
another order of experience first began to reveal itself to him through
his exciting/frightening encounters with the female hysterics who had
overwhelmed Breuer. The mystery and the awe became all the greater
as Freud followed the trail of his thoughts and feelings in his journey
into the underworld of his own mind and body and spirit, an under-
world occupied with subjects and objects and invisible presences with
their own utterly alien and utterly familiar subjects and objects and his-
tory and sense of time and space. Perhaps most important of all is
Grotstein's ability to convey a sense of unlimited creative potential of
the unconscious; the goal of realizing a greater share of this potential in
the analytic experience itself is a pivotal touchstone for the reader's
reconsideration of his or her analytic technique.
I will not attempt to present a precis of this book: to do so would
require at least twice the number of pages written by Grotstein. With
the caveat that any attempt to paraphrase Grotstein is as doomed as an
effort to paraphrase a poem, I will discuss a few of the ideas developed
in this book. As Frost put it, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." I
would, however, like to offer something of a "Reader's Guide to
Grotstein." This is a dense book that, despite its weight, moves very
quickly; the writing is enthusiastically brimming over with ideas. This

vii

Copyrighted Material
viii FOREWORD

book requires that the reader tolerate a good deal of a feeling of not
knowing, of feeling confused and lost. But this difficulty in reading is
offset by the fact that the major concepts discussed in this book are revis-
ited in each of its chapters. The return of increasingly familiar, but never
static themes has the quality of a recurring musical leitmotif that accrues
richness of meaning as the composition proceeds. The book builds
toward its final chapter, "Bion's Transformations in 0," where I believe
the reader will find that the book comes together as more than the sum
of its parts.
To tum to the text itself, Grotstein, in his preface, presents his belief
that Freud's structural model, involving the interplay of id, ego, super-
ego, and external reality, is a woefully inadequate model with which to
attempt to conceptualize the mind. (The Latin terminology introduced
by Strachey, despite Freud's admonitions, renders the terms abstract
and experience distant.) Grotstein attempts to rediscover the energy and
muscularity of Freud's insights by offering a model of the psyche in
which there is a phenomenal subject (our conscious experience of our-
selves as "1") and an "Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious." The latter
term is intentionally ambiguous in that it represents a subject who is a
reflection of itself and is known (and knows itself) only indirectly. This
is perhaps the central paradox of the book. From the perspective devel-
oped by Grotstein, psychological health might be thought of as the
degree to which an individual has been able to create a generative ten-
sion between the phenomenal subject and the Ineffable Subject of the
Unconscious.
Grotstein's discussion, in chapter 1, of the dreamer who dreams the
dream and the dreamer who understands the dream represents, to my
mind, an important contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding
of the phenomenon of dreaming. Grotstein views the mystery of dream-
ing from the point of view that dreaming is a critical way we have of
communicating with ourselves and of processing that unconscious com-
munication in the very act of dreaming. The remembering of dreams
and their verbal narration in the analytic setting are secondary and ter-
tiary phenomena. The dreamer who dreams the dream works in con-
cert with the dreamer who understands the dream in their effort to give
visual, narrative shape to psychic pain that can be viewed by an inter-
nal audience. That audience (the dreamer who understands the dream)
understands and bears therapeutic witness to the truth of the experi-
ence that is brought to life in the experience of dreaming. This internal
therapeutic dialogue, like the stars in the sky, is continuous, but visible
only at night (that is, in sleep). The dreamer, never represented in the
dream, is the "Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious." In this context, the
Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious might be understood as a quality

Copyrighted Material
 THOMAS H. OGDEN ix

of being that is forever creating metaphoric reflections of itself: Dreams

are among its most creative, magnificent, terrifying, enigmatic, unlo-
calizable creations. It could be said that we are most fully ourselves in
the dreaming of the dreams that dream us.
Grotstein's development of the idea of autochthony in the second
chapter is a cogent statement of what is most central to the analytic
enterprise. "Autochthony," the fantasy of self-creation, is seen as stand-
ing in dialectical tension with "alterity," the awareness of the other as a
whole and separate subject with an inner life very much like one's own.
Autochthony is not a state of being to overcome or outgrow; it is an
essential, life-long aspect of experience through which we "personal-
ize" the world by imagining that we created it and that it is a reflection
of who we are. Grotstein enriches Winnicott's notion that transitional
phenomena are necessary for the infant to accept the separateness of the
object and, ultimately, to be able to take part in "object usage." He adds
to Winnicott's formulation the important element of an autochthonous
(self-creating) phantasy as a healthy unconscious dimension of all object
relatedness. Trauma, from this perspective, is the experience of the exter-
nal world forcing itself on the individual before the individual has had an
opportunity to create it in his own image; the traumatized individual defen-
sively personalizes the trauma (after the fact) by fantasizing (feeling
convinced in the most irrefutable way) that he caused and was respon-
sible for the traumatizing events that overpowered him.
Two important principles of technique follow from this conception
of autochthony:
Initially, the analyst's interpretations should address the patient's
unconscious fantasies concerning his own responsibility for creating the
dangerous (anxiety-generating) situation being experienced (whether
within or outside of the analytic relationship. For example, an inter-
pretation might be addressed to the patient's unconscious conviction
that his inability to love caused his parents to neglect him in a way that
left him feeling terrifyingly alone. The analyst need not concur with the
patient's belief that he brought his frightening isolation on himself, but
the analyst must recognize the life-preserving, defensive (personaliz-
ing) function of the patient's unconscious fantasy that he did so.
The analyst's premature attempts to demonstrate to the patient the
"reality" that he or she is not responsible for all that has occurred in his
or her own life may undermine the patient's necessary efforts to per-
sonalize his world, consequently leaving the patient even more help-
less in the face of traumatizing impingements (past and present).
Second, as analysis progresses and the patient becomes conversant
with his unconscious autochthonous fantasies (as they have been expe-
rienced, interpreted, and rendered manageable in the transference-

Copyrighted Material
xl fOREWORD

countertransference), the analyst's interpretations increasingly address

the differences between "persecutors" and "enemies." That is, the analy-
sis becomes increasingly more focused on the differences between per-
secutory projected aspects of the self, on one hand, and the feelings and
behavior of external objects on the other. Grotstein's conception of suc-
cessful analytic work as a process of turning persecutors into enemies
elaborates and extends Loewald's (1960) conception of analysis as a
process of turning ghosts into ancestors.
The analytic quest, for Grotstein, involves the voluntary "uncon-
cealment" of private, pain-ridden aspects of self. To achieve this, the
Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious and the phenomenal subject join in
an effort in which the Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious serves as a
metaphorical "playwright of the analytic text." The Ineffable Subject of
the Unconscious communicates (in the form of symptoms, dreams, act-
ings-in, actings-out and so on) to the phenomenal subject formerly unex-
pressed and inexpressible pain. The phenomenal subject brings to the
Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious the pain of current life experience
(which is saturated with its historical antecedents). The Ineffable Subject
of the Unconscious "reworks" current experience, for example, in the form
of dreaming, and thus makes it available in its altered form to the phe-
nomenal subject (which is more imbued with capacities for secondary-
process thinking and verbal symbolization). This process might be thought
of as an internal process of projective identification in which different
aspects of the subject make use of one another in creating emotional expe-
rience that can be thought, felt, remembered, symbolized, and commu-
nicated to oneself and to others. That which cannot be "metabolized" in
this manner is manifested in the form of symptomatology.
Grotstein, in chapter 4, discusses the spatial and temporal dimen-
sions of psychological experience. In a lucid and highly original pre-
sentation, he proposes that we might think of "inner space" in terms
of four different forms or experiences of times and space. The null
dimension is characterized by a sense of infinite space and might be
thought of developmentally as corresponding to intrauterine experi-
ence (which is not "mentalized" since there is no space-or there is
infinite space-between subject and experience). Grotstein's descrip-
tion of the experience in the "first dimension" is a vibrant description
of the phenomenology of the paranoid-schizoid position. If zero
dimensionality is the universe of the point (that is infinite), one dimen-
sionality is the universe of the line: "there is a polarization of spatial
[emotional] experience. Mother is either approaching (up the line) or
departing (down the line). Moreover, the good mother's departure
(down the line) is indistinguishable from the bad mother's approach
(up the line)" (p. 92).

