Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2004, 49, 313336

Psychic phenomena and early emotional states

Annie Reiner, Los Angeles
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between severe early trauma and the development of psychic intuition. A case presentation with extensive dream work helps to illustrate this connection by exploring the psychological meaning of one patients acute receptivity to unconscious communications. The paper includes a historical overview of Freuds attitudes toward occultism, as distinct from later psychoanalytic views, including those of Wilfred Bion. Many of Bions views have more in common with Jungs perspective than with Freuds, with particular reference made to spiritual and religious differences. Bion clearly states that Freud and psychoanalysts have focused on phenomena, not on noumena, which Bion considers to be the essence of the psychoanalytic point of view. Key words: Bion, early trauma, primitive emotional states, psychic intuition, relationship to the transcendent self.

Psychic phenomenatelepathy, clairvoyance, etc.once a domain most commonly addressed by Jungian analysts, is increasingly coming under investigation from a psychoanalytic perspective as well. This aspect of mental functioning, however, is not only represented in Jungs theories of synchronicity, archetypes and the collective unconscious, but also in less direct fashion in Melanie Kleins theory of projective-identification and Wilfred Bions theories of reverie, O and thoughts without a thinker, all of which describe communications outside the usual means of verbal interchange or visual signs. Only a handful of psychoanalysts since the 1950s on have addressed the matter of occultism directly, but for a growing number of psychoanalysts (Mayer, Morgan, MatteBlanco, Toton, for instance) it is no longer a question of whether or not these phenomena beyond sensual experience exist. An abundance of clinical questions continues to arise, however, concerning the meaning and function of extrasensory capabilities and how these intuitions figure into the individuals psychological make up. My aim in this paper is to explore the relationship I have observed clinically between early trauma and the development of the capacity for unconscious communication, and the ways in which it may at times reflect a breakdown in the minds ability to form attachments and to
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contain emotion. Despite these traumatic beginnings, however, like most gifts or talents, psychic intuitions are of complex origin and meaning, and at times seem to grow like a pearl, from an irritant, in this case an irritant of psychological origin. It may be useful to clarify my own theoretical orientation. Having long admired Jungs ideas, I am familiar with his work on the paranormal and the occult, but as my own training was along the post-Freudian lineage of Klein, Object Relations and Wilfred Bion I am by no means an authority on Jungian thought, in addition to which, at least overtly, I speak a different language. Each analyst must find his own language, Bion once said (Bion 1977), addressing the difficult challenge of finding an effective language to describe the life of the mind and communicate to the patient ones understanding of that ineffable inner life. In such a vast unfathomable realm, it would seem to our advantage to pool our understanding, and it was this ultimately unknowable nature of the psyche which prompted Jung to consider the intellectualistic hubbub not only ridiculous, but also deplorably dull (1960, para. 815). The difficulty inherent in communication exists not only between groups of differing ideologies but also within groups who apparently speak the same theoretical language. In her paper concerning the growing rapprochement between Jungians and post-Freudians, as well as the sometimes scarring schisms based on theoretical differences, Stephens suggests that in order to facilitate a dialogue, we shift the locus of theoretical discussion into the arena of our dialogue about our actual clinical work, the sacred texts of analysis (2001, p. 487). In this spirit, the detailed clinical work presented below provides a text, a basis for discussion, offering a possibility for bridging a gap between two languages which, given a common interest in the ineffable and a common belief in a transcendent aspect of the mind, may not at times be as wide as it seems. Historical overview In 1921 Freud wrote:
There is little doubt that if attention is directed to occult phenomena the outcome will very soon be that the occurrence of a number of them will be confirmed; and it will probably be a very long time before an acceptable theory covering these new facts can be arrived at. (1921, p. 179)

While often making it clear that he believed in the occult, Freud insisted dogmatically to Jung that his theory of sexuality stood as a bulwark against the black tide of mud of occultism (Jung 1961, p. 150). Freuds ambivalence was reflected in his first paper on the subject, where he was rather apologetic about discussing the matter at all, concerned that if occultism proved to exist it might endanger the perception of psychoanalysis as a scientific endeavour (Freud 1921, p. 176, ed. note). In Dreams And Occultism he outlined his doubts, seeing

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the belief in the occult as hostility toward reason and resistance against . . . the demands of reality-testing (Freud 1932, p. 33). Jung, on the other hand, viewed intuitive knowledge as an irrational function of perception, defining irrational, however, not as denoting something contrary to reason but something beyond reason (Jung 1921, para. 774). With Spinoza, he upholds the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge (ibid., para. 770). Freuds dismissal of occultism as religious is again on the grounds of its resistance to scientific thought (Freud 1932, p. 34). This view of religion as essentially at odds with science differs significantly from many scientists, Einstein for one, who placed his belief in God at the centre of his scientific work, stating, The cosmic religious experience is . . . the sower of all true science (Barnett 1952, p. 117). Einsteins view is consistent with Bions theory of O, denoting ultimate reality, absolute truth or the godhead. According to Bion, being at one with O is the essence of the psychoanalytic point of view on which the success of psychoanalysis depends (1970, p. 27). This spiritual perspective is as essential to science as to religion (p. 30).
. . . The term science, as it has been commonly used hitherto to describe an attitude to objects of sense, is not adequate to represent an approach to those realities with which psychoanalytical science has to deal. Nor . . . [is it adequate to deal with] that aspect of the human personality that is concerned with the unknown and ultimately unknowablewith O. (p. 88)

His perspective here is closer to Jungs, for Bion makes it clear that Freud and psychoanalysts are dealing with phenomena, and not with noumenathe thing-in-itself (Bion 1973, p. 41). Jungs idea of psychoid processes pertain[s] to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness (Jung 1947, para 380). The archetype is described as spirit which manifests itself psychically but is located beyond the psychic sphere (1947, para. 420). The psychic, he points out, lies embedded in something that appears to be of a non-psychic nature (1947, para. 437). This irrepresentable, transcendental nature of the archetypes also fits Bions description of O, the unknown and unknowable thing-in-itself, which does not fall in the domain of knowledge . . . it can be become, but it cannot be known (Bion 1970, pp. 926). Bions theory, like Jungs differentiation between the archetype-per-se and the archetypal image, has its basis in Kants numinous thing-in-itself. Freuds view of religious feeling, identifying God with the father and denying its transcendental nature, is more an aspect of Jungs personal unconscious, while Bions view could be said to reflect the collective unconscious. In essence Freud sees religious feeling as neurosis (1927, pp. 1719). He was therefore disturbed by the opinion of his much admired friend, the writer, Romain Rolland, who described religious feeling as . . . a sensation of eternity . . . limitless, unbounded as it were, oceanic . . . (Freud 1930, p. 64), for Freud admitted to finding no such oceanic feeling in himself (Freud 1930, p. 33). Rollands

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description, however, approximates to Bions description of Othe infinite mind, incomprehensible to reason. According to Rolland, this feeling is not an article of faith but a purely subjective fact, a psychic fact, as Jung called it. Similarly, Bion points out that to view faith as supernatural may simply reflect a lack of experience of the natural to which it relates (Bion 1970, p. 48). Freuds unfamiliarity with religious feeling indicates a lack of experience of this infinite mind which Bion, like Jung, recognized as the essence of psychoanalytic work (Bion 1970, p. 27). Mogenson proposes that Freuds more Aristotelian perspective provides a necessary balance to Jungs more Platonic vision (Mogenson 2003, p. xii). propos of this, I am finding in my work with patients with psychic ability that despite Freuds limited views on religion and occultism his caution may have validity. In a discussion of idealization Cocks presents similar warning of the perils of fascination with the mysterious and transcendent, and the necessity for maintaining a rational and ethical distance from destructive enthusiasms (Cocks 2002, pp. 1920). There is danger, Speicher also says, of fascination with archetypal energies and of falling into the shadow (Speicher 2002, pp. 1512). As we will see in the clinical material, this fascination may serve as a defence against disturbing unconscious emotions, and the exercise of extra sensory perceptions of clairvoyance, telepathy, clairaudience, etc., may in this way compromise reality testing and interfere with emotional development if not integrated within the broader context of other mental functions. Case materialLaura I began seeing Laura, a gifted painter, eight years ago, at which time she was suicidal, and her creative work had stalled. After almost five years of treatment, repressed memories began slowly to emerge of years of sexual molestation by her father from earliest childhood, continuing until her parents divorce when she was ten years old. He has since died. Her memories grew to include reminiscences of abuse by her two brothers as well, instigated by her father, and most disturbing of all, Laura began to get images of her mother in the room telling her, Just do what Daddy says. Her mothers involvement seemed to Laura to be more of an acquiescence to her husbands will than an active taste for these perverse acts, which included the mothers intercourse with the father while the children were made to watch. These revelations were dreadfully painful for Laura to endure, often challenging her sanity, and at times my own. It seems a miracle that Laura avoided becoming overtly psychotic, although as with every patient we had to deal with psychotic mechanismsparanoid, depressive and manic anxietiesreflecting primitive modes of thinking, considered by Klein to be part of normal development (Klein 1948, p. 299). In Lauras case these primitive psychotic anxieties were exacerbated by the relationship with her mother, a histrionic woman unable to contain her own, much less Lauras, feelings, but still did not

