ABSTRACT
In place of offering cure, Bion proposes that psychoanalysis restrict itself to searching for truth. In his view, the search for truth is crucial because, among other things, the only alternative to this search is practising propaganda: the analyst either searches for truth or acts as a propagandist—the enemy of truth and thought. Bion offers a reading of the Oedipus myth as defiance of a God who forbids thought and exploration. 1 Suggestion from this perspective is a form of propaganda, adopted by the analyst as a way of exerting power over the patient’s mind, at the expense of the patient’s ability to think for himself. Of the three types of links that Bion believed we form with the world—L (love of an object), H (hated of an object), and K (love of truth)—only K is free of the desire to control. In fact, the desire to control psychic reality, the goal of suggestion and propaganda, is antithetical to the love of truth (and vice-versa). The analyst’s capacity to do analysis depends on a radical respect for truth that overcomes his desire to control (of which healing and curing are instances).