Copyrighted Material
 THOMAS H. OGDEN xi

The quality of experience associated with the two-dimensional inner

space is an experience of emotional thinness and flatness (geometrically
represented in fantasy as a plane). Defense takes the form of flattening
out of the emotional intensity. Three-dimensional inner space is associ-
ated with the qualities of experience of the depressive position: There
is a sense of one's own psychological depth, of layered symbolic mean-
ing, of interplay between inside and outside and between oneself and
other subjects. Psychopathology is not inherent in any of these experi-
ences of inner space. Rather, psychopathology might be thought of as
the breakdown of the generative dialectical tension among these forms
of psychic dimensionality. From this vantage point, creativity might be
thought of as requiring an ability to remain grounded in three dimen-
sionality while immersing oneself in the possibilities of another form of
dimensionality (for example, as Borges does in his imaginative literary
excursions into the infinite). Grotstein suspects that experiences of inner
space extend into the dimensions beyond three dimensionality in order
to account for "the synthesis of component spaces" (p. 97).
It is not possible to discuss in this foreword each of the chapters of
this book in detail. In the latter chapters, Grotstein offers rich discus-
sions of the subject of analysis and its internal objects/presences, as well
as explorations of the mythology, cosmology, and religious symbology
in which the subject finds/ creates itself. Instead of attempting to sur-
vey that landscape, I will look closely at the final chapter, toward which
each of the preceding chapters seems to build. The last chapter is a tour
de force that begins with one of the clearest and most inclusive expli-
cations of Bion's work that I have encountered. Bion believed that the
most basic driving force for human beings was not the Freudian libid-
inal and aggressive drives or the Kleinian death instinct, but the "truth
instinct" (Grotstein's phrase) that involves an ability to achieve a reso-
nance with "0." 0 is the symbol Bion used to refer to "ultimate Truth,"
which is unknowable in any direct way. 0 is beyond words and beyond
sensory perception. The infant has a need for Truth that is as strong as
his need for food. In early development, the infant projects unbearable
(unthinkable) truth into the mother who converts it into bits of knowl-
edge (K), which can be used by the infant for purposes of thinking and
feeling that which was formerly unbearable to think or feel. This
mother-infant relationship serves as a model for Bion's conception of
the analytic relationship. Grotstein explains that transference itself is
ultimately directed, through the analyst as object, toward the analysand's
own unconscious (the Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious). The ana-
lyst in a state of reverie (a state of receptivity free of memory or desire)
attempts to live with the truth projected into him by the analysand and,
in a sense, "becomes it" before transforming it into symbols (K) that are

Copyrighted Material
xii FOREWORD

offered to the patient in the form of interpretations. This is a process of

transducing, in Grotstein's words, an infinite or omnipotent unknow-
able entity into a finite and knowable one.
The process of becoming 0 represents the achievement, albeit tran-
sitory, of the "transcendent position," the individual's gradually devel-
oping capacity from infancy onward to tolerate (suffer) and therefore
resonate with 0, the ultimate realness of anything and everything.
Grotstein makes clear that, when he uses the symbol 0 and the con-
cept of transcendence, he is talking about reaching toward something
"beyond" but not necessarily "lofty." Transcendence can be quite quo-
tidian: it might be sensed as an essence of a perception or as a response
to a poem or to a conversation. It has to do with our coming into being,
our becoming. In other words, the trajectory of transcendence is
beyond the structures that defensively imprison us in our subjectiv-
ity. From this perspective, the Kleinian paranoid-schizoid and depres-
sive positions might be viewed as strategies that we use to filter the
blinding brilliance of O . The paranoid-schizoid "filtering technique"
involves the creation of reductionistic binary oppositions (good-bad,
victim-victimizer), whereas the depressive position "filtering tech-
niques" involve an evasive use of the complexities of mythic categories
played out in "realistic" whole-object relations (for example, the dilem-
mas of the permutations and combinations of the experience of oedi-
pal jealousy).
The chapter and the book close with a fuller explication of the tran-
scendent position. I will attempt something similar here with the help
of a quotation from Grotstein's poetic language: "Transcendence is the
mute 'Other' that lies just beyond, around, and within where we are
from moment to moment. It is the core of our very Being-in-itself" (p.
301). The transcendent position involves a state of being that is not
reserved for mystics who seem to float above everyday life.
Transcendence is not a state of being that has left behind the concerns
of everyday life experienced as paranoid-schizoid and depressive anx-
ieties; rather, the transcendent position, as I understand it, is a psycho-
logical state in which one reaches deeply into everyday life (what other
life is there?) and senses something more that saturates and enlivens
one's being; it involves experiencing the pain of a beauty that is almost
too much to bear.
The great value of the concept of the transcendent position is felt
most strongly, I think, when, after having spent some time with Grotstein
as he discusses this aspect of the experience of the human spirit and its
hunger for corning into being truthfully, one finds the extant concepts
provided by Freud's topographic (conscious, preconscious, unconscious)
and structural (id, ego, superego) models and Klein's paranoid-schizoid

Copyrighted Material
 THOMAS H. OGDEN xiii

positions a little flat, lacking something of "an imminence unfulfilled"

(to borrow a phrase from Borges). In the impossible task of attempting
to write about the ineffable, the unknowable, the "something more,"
Grotstein has made significant strides where few have dared to try (or
even thought to try).

Copyrighted Material
Copyrighted Material
 PREFACE
Who 1s the Unconscious?

The themes of the chapters in this book have occupied my thinking

through many years of psychoanalytic practice. Once the chapters were
gathered together for publication, some unifying and defining themes
seemed to emerge. Searching for a title that would reflect the Ariadne's
thread running through them, I realized that I had been trying to address
the mystery and ineffability of the self in general and of the unconscious
in particular. I found myself attempting to deconstruct the concept of
the subject, most particularly that which we know as "1," as differenti-
ated from "me" or "self." I began to realize that I wanted to bring psy-
chic entities, the unconscious and its denizens (its internal subject and
internal objects), as well as the ego and id, out of the shadows and mists
that have enveloped and obscured them in the misleading and decep-
tive garb of deterministic science, which was Freud's oeuvre, and restore
them to their true aliveness.
We psychoanalysts and psychotherapists take these entities so much
for granted that we overlook their mystery and wonder. There is a vast
difference, for instance, between thinking of an ego, on one hand, and
of accepting "I" as the consummate, complex, nonlinear, multidimen-
sional subject, on the other-or between using the construct of the id as
opposed to Lacan's (1966) "Other," which I sometimes render as the
"second self" or "alter ego" or the "ineffable subject of the unconscious."
When the ineffable subject of the unconscious finds an external other
who happens to be a psychoanalyst, then the two together constitute
what the Greeks called the psychopomp, the conductor to the realm of
lost souls. Thomas Ogden (1994) calls it "the intersubjective third

xv

Copyrighted Material
xvi PREFACE

subject of analysis." In bygone times this entity was known by many

names: soul, spirit, presence, or even demiurge.l
While searching the literature for background for an earlier contri-
bution on the alter ego or second self, I came across the following advice
given to young writers in another age. In 1759, in Edward Young's
Conjectures on Original Composition, we find: "Know thyself . .. learn the
depth, extent, bias, and full fort of thy mind; contract full intimacy with
the Stranger within thee" (in Cox, 1980). I am searching, in short, for the
"Stranger within thee" -and within me-a more vitalistic, animistic,
and phenomenological way to address the rich complexity of the mind,
one that respects the mind's numinousness, mystery, and infinite pos-
sibilities. And I am seeking ways to rescue the id specifically and the
unconscious generally from what I believe has been a prejudice-that
it is primitive and impersonal, rather than subjective and ultra sophis-
ticated, and constitutes a "seething cauldron." There is reason to believe
that the cauldron seethes because it bubbles with infinite creative pos-
sibilities and bristles with our indifference to it. One of my aims is to
revive the concept of the" alter ego" (second self) in order to restore the
unconscious to its former conception before Freud, that of a mystical,
preternatural, numinous second self-and then to integrate that older
version with the more positivistic conception that Freud gave us.
The unconscious functions with infinite sets and is mediated by "bi-
logical"2 mental processes, according to Matte-Blanco (1975,1981,1988),
which abound in symmetrizations (self-samenesses) as well as in asym-
metrizations (differentiation).3 In other words, the id and its host, the
unconscious, are, upon deeper consideration, characterized by a lofti-
ness, sophistication, versatility, profundity, virtuosity, and brilliance that
utterly dwarf the conscious aspects of the ego.
Similarly, when one refers to the ego, its very alienating latinity con-
ceals its numinousness and mystery as "I," the subject of experience,

1. Plato's name for God, the creator or architect of the world, as distin-
guished from God as essence. The demiurge figured as the "heretical" Gnostic
concept of the immanent God within us, whereas the mystics differentiated
between the immanent "God" within us and the "Godhead," the God beyond
contemplation.
2. "Bi-Iogic" is Matte-Blanco's term for a hybrid concept which he substi-
tutes for Freud's primary process. It is conceived of as being situated in vary-
ing layers within the unconscious and is characterized by differing proportions
of mixtures of symmetrical and asymmetrical logic; i.e., "everything is the
same" /"everything is different." At the extreme, the unconscious is character-
ized by symmetrized infinite sets of selfsameness, i.e., the psychotic state.
3. See chapter 3 for a fuller development of the works of Matte-Blanco and
for definitions of symmetrization, asymmetrization, and bi-Iogic.

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xvii

especially in its own unconscious reaches. 4 I refer to the "I" that we

know as the phenomenal subject and the id, which is really the alter ego
to the ego as the ineffable subject. In fact-and this constitutes the major
theme of this book-I posit that the unconscious is perhaps as close to
the "God experience" as mankind can ever hope to achieve. Bion (1965,
1970, 1992) informs us that the Godhead is utterly ineffable and beyond
contemplation and equates it with Absolute Truth, Ultimate Reality, the
noumenon, beta elements (unmentalized elements), the thing-in-itself,
0 .5 The experience of a presence that is meta-human or preternatura16
exists as a potentiality in the boundless landscape of the unconscious. I
believe that it is here that religious, philosophical, and mystical studies
converge with the psychological and the psychoanalytic.? This conver-
gence is implied in Plato's concept of The Ideal Forms and in his para-
ble of the cave. Let me cite a passage from Plato's Republic in regard to
the cave metaphor, a passage that involves a dialogue between Socrates
and Glaucon:

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is
enlightened or unenlightened: Behold! Human beings living in
an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light
and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their
childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they
cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by
the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind
them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the
prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a
low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette
players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carry-
ing all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made

4. Kennedy's (1998) The Elusive Human Subject cogently addresses the mean-
ing I am trying to convey.
5. Bion (1965, 1970) uses the term 0 to deSignate Absolute Truth or Ultimate
Reality, that domain that lies beyond imagination and beyond symbolic reality.
It just is.
6. By preternatural I do not quite mean omnipotent or supernatural; I mean
out of or beyond the normal course of nature; differing from the natural, exceptional.
7. I hasten to inform the reader that this work is not about religion. It
uses religion, spirituality, and mysticism, as well as other disciplines in order
to obtain different "camera angles" on the "unknown," Freud's real name for
the unconscious.

Copyrighted Material
xviii PREFACE

of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over

the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are
strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shad-
ows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on
the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shad-
ows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner
they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would
they not suppose that they were naming what was actually
before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which
came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when
one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard
came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the
shadows of the images.

Plato thus presents us with a powerful epistemological metaphor in

which there is a fire situated behind a human being facing the wall of a
cave. Between the fire and the individual are the Forms, those inherent
preconceptions that Bion (1962,1963) calls "thoughts without a thinker"
and that are older than the thinkers who think them. 8 The fire and the
numinous figures in front of it constitute the ineffable subject of the
unconscious and its inscrutable landscape and workings, one aspect of
which is alpha function (a profound form of meditative intuition; Bion,
1962).9 We humans realize them from the shadows they cast on the wall

8. Later, I shall differ with Bion somewhat to suggest that the ineffable sub-
ject of the unconscious is the "thinker" of the "thoughts without a thinker." I
use Plato as my resource to suggest that everything is known to that immanent
preternatural subject, whose ignominious nom de plume is the id, and to which
I shall soon add another name, the "dreamer who dreams the dream."
9. Alpha function is Bion's (1959, 1962) term for an intuitive, nonlinear,
nonobjective mental process that approximates Freud's (1911) concept of pri-
mary process. According to Bion, the infant is born without it and depends on
mother's use of it to contain and "translate" its feelings into appropriate enti-

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xix

of the cave. The shadow cast by these "marionette" derivatives of the

ineffable subject becomes the phenomenal subject, the self, its object,
and the other objects to which the self relates. The shadow of the inef-
fable I, in other words, is the self, its object, the one that can never be
the subject.

PSYCH1C lMAGERY AND PSYCHlC PRESENCES

Transcendentally speaking, the object the infant encounters is not merely

a realistic object. That is, it is apperceived (anticipated) by virtue of inher-
ent categories and a priori considerations (including needs, drives,
affects, expectations, etc.), all exported by projective identification, which
transforms the image of the real object into a phantom (even during
moments of extreme trauma). This phantom becomes a compounded,
or third, form, a montage, a chimera (hybrid, containing many disparate
forms), which ultimately becomes far removed in nature and composi-
tion from the original object in reality (see chapter 6). I believe that psy-
chic imagery is the mysterious intermediary (presence) that occupies
the internal world both as subject and as object. Psychic imagery also
serves as an obligatory link between individuals externally; we relate
through the resonating intermediary of our private yet shared images.
My term psychic presences is meant to convey the experience of
intrapsychic preternatural entities, which present as images or phan-
toms and which we, in turn, reify as real. These images or phantoms
undergo a transfiguration or transmogrification as we progress from
the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position, to use Kleinian terms
and concepts. They evolve into symbolic images that designate the
"presence of the absence" of the object-person, that is, the presence of
the legacy of the experience with the object in its absence. Even this status
is obsolescent when we evolve to the transcendent position of 0, the
position in which the need for imagery vanishes altogether and we are
face-to-face with Absolute Truth, Ultimate Reality, which are essence
and the void (see chapter 10). The idea of a presence in the mind is very
close to the older notion of the "numen," as in "numinous" (the numen
is the local god of a place).
Intrapsychic life, like interpersonal encounters, is a dance of

°
images-until we achieve oneness with 0. In other words, once we
"become" (attain the transcendent position), we serenely realize that

ties. In this transaction the infant's feelings constitute the contained, and mother
is the container.

Copyrighted Material
xx PREFACE

everything we "learned" in the depressive position (i.e., all our "trans-

formations in K," Bion's abbreviation for all our knowledge about facts)
was but the scaffoldings of necessary approximations or falsifications
until we could be ready for 0.1 0
I consider the concept of the image to be of consummate importance
in our understanding of psychic presences. The term projective identifi-
cation suffered a sea change as it crossed the Atlantic and was torn loose
from its strictly Kleinian moorings in unconscious phantasy. Bion's revi-
sion of the concept in his container-contained paradigm lent itself decep-
tively to the American revision. I do not believe, for instance, that the
analysand projects into an object per se (if object means an external per-
son). I believe that analysands project into their image of the object, and
that image is intrapsychic. The participation of the real person who is the
putative object of the projective identification is separate from, and there-
fore independent of, that projecting subject. When the analyst is truly
influenced by the analysand's projective identifications, this influence
involves the counterintrojective and counterprojective invocation of the
analyst's own intrapsychic imagery. This occurs in a state of what Ogden
(1997) calls "intersubjective thirdness," Mason (1994) names "folie it
deux" (or mutual projective identification or "hypnosis"), and Girard
(1972) terms "mimesis." Schore (personal communication) and I assign
this phenomenon to "intersubjective resonance." My choice of the image
as an important intermediary concept was guided by st. Paul's "First
Letter to the Corinthians":l1

For we know in part, and we prophecy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in
part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away
childish things,
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
known.
[I Corinthians, 13:9-12]

10. See de Bianchedi (1993) for her contribution on Bion's conception of

truth and falsehood.
11. I chose this reference not for its religious importance but because of its
application to psychoanalytic epistemology. I have not been alone in observing
that theologians have been working on problems that correspond to our under-
standing of the ontological nature of the subject and our epistemological attempts
to make sense of the inner and outer cosmos. See Bion (1965, 1970, 1992).

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxi

I understand this citation to be an example of the tradition of the mys-

tics, who believe that the spiritual quest is to be able to see clearly, with-
out disguise and through disguise. I also understand it as parallel to
Bion's (1965, 1970) concept of "transformation in '0,'" where we become
Truth and Real, without knowing and beyond recognizing.
A corollary to 5t. Paul's Letter is a citation from Virgil's Aeneid, Book V:

The clouds that block thy mortal sight

I shall remove.

To clear the clouds that block our mortal sight is the psychoanalytic task,
but that clearance is deceptive. As the metaphoric clouds clear away
outside, our internal vision is all the more opened so that we can then
shift from imagery (the object) inward to becoming the subject-in O.

"ROGUE" OR "SUBJECT1VE OBJECTS"

I have come to realize that what we have been calling internal objects
are really "third forms," chimerical (hybrid) conglomerations of the
image of the real object image intermixed with the resulting products
from splitting and projective identifications of aspects of the subject.
When the object is external, we see what our senses and sensitivities
have rendered of our perception of the original object. This rendition
becomes a projectively reidentified "subjective object," a psychic entity
created by our subjectivity while we think we are perceiving the object
as it really is. In other words, what we call perception is more often
apperception. Apperception is the falsification or personalized distor-
tion that underlies the illusion of perception. We "perceive" that which
we are always already predisposed to encounter.
We forget that we must subjectively "format" the data of our obser-
vations with a priori categorizations (Kant, 1787). Just as a film emul-
sion catches the rays of light and transforms them into corresponding
photographic images, so the images we form and internalize are mod-
ified by the subjective emulsions of our internal world, which render
these data into personalized subjective experiences prior to their ulti-
mate objectification.
The resulting chimerical (hybrid) images are at some remove from
their original models, and they become secondary or acquired precon-
ceptions that function like additional filters over our subsequent per-
ceptions, thus rendering them into apperceptions (personalized
distortions or "transferences"). We process our experiences from inher-
ent and continuing mental formatting. We and our objects become

Copyrighted Material
xxii PREFACE

prisoners, not of the events that transpire between us, but of these sub-
jective transformations and the personalizing modifiers of how we
process our experiences.
What have become known as internal objects are, to my thinking,
"rogue" or "renegade subjects" ensconced within images of objects. In
other words, the agent of intentionality or will of internal objects is
always a function of split-off subjects. As Ogden (1986) reminds us,
"Internal objects do not think." These internal objects express them-
selves clinically as primitive, compulsive, relentless superegos, uncon-
trollable, omnipotent, sometimes impulsive (even addictive) subjective
objects, or as defective, wounded, or impotent object relics with which
we identify.
The concept of the object began to change with Klein's discovery of
projective identification and was further modified by the contributions
of Fairbairn, Piaget, and others. We have been forced to reassess the true
meaning of object, a term that, in contrast to subject, has a solid ontic (sci-
entific, deterministic) background and lends itself in no small measure
because of that provenance to what I believe are serious misunder-
standings. Many psychoanalysts and psychotherapists continue to think
of the object as the actual other person and to think of the internalized
object as the actual external person who is now resident within the mind.
It is frequently considered that we "introject" our objects and their val-
ues as our own. Freud (1915), referring to Kant, wrote the following:

The psycho-analytic assumption of unconscious mental activ-

ity appears to us, on the one hand, as a further expansion of the
primitive animism which caused us to see copies of our own
consciousness all around us, and, on the other hand, as an exten-
sion of the corrections undertaken by Kant of our views on
external perception. Just as Kant warned us not to overlook the
fact that our perceptions are subjectively conditioned and must
not be regarded as identical with what is perceived though
unknowable, so psycho-analysis warns us not to equate per-
ceptions by means of consciousness with the unconscious men-
tal processes which are their object. Like the physical, the
psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be
[po 171].

I infer that Freud understood that he was borrowing heavily from Kant's
transcendental analytic and that the unrepressed unconscious is unknown
and unknowable and consequently must be treated as if it were Kant's
a priori categories. Psychoanalysis is transcendental since it is predi-

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxiii

cated on the concept of inherent a priori categories with which the indi-
vidual is constitutionally predisposed to use in anticipating the arrival
of the object. Freud's rendition of these inherent categories is the instinc-
tual drives. The phenomenon of transference is also a testimony to this
transcendental leitmotif in psychoanalysis (see chapter 6).

PRETERNATURAL PRESENCES W1TH1N THE PSYCHE

I wish to reintroduce the term preternatural (beyond natural), to which

I alluded earlier. Like many others lately, I have been struck by how our
psychoanalytic language has flattened and desiccated the essence of the
first person pronoun I, the subject and also the object. The ego and the
object have become saturated conceptually, and their inherent mystery
has all but vanished. I use the word preternatural to address the nonlin-
ear complexity of our being alive and human-in the presence of the
mystery inherent within others. It suggests exceptional qualities and
capacities that we once attributed to gods, messiahs, and mystics.
This meaning of preternatural approximates how I have corne to
regard the ultimate nature of the subject and the object (the other) and
applies to what I consider to be the ultimately sacred architecture of the
psyche. It encompasses the human and yet more-than-human capacity
we have in our innermost souls to harness infinity, complexity, and chaos
and render them meaningful along the variegated dimensions of under-
standing within the human wave band. The unconscious, particularly
the ineffable subject (the id), is like a god, but a handicapped one,
because it needs partners in order for its mission to be completed. These
preternatural presences include the dreamer who dreams the dream and
the mythical author of the analysand's free associations, who are the
same.
The concept of preternatural presences carne to me as I was begin-
ning to use a clinical technique that I had picked up from my own ana-
lyst, Wilfred Bion. His clinical emphasis, which I was late to learn, was
not on what I thought I was saying but on the text of what I was say-
ing, that is, on the patterned unfolding of the sequences of my associa-
tions. As I slowly recalled what he had imparted, I found myself
listening not to an analysand per se (i.e., the person of the analysand
who spoke) but to the seemingly depersonified text itself, which, from
one point of view, was other than human or personal.
Subsequently, I had difficulties in imparting this technique to super-
visees because they felt it was too impersonal. Indeed, it is impersonal in
a way. I find that I am listening to an eerie, difficult-to-define, exceptional

Copyrighted Material
xxiv PREFACE

other, the ineffable subject of the unconscious itself-"speaking" to me

through the muffled discourse of the analysand's conscious discourse.
This other self is what Lacan (1966) called "the Other" or "the decen-
tered self," that is, the unconscious itself. To me it is the ego's alter ego,
and I have called it the ineffable subject of the unconscious, whose nature
is preternatural (beyond natural, larger than life), a presence among
presences within, encased holographically within an ultimate, internal
cosmic subjectivity, the supraordinate subject (see chapter 5).
The concept of preternatural psychic presences presumes a vitalis-
tic, or animistic, demonic (in the positive as well as the negative sense)
view of internal mental life. While it is true that the unconscious is a
part of our human, personal self, it is nevertheless different. It is both
human and more than human (although it was formerly thought to be
less than human when the unconscious was considered as an id-"it").
In every absence, from infancy onward, there exists a felt presence
(of the object) that either hounds or protects that absence but that cer-
tainly occupies it. The sense of presence is bimodal. One presence is the
experiencing and contemplating subject itself, which includes the inef-
fable subject, the phenomenal subject, and perhaps others, which are all
compositely located within a holographic supra ordinate subject(ivity).
This complex subjective presence becomes focused on its other pres-
ence, the self, its object of contemplation and reflection, which in turn
consists of identified-with presences, that is, internal objects (which I
have termed subjective objects since they are estranged, alienated, mis-
recognized subjects in the disguise of the objects they inhabit).
These objects are subjects at one remove because of projective iden-
tification of alienated subjectivities into images of external objects. Our
subsequent introjective identifications with these altered images trans-
form them into "familiar within" (deja vu) or misrecognitions; and, in
so identifying with them, we become altered, misrecognized selves. In
the psychoanalytic enterprise we psychoanalysts try to name the haunt-
ing presences that occupy the absence, and even presence, of the real
object and hope that they may ultimately be transformed into benign
and realistic presences or returned to their proper owners.
Presence is my designation for the ultimate subjectivity of the supra-
ordinate subject of being, which itself may be a supraordinate presence
we ultimately aim to become in an evolution in 0 (Bion, 1965, 1970),
Bion's term for the attainment of our ultimate state of consciousness.
The term presence also refers to the ineffable subject, that transcenden-
tal (numinous) subject of the unconscious, the phenomenal subject of
consciousness and preconsciousness, and the internal-and external
(projected)-subjective objects. My choice of the term is also my way of
addressing our need to be present-and alive-in our own experience

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxv

and to repatriate our lost subjectivities from the diaspora into which we
exiled them.
Years ago, I developed the concept of the background object of pri-
mary identification (see also chapter 1). Later I began to realize that this
is more a "presence" than an object since it, whether it is unseen (because
of its being internal) or visible externally, is sensed as a presence, often
a formidable one, not just as an object of contemplation, need, or desire.
We are most aware of this entity when we do not experience its holding-
environment presence securely stationed behind us. The idea of psychic
presences seemed to embrace my ideas about both the subject and the
object, which are at the heart of this book.
I then began to wonder all over again about the thinking, feeling,
and sensing mind to which these presences present themselves, pres-
ences that I now believe are larger, more formidable, and often more
eerie than life; that is, they are preternatural presences. The mind that
houses these preternatural presences is itself a presence of another order,
a subjective presence, one capable of considerable objectivity (clear dis-
tinction between subject and object) but never loses its connection with
its personalness, its subjectivity.
I came to feel that the mind is a subject-no, more than a subject; it
too is a presence to be reckoned with. But one cannot reckon with a sub-
ject because it is a subject. I realized that from grammar. One cannot,
grammatically, objectify "I" in any language. We are reduced to exam-
ining the shadow of its presence, as Plato suggested in the parable about
the fire, the cave, and the Eternal Forms. In other words, the mind itself
is a holographic subject, by which I mean that it constitutes a consum-
mate presence totally and seemingly functions in parts as well.

THE lNEFFABLE SUBJECT OF THE UNCONSClOUS

AND THE PHENOMENAL SUBJECT OF CONSClOUSNESS

I picture the psyche/mind, especially "I" and particularly the deeper

strata of our I-ness that I call the ineffable subject of the unconscious, as
having characteristics like those the ancient Greeks gave to the heroes
and heroines who were half-god and half-human. Centaurs and the
Minotaur also portray this dichotomy. Even today we attribute to
famous personages such as movie stars, national leaders, and sports
heroes a kind of quasi-divinity. I have learned from Bion (1965, 1970,
1992) and from Lacan (1966) to think of the real object as a real subject
in its own right, utterly unknowable in its ineffable Otherness and
preternatural in its ultimate essence. We fail to realize, I am now con-
vinced, how little we are privileged to know about ourselves or about

Copyrighted Material
xxvi PREFACE

the ineffable subjectivity of others. We can only know about them,

according to Bion (in transformations in K [knowledge]), which is not
the same as achieving ultimate intimacy with them ("become" them [but
not as an identification]) in a transformation in 0, the Absolute Truth
or Ultimate Reality of the Otherness of the other.
Recently, Peltz (1998) addressed the theme of psychic presence from
the standpoint of its dialectic with absence and suggested that
analysands must develop the ability to experience their own presence
in the absence and presence of the analyst in order to be involved in the
third area of potential space, where the real workings of analysis take
place. In other words, the analysand must become "present" in the expe-
rience of the absence and presence of the analyst. It must be apparent
that I-and I presume Peltz as well-use the word presence here in a
sense more akin to Heidegger's (1927) concept of Dasein (being here).
Since the German language uses the same spelling for the imperative
and the indicative mood of the verb, the ineffable subject may be said
to be trying to rally the divided selves of its being, induding itself, into
a rousing unity with the imperative "Be here!" (Daseinf).
The qualities of aliveness and humanness require our presence as
a subjective self, and we admire those whom we encounter who seem
to be present. We feel that we can count on them for authentic interac-
tion. I will try to show that it is the unity of one's ineffable subject and
phenomenal subject that ultimately constitutes "being together with
oneself," that is, attaining ultimate subjectivity, which is also a goal of
psychoanalysis.
I call the inner (unconscious) subject-that is, the numinous inef-
fable subject-transcendental.1 2 This is the term Kant (1787) used for
the a priori categories with which we are born and that enable us to
anticipate, format, and prepare for new experiences by being able to
precategorize them. (Kant actually used the term transcendental sub-
ject.) From this point of view, psychoanalysis constitutes a transcen-
dental enterprise. The numinous, ineffable subject originates as a
transcendental subject (the unconscious), and it is the individual's tran-
scendent task to "rebecome" that subject (from which it was inchoately
separated)-in what Bion (1965, 1970) called "transformations in '0,'"
and which I term the attainment of the transcendent position (Grotstein,

12. The terms transcendent and transcendental may be confusing. The lat-
ter corresponds to inborn, a priori categories, according to Kant (1787). The for-
mer is best captured by the idea of developing toward or attaining a higher state
or a more profound state, for example, of presence within oneself. It corresponds
to the attainment of a sublimated ideal, which can also be ontological humility or
unconcealment.

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxvii

1996,1997, chapter 10). To put it another way, I believe that the task of
psychoanalysis is not the attainment of insight but, rather, the use of
insight to attain transcendence over oneself, over one's masks and dis-
guises, to rebecome one's supraordinate subject. This task involves a
transcendent reunion with one's ineffable subject in a moment of
aletheia (unconcealment).

WHO DREAMS THE DREAM AND

WHO UNDERSTANDS IT?

Once, when I was a second-year medical student, I experienced a dream

(described in chapter 1). I say "experienced" because I had an epiphany
when I awakened from that dream. 1 knew that, in a way, it was not my
dream! Or so I felt at that moment. It occurred to me that the beautiful
and awesome dream I had experienced and the dreamer who dreamed
that dream were other than I. Someone who was not I was dreaming a
wondrous dream while 1 was asleep! Years later I related this episode
to a dinner companion in Jerusalem, Professor Chaim Tadmor of Hebrew
University, an authority on ancient Assyrian culture. He was fascinated
by my reaction to my dream and informed me that the ancient Assyrians
believed that dreams were the language of the gods, that gods spoke to
each other through human dreams, and that humans were forbidden
from attending to them or remembering them. Dreams, to ancient
Assyrians, constituted a divine sexual conversation, and paying atten-
tion to them amounted to voyeuristic hubris.
The memory of that epiphany lasted through my analytic training
and several psychoanalyses. The meanings of the dream paled in com-
parison with the mystery of its creation. 1 realized that we take this awe-
some phenomenon too much for granted. To say "I had a dream last
night" is, in a way, presumptuous. All we can honestly say is, "I was
privileged to witness and experience a part of a dream last night. I wish
I could have witnessed and experienced the whole dream." In other
words, our ability to dream, whether asleep or awake, belongs to a
preternatural capacity, one possessed by our holographically and numi-
nously functioning ineffable subject of the unconscious, whose noms de
plume are the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream as well as the Dreamer
Who Understands the Dream.
One further point about the ineffable subject is in order: In dis-
cussing the unconscious, Freud (1915) stated, "The nucleus of the Ucs .
consists of instinctual representations which seek to discharge their
cathexes; that is to say, it consists of wish impulses" (p. 186).

Copyrighted Material
xxviii PREFACE

But then, "It would nevertheless be wrong to imagine that the Ues.
remains at rest while the whole work of the mind is performed by the
Pes . ... The Ues. is alive and capable of development and maintains a
number of other relations with the Pes., amongst them that of co-oper-
ation" (p. 190).
And, "[We] find that many Pes. formations remain unconscious,
though we should have expected that, from their nature, they might
very well have become conscious. Probably in the latter case the stronger
attraction of the Ues. is asserting itself" (p. 193).
I reason from these citations of Freud that he conceived of the Ucs.
as both wantonly discharging in its relentless search for pleasure and
relief from unpleasure and paradoxically protective of the psyche by
actively withholding cathexes from becoming discharged-out of con-
sideration for the psyche. As I shall try to show in the following chapters,
I believe that the discharging Ues. is not only obeying the ongoing needs
of the individual, but also is "discharging" in order to get the attention
of the psyche-in dramatic form-of urgent affects and affect scenarios
that need to be recognized and processed. On the other hand, the Ues.
that retains its cathexis from discharging does so out of a "cooperative"
covenant with the psyche to protect it from too much revelation achieved
too quickly. Moreover, it is my belief that the Pes. constitutes the "search-
engine" of consciousness for the Ues.

SP1RlTUAL, ONTOLOG1CAL,
AND MYST1CAL PERSPECT1VES

In trying to describe psychic presences, I have found it useful to add

spiritual, ontological, and mystical perspectives to my thinking. By spir-
itual I mean those aspects of the ultrasensual, yet still experiential dimen-
sion that merit psychoanalytic study, and I hope to show that the
psychoanalytic conceptions of subject and object are seriously incom-
plete without that perspective. The spiritual dimension of presence
includes the unconscious capacity for prescience or premonition (Bion,
1992), whereby one aspect of the self seems to be superior in knowledge
to our more ordinary self.13 In addition, that aspect seems to have a
quality of unusual authority with its other self. In the premoral stage of
infant development, this quality of virtually absolute authority issues

13. As I discuss in chapter 1, the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream and the
Dreamer Who Understands It (each being an aspect of the unconscious) are pre-
scient vis-a.-vis the one who witnesses the dream, that is, the waking self.

Copyrighted Material
 WHO 15 THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxix

from archaic internal (subjective) objects situated in "a gradient in the

ego." In the later, moral stage, the inner voice of this spiritual quality
approximates the deity and relates to guilt as well as to ideals.
Modell (1993), citing William James, addresses the concept of pres-
ences as follows:

James (1902) observed that in human consciousness there is a

"sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of
what we may call something there." It is this sense of presence
that may have led the Greeks to ascribe to the abstract order of
earth, sky, and sea the presence of a god who is the organizer
of what appear to be coherent entities. It is the function of a god
to bring order out of chaos. From there, it is a short step to
believing that an analogous process occurs within the mind.
Chaos is organized by means of a god-like or goddess-like muse
[p.133].

Freud rendered his conceptions of the ego and the id in "scientific" or

positivistic terms. It is only with the superego that we get a hint from
him of a moral or possibly spiritual entity. On the other hand, Klein's
descriptions of the ego, internal objects, the archaic superego, and the
death instinct amount to an apocalyptic portrait of the unconscious, one
that more approximates the demonic (i.e., the persecutory), preguilt con-
sequences of our primitive intentionality, phantasmal as well as real.
Classical psychoanalysis is based on a clearcut division between uncon-
scious intentionality (the drives) and morality (the superego). Kleinians
find clinical evidence for primitive superegos that are demonically
impulsive as well as compulsive and that, at the same time, seem to
impose absolute moral authority over the ego. The Greeks understood
this paradox when they portrayed their gods and goddesses as corrupt
and corrupting. Spirituality, in other words, is often ignoble, corrupt,
and even perverse. The devil himself is a god of a lower pantheon.
Jaynes (1976) sees this unilateral hierarchic as the "bicameral mind," a
mind that is divided on a gradient dominated by the higher mind. He
pictures the infant as being dominated by powerful godlike voices in a
state of absolute hypnotic (nonconscious) submission.
By mystical I refer to the capacity that Bion (personal communica-
tion)14 ascribed to the mystics-"being able to see things as they really
are-through the filters of disguise." The mystic is also able to see the
mysterious that is embedded in the ordinary. The mystic does not

14. Eigen (1998) addresses this theme in his book The Psychoanalytic Mystic.

Copyrighted Material
xxx PREFACE

mystify but detects and clarifies. The analyst, without realizing it, is a
practicing mystic. The mystical conceptions of the subject can be inte-
grated with a concept that Bion (1962a, b) introduced-alpha function
or "dream work alpha."
Bion believed that the infant projects into its mother-as-container
for relief, attunement, and understanding and that through her use of
her alpha function the mother is able to comprehend the meaning of her
infant's cries and signals. He then stated that the infant introjects its
mother's alpha function and is able thereafter to begin to think for itself.
I have come to believe that alpha function is an inborn given, a Kantian
a priori category, that enables the infant to communicate with its mother
as an inchoate "sender" to her "receiver" and "processor" function.
Correspondingly, it is our analysands' use of their own alpha function
that enables them to "send" encoded messages to us as analysts, and it
is our intuition (Bion, 1965, 1970, 1992), modified by our correlation of
the data with other points of view and with the arrival of the "selected
fact" (which gives coherence to the data), that allows us to arrive at an
interpretation with our own alpha function ("receiver").
The mystical and spiritual perspectives are older ways of describ-
ing our attempts to "divine" the ultrasensual. Following Bion, I have
borrowed these perspectives, from the mystics, such as Meister Eckhart
(Fox, 1980, 1981b) and from the Gnostics (Pagels, 1979; Bloom, 1983,
1996); today we call these the nonlinear domains of chaos, complexity,
emergence phenomena, and paradox. In this regard, I am guided in part
by the work of Lewis Carrol (1882), Gleik (1987), Hofstadter (1979),
Hoftstadter and Dennet (1981), Hawking (1988), Zohar (1990), Kauffman
(1993,1995), Palombo (1999), and Waldrop (1992), all of whom approach
the mystical and the spiritual domains from the perspectives of non-
linear science, mathematics, or both.

THE SlGN1F1CANCE OF 0 FOR PSYCHOANALYS1S

In a series of works on epistemology and ontology, Bion (1965, 1970,

1992) conceived of mental transformations, one of which was the trans-
formation of raw, unmentalized experiences into K (knowledge), ini-
tially through the infant's use of mother's reverie and alpha function
(patience and intuition), following which the infant could comprehend
itself from mother's preliminary "digestion" of the infant's raw experi-
ences. In Bion's terms, this amounts to a transformation from 0 (unmen-
talized experiences) into K (knowledge about the self which is to be
accepted and integrated). I develop this idea more in chapter 10, but in
the meanwhile, I should like to give a preview of what Bion entails in

Copyrighted Material
 WHO IS THE UNCONSCIOUS? xxxi

his concept of O. This concept has far-reaching significance for psycho-

analysis. Let me summarize for now:
o represents the ineffable, transcendental aspects of the mind, on
one hand, and the raw protoencounters or experiences that initially con-
front the mind, on the other. In classical theory, they can be equated with
Freud's conception of the instinctual drives. Bion equated 0 with Kant's
noumena (before they become processed into phenomena), the thing-
in-itself, and even with "God," as well as with Absolute Truth or
Ultimate Reality. Lacan (1966) similarly talked of the Register of the Real,
by which he also meant something beyond imagining and even beyond
symbolizing. The Greeks referred to this idea as Ananke (Necessity). In
other words, 0, in its initial sense, represents cosmic immutability,
impersonalness, and utter indifference. Bion tells us, however, that when
we are able to allow ourselves to "become 0," by which he meant hav-
ing a capacity to face and to transform into 0, then 0 itself evolves, by
which I think he meant that we have been able, by countenancing the
utter indifference of 0, to transform it into our personal, subjective 0-
by matching up with it internally so that our own inner world resonates
with the fundamental of the other, like two human tuning forks.
The significance of 0 for psychoanalysis is, in my opinion, as fol-
lows: drives and affects, rather than being the ultimate dreadful content
of the repressed, are mere signifiers or mediators for something more
profound, ineffable, and incomprehensible. Further, 0 is not merely
localized within; it is omnipresent, within us and in the ether of our
externality. More about this in chapter 10.
I end this preface with the question I asked at the beginning: Who
is the unconscious? As Maurice Blanchot has mused and as Bion often
noted, "Sometimes the answer is an embarrassment to the question."
Yet the question must be asked with full premonition about its
inscrutability and mystery.
A chance observation in a dictionary by my wife, Susan, provides
what I believe is the best way to grasp what I have already stated:
"Seminal principle: (Philosophy). A potential, latent within an imper-
fect object, for attaining full development."ls

ROAD MAP THROUGH THE BOOK

As the reader proceeds through the chapters of this book, different des-
ignations of these preternatural presences appear. In chapter 1, I intro-
d uce the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream and the Dreamer Who

15. Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1966, p. 1297.

Copyrighted Material
xxxii PREFACE

Understands It. In chapter 2, I present the "Infant-as-God-the-Creator

of its own little universe prior to discovering the universe beyond his
creation." In chapter 3, I introduce the "Infinite Geometer," who wields
the "calipers of fearful symmetry" and rules over bi-logic and bivalent
logical structures. In chapter 4, I present a quasigeometrical version of
the dimensions and coordinates of psychic space in which psychic pres-
ences dwell.
In chapter 5, I introduce yet another way of talking about these
preternatural presences, the ineffable subject of the unconscious and
the phenomenal subject of consciousness. In chapter 6, I discuss inter-
nal objects as "rogue" or "alien subjective objects" since our identifi-
cation with them (subjectively) is the source of their haunting and
intimidating authority over us within. In chapter 7, I present the myth
of the labyrinth and the Minotaur as a developmental staging area for
the acquisition of courage, determination, and resourcefulness. In chap-
ters 8 and 9, I develop the theme of Christ as a continuation of the
theme of Oedipus, as well as those of Moses, Isaac, Joseph, and other
martyrs or would-be martyrs. I present the "Christ archetype" as an
aspect of the ego ideal, the hero, the martyr, and the ineffable subject
of the unconscious.
In chapter la, I introduce the notion of the transcendent position,
0, the teleological destiny for the supraordinate subject to achieve mat-
uration through and transcendence beyond the paranoid-schizoid and
depressive positions.
In all the chapters I am merely presenting differing ways of view-
ing the ineffable, preternatural, subjective, and ultimately personal
essence of "I" in its mystical (more than we thought) relationship to the
ineffable O.

Copyrighted Material
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As any writer will confirm, it is virtually impossible to be aware of all

the individuals who, either by their own works, their personal interac-
tions with the author, or general participation in the atmosphere in
which the author participated, may have influenced the author's ideas.
For those I have ignored in this acknowledgment, I can only offer my
regrets and my apologies, which arise out of amnesia and ignorance. I
should like, however, to thank those who I do keenly recall have had a
profound influence on this work by their gracious sharing of their
thoughts and critiques with me. I, first of all, would like to thank Stephen
Mitchell for inviting me to contribute this book and also for his editor-
ial assistance in bringing it to publication. I am very indebted to Dr.
Mariam Cohen, and Toby Troffkin for their invaluable in-depth editor-
ial assistance and for their tireless efforts in getting the manuscript ready
for submission.
To my friends Thomas Ogden, Allan Schore, and Heward Wilkinson
I am indebted for countless moments of precious input that perfuses the
entirety of this book. To the late Wilfred Bion and to Albert Mason my
debt for professional and personal growth is beyond measure. I am espe-
cially grateful to my wife, Susan, for putting up with me and my dis-
tractions, for her loyalty, and particularly for her countless, cogent
suggestions for the text-and to my children, Laurie and Josh, and their
families, for bearing with me. I am profoundly grateful to my patients,
each of whom not only has given me a wonderful learning experience
for my analytic development, but also has become an integral part of
my inner life. I am deeply indebted to my secretaries, Amy Tombor and
Johna Barson, who have been loyal, keen, devoted, and diligent in help-
ing to bring this work to publication.

xxxiii

Copyrighted Material
xxxiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Others whose advice was important in the development of this book

include Jane Van Buren, John Lundgren, Harriet Kimball Wrye, Stuart
Twemlow, Marilyn Charles, Michael Eigen, Rochelle Kainer, Carol
Morgan, Polly Young-Eisendrath, James Fisher, John Stone, Gail Bates,
Enid Young, Michael Huber, Paul Williams, Joseph Berke, Roger
Kennedy, Joseph Aguayo, Edmund Cohen, Jon Tabakin, William
Meissner, John Beebe, Gayle Scott, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, Margaret Fulton,
Karen Willette, Joanne Culbert Koehn, M. Guy Thompson, M. Brandon
French, and Marcello and Elizabeth Tabak de Bianchedi. There certainly
are many others, and I ask forgiveness for not remembering. I am also
indebted to Paul Stepansky, Eleanor Starke Kobrin, and The Analytic
Press for all they have done to bring this book to publication.

Copyrighted Material
 Who 1s the Dreamer
Who Dreams the Dream?

Volume 19
Relational Perspectives Book Series

Copyrighted Material
Copyrighted Material
 Chapter 1

THE lNEFFABLE NATURE OF THE DREAMER

I am, without knowing it, he who has looked on that other

dream, my waking state.
-Lois Borges, The Dream

This chapter is based on a dream that I experienced-I should now

say "witnessed" -while I was in medical school. It occurred shortly
after my mother's first heart attack and just before her second, which
killed her.
Unlike other dreams I had had before, or have had since, this one
seemed in some respects to be about the very act of dreaming. What
seemed to be different about this dream was its aesthetic beauty, its spir-
ituality, its otherworldliness, the awesomeness of its presentation, and
the experience of its numinousness. I felt that this dream happened to me
but was not dreamed, that is, created, by me-even though it was. The
simple truth occurred to me at the moment of awakening that I could
not have dreamed this dream, first because I did not generally speak
the way the dream's characters did and, second, I was asleep at the time
the dream took place-therefore, I could not have been its dreamer! I became
aware that it was a kind of arrogance to presume that I had had a dream.
Instead, I felt that I was privileged to have experienced and witnessed a
dream that an "I" I could never know had dreamed! This chapter is my
attempt to come to grips with the paradox and mystery of the creation
of dreams.
This chapter was originally dedicated to Wilfred R. Bion, whose
analysis of my dream was very satisfying; but it is not my purpose here
to discuss his analysis of it. What I want to do is explore the mystery of
dreaming, a mystery that not even Freud solved, and search for that

Copyrighted Material
2 CHAPTER 1

exquisitely elusive, ineffable subject within us who dreams the dream,

the one who lurks on the other side of "the dream's navel" (Freud, 1900,
p.525).
When Freud (1900) bequeathed to us his legacy-the psychoanaly-
sis and understanding of the dream-patients and laymen generally were
so enthralled with this new unraveling of the Linear B of the uncon-
scious that the creating of the dream received little notice among schol-
ars; nor did this matter occupy subsequent psychoanalysts. I was naively
baffled by the irony that, although we dream every night, we are fortu-
nate if we can remember any portion of our dreams. Why the discrep-
ancy? If we dream every night but are able to recall only minute portions
of our potential dream harvest, then why do we dream at all? I con-
cluded that we are compelled to dream in spite of ourselves. Our under-
standing of dreams is incidental to-or maybe even helpful to-our
mental well-being, but the latter ultimately depends on the fact of dream-
ing more than on our being able to understand our dreams.
Lowy (1942) proposed that the benefit we receive from dreaming
is in no way dependent on our remembering our dreams and that the
benefits of dream interpretation are secondary gains. According to
Lowy (cited in Palombo, 1978), dreams link current experiences with
past experiences:

By means of the dream-formation, details of the past are con-

tinually reintroduced into consciousness, are thus prevented
from sinking into such depths that they cannot be recovered.
Those of our experiences which are not at the moment accessi-
ble to consciousness are thus kept in touch with consciousness,
so that in case of necessity association with them may become
easier.
This connecting function of the dream-formation is rein-
forced considerably by formation of symbols. When this func-
tion takes a hand and condenses masses of experiences, perhaps
a whole period of the dreamer's life, into one single image, then
all the material which is contained in this synthesis is recon-
nected with consciousness. Dream-formation thus causes not
only a connection of single details, but also of whole "con-
glomerations" of past experience. But this is not all. Through
the constancy and continuity existing in the process of dream-
ing, there is created a connection with this dream-continuity.
Which fact greatly contributes to the preservation of the cohe-
sion and unity of mental life as a whole [po 7].

Copyrighted Material
 THE INEFFABLE NATURE OF THE DREAMER 3

I understand Lowy to be stating that dreams reinforce long-term mem-

ory and help to maintain the stability of mental organization by medi-
ating current experiences and matching them with their past prototypes.
He seems to be saying that dreams are the silent service of the mind,
that they do not need to become conscious in order to do their work. If
this is so, then there must be a creator/transmitter of dreams and a
dream recipient who receives and processes the results of the dream
work. I designate these as the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream and the
Dreamer Who Understands the Dream, respectively.
Palombo (1978) wrote that dreams occur in narrative cycles over
time and are computational in their matching functions between current
and past information:

An earlier paper (Palombo, 1976) described an autonomous

mechanism of unconscious adaptive ego functioning called "the
memory cycle." The memory cycle is a sequence of processes
through which new experiential information is introduced into
adaptively suitable locations in the permanent memory struc-
ture. The most striking hypothesis of the memory-cycle model
is that the critical step in the sequence-the step which matches
representations of new experiences with the representations of
closely related experiences of the past-takes place during
dreaming. These new data ... demonstrate for the first time the
precise relationship between the adaptive function of dream-
ing in the memory cycle, that is, the matching of representations
of current and past experience, and the defensive operations of
the dream censorship which act to prevent the matching from
taking place [po 13].

On the influence of psychoanalytic dream interpretation, Palombo

wrote:

1. Dream interpretation appears to have a special efficacy

in the building of those intrapsychic structures which restore
and renew the incomplete self and object representations
acquired during the patient's childhood. This effect results from
a synergistic collaboration between the analyst'S interpretive
activity and the adaptive functioning of dreaming in the mem-
ory cycle. It is distinct from, but complementary to, the role
played by dreams in providing new data from that part of the
patient's memory structure which is ordinarily inaccessible to
consciousness.

Copyrighted Material