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develop into psychosis. One explanation for this may reflect Lauras precocious creative capacities. Schore describes the role of interactive repair in the mother/infant dyad in ameliorating anxiety and establishing the capacity for affect regulation (Schore 1994, p. 31). In the absence of this kind of maternal relationship to absorb the infants projections and process emotions, Lauras prodigious early paintings and poems provided a container into which to project overwhelming feelings and to a certain extent process some of what could not be digested in that relationship. In addition to her creative gifts, ego defences such as repression, splitting, idealization, etc., also protected Laura, for at the beginning of treatment her father was revered as a man of superior intelligence and sensitivity, an idealization which had already been slowly and painfully stripped away in the course of our earlier work, leaving the image of a man who, while intellectually gifted, had mentally abused her in many ways. Laura had always felt her psychic gift was crazy and that others, myself included, would think it was crazy as well. Archetypally, her gift of prophecy was, like Cassandras, destined never to be believed in a world lacking her vision, but on an emotional level her doubts also reflected an inherent intuition of the dangers of this capacity when not properly balanced by a capacity for reason, which is based first of all on the ability to contain ones emotional reality. This feeling that her intuitive gifts were crazy came to a head about two years ago, one year after her repressed memories emerged, when she began sensing the presence of deceased loved ones, of friends and acquaintances. In one such experience, while having coffee with Nancy, a woman she had just met, Nancy mentioned in passing that her brother had died. Immediately Laura saw a brilliant ball of white light and heard the brothers voice saying, Tell my sister Im alright. Never having had such a vision of the beyond she naturally felt it was very strange, and hesitated to say anything for fear that Nancy would think she was crazy. However, the brother repeated his plea, with the additional request to, Tell Nancy I found my song. Laura reluctantly repeated the arcane message, which Nancy immediately understood, informing Laura that her brother was an aspiring musician who had been crushed by terrible stage fright. At his memorial, Nancy had eulogized him as a singer without a song. Although these kinds of incidents challenge common logic, Laura none the less seemed to have experienced Nancys brother, whose metaphysical energy was inexplicably present in our physical dimension, with someone able to apprehend it. One could certainly argue against this impression for as far as we know there can be no physical proof of this kind of non-sensual reality, nor can there be proof against it. As Jung points out, Of what lies beyond the phenomenal world we can have absolutely no idea, for there is no idea that could have any other source than the phenomenal world (1960, para. 437). Still, he points to evidence for unconscious communication in Rhines experiments in parapsychological phenomena and found inspiration for his theory of

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synchronicity and meaningful coincidences in Einsteins special theory of relativity, where the absolute character of time was destroyed (Einstein 1950, p. 79). It was Einstein, Jung said, who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space (Meier 2001, p. lix.). Laura experienced more visions of this sort. During this period there was a hypo-manic quality to her sessions and an unconscious resistance to the emotional work we were doing. I was eventually given enough information to link these visions to her need to contact her father psychically, not in physical death, but in the mental death of perversion in which he lived his life. No secure emotional bond can be made with someone as mentally divided as he, and in such a situation the intuitive child attempts to create her own kind of bond with the parent, a bond, however, based on an idealized unconscious phantasy. I found it necessary to make the following distinctionthat what looks like an expanded mind may at times reflect a split or fragmented mind. Healthy mental expansion can occur only in a mind capable of emotional containment. Linking Lauras despair and need for a connection to her father with her capacity to contact the dead brought her back to her emotional self, and enabled her to keep at bay these communications from the other side. There were fewer such occurrences until, as well see, two years later. As she so aptly put it, Its like getting a new telephone; just because it rings doesnt mean you have to answer it. On the other hand, not answering this phone doesnt mean one gets rid of the phone, for such a powerful force is not amenable to a simple act of will. Jung points out, The will cannot coerce the instincts, nor has it power over the spirit. Spirit and instinct are by nature autonomous (Jung 1960, para. 379). He distinguishes these psychoid processes of the unconscious, where will has no power, from an unconscious which contains ideas and volitional acts, hence something akin to conscious processes (Jung 1960, para. 380). The force impelling Lauras mind to telepathic communications seemed to originate in the autonomous psychoid realm, so it was of interest that an exercise of will did at times allow Laura temporary control over the otherwise insistent demands of her psychic visions. It became clear, however, that access to this spiritual realm was never gone, merely temporarily suspended or superceded at times, as powerful memories became ascendent in her consciousness. Setting aside, even for the moment, her psyches elastic relationship to space and time (Jung 1960, para. 840), allowed previously split off emotions to become contained in thought. Laura could then also experience the aspect of these visions which related to her traumatic memories of her father. Breaking through temporal and mental boundaries as she had in the visions of her friends deceased loved ones carried with it a sort of awe and excitement reflecting the perils of fascination with archetypal energies described earlier by Cocks and Speicherwhich addressing Lauras own memories of course did not. As her attention was directed to this emotional relationship, a boundary was established between her and her father. This incipient separateness gave rise to a highly creative period as her previously unbounded intuitive energy

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became mentally contained and available for use in her work. There was a price, however, as this courageous separation was followed by fearsome visitations by her father in dreams and waking images, his face grinning at her like an eerie Cheshire cat. Associations revealed this to be a memory of her fathers excited face as he molested her. We will now look at more detailed accounts of some of Lauras sessions.1 Session no. 1 Laura began this Monday session by telling me that upon leaving last session, I found myself going to your house [i.e., psychically, as she does not know where I live]. I saw the house, but then I thought No, dont do this! And I stopped. I asked what shed seen and she accurately described my house in some detail. Her restraint in using this capacity was corroborated by her dream. Dream
I was in your cara Black Volvo station wagoncrawling around on the floor like a baby. I couldnt control my movements so I couldnt get out. Finally I somehow got out and came to your office. You and Jason [her boyfriend] and I were sitting on the floor in the waiting room, Jason made an interpretation to me. I was angry and said, Thats Ms. Reiners job! And I said to you, Right? You said, Right. Jason said, Right. Then he left. You and I got up and went to your office for my session. Then I dreamt that Hank [an old love] was hopping around the room with a red face as if he were on cocaine. He kept saying things like Now that Jasons here! and With Jason around. . . He must have said Jasons name twenty times.

Associations Laura said that she was her current age in the dream but her head and body were flopping around like an infants, making it hard to press the pedals. Her mother, she said, has a different coloured Volvo station wagon [I do not]. Laura mentioned that Jason had been depressed last evening, then felt she was being pushy and trying to fix him. She noted that she has been doing this less, making for more peace at home. He sometimes tries to analyse her as well. I asked Laura how she managed to get out of the car. With a tremendous act of will, she said. Hank is a man with whom she had a relationship. Having discovered how confused and angry he is, she felt angry and devalued by him. Hanks behaviour in the dreamjumping around red-faced and repeating Jasons name felt to her like his jealousy of her new relationship.
1

For purposes of clarity I have tried to bracket certain thoughts or sentences directed to the reader to distinguish them from those directed to the patient, which would be conveyed in less technical language.

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Discussion and interpretation The long weekend break (the waiting room) aroused Lauras feelings of panic and helplessness, which she seeks to allay by going psychically to my house. The fact that she was like an infant in this dream led me to think that on a primitive level her mothers Volvo in which she is trapped stands for her mothers vulva, mine in the transference. Unable to make contact with her absent unfeeling mother, Laura tried to establish a bond through an unconscious phantasy of magically going into her mothers vagina, perhaps the womb, as a means of protection and closeness, but also as a way of trying psychically to control her. In this material, it seemed that the psychic gift may derive from a breach in the emotional bond to the parent, which is also a breach in the emotional connection to the self. The infant has a need to be sheltered in the womb of the mothers mind in order to maintain the illusion of unity (Tustin 1981, p. 183). Lacking this, the child is aware of too much too soon . . . [resulting in] an agony of consciousness beyond their capacity to tolerate or to pattern (Tustin 1981, p. 192). In extreme cases, Tustin writes, in order to avoid suffering children may lose touch with reality and become psychotic. Alternatively, I believe, they may become psychic, open to a realm where space and time lose their meaning and the barrier between conscious and unconscious is permeable, yet not under the direct influence of the unconscious (Jung 1960, para. 134). Neurobiologically, Schore describes the effects on brain development of early problems in attachment. The infant may dissociate or become disorganized, he may develop a resistant or avoidant attachment (Schore 1994, p. 375). As we see in Lauras case, when the bond with the parents is thwarted, a new bond may be sought, one which is forged in an abstract relationship to love, to God or absolute truth. It is a precocious spiritual connection, however, a substitute for the necessary physical and emotional relationship to the parent, and born of that troubled attachment. This would reflect the kind of primitive relationship to God conceived by Freud. As Laura gets stuck in my Volvo the boundaries between us become blurred. She had already transcended space and time by going to my house psychically, and in trying to analyse Jason she becomes me, while I/mother am turned into a baby, on the floor with no distinction between us. Of course, it is not necessary to say all of this to the patient. I did tell Laura that because she felt panicked and helpless over the weekend she felt herself go inside of me, into my Volvo, vulva or womb, to try to feel safe. My absence made me appear to her like her emotionally unavailable mother, confusing this entry into my vagina or womb with being emotionally held or remembered by me over our break [confusion certainly coloured by the early sexual abuse]. She then feels she has become me, transcending the boundaries between us, going inside me, and my house, psychically. I pointed out, however, that she seemed to have managed by a tremendous act of will to get out of my Volvo and the [primitive] identification with this mother/me.

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This reflects Lauras conscious choice to frustrate her psychic visit to my house and feel her helplessness, allowing her to reassert her emotional boundaries. In my absence she makes Jason into the analyst/mother to avoid primitive feelings of helplessness and rage, but her awareness of boundaries is further reflected in the dream when she ousts Jason from the room so that she can come to my office and begin our session. Concerning the dream about Hank, I also told Laura I thought he represented her father; hopping around with a red face reflects the way her father looked to her in the heat of the sexual abuse. Hanks jealousy in the dream would also reflect her fathers jealousy, for his orgies would have created in the family a hornets nest of jealous feelings, projections of his own primitive feelings. In addition, as Laura reveals to me things shed promised never to repeat, her internal father becomes jealous of her relationship with me as well. As a child, forced to watch her parents intercourse, the confusion between Lauras jealousy and her fathers projections would have been insurmountable, leading her mentally to crawl back inside her mothers womb, erasing all boundaries and any feelings of jealousy, while also providing the illusion of closeness. The need for this womb-like oneness seems to have activated an archetypal Mother on whom she could rely, but according to Neumann, activating the Mother archetype to compensate for the loss of the real mother may result in psychosis if the child has no outlet for expressing these mythological creations (Neumann 1949/1973, p. 81). As we have seen, Laura clearly did have such an outlet and was spared that fate. While this traumatized infants phantasy of returning to the oneness of the mothers womb was in part a way of stopping the parents intercourse by making her mothers Volvo a black one, incapable of life or sexuality, it is more complicated than simple jealousy of the parental intercourse. The healthy part of her, aligned with what I view as the instinctual wisdom of the child, and which might be seen in Jungian terms as the positive aspect of a nurturing archetypal Mother, would also have intuited the wisdom of stopping the perverse acts to which she was subjected. As this primitive confusion was sorted out I had to have faith that I wasnt closing off her relationship to her higher self but rather trying to cleanse these personal aspects of her unconscious to further facilitate her relationship to that knowing self. Spiