ABSTRACT
Bion was realistic and straightforward about the limitations of the practice of analysis. Asked whether he was optimistic about getting patients to submit to the analyst’s inevitable invasion of their minds in the service of relieving them of pain, Bion (1978) said, “No, I am not optimistic about it, although I think it is on the right lines” (p. 9). Such humility about our work as analysts is always refreshing, for accepting a patient into one’s care is a great responsibility and there is a natural desire to want to help, and to believe one is helping, rather than harming the patient, or being ineffectual. These are among the desires that Bion suggested suspending in the session if one were to be available to whatever truths might emerge in the course of treatment, for no matter how much the analyst or analysand may want a guarantee of success, whatever that might mean, neither of them can know the eventual outcome of the treatment.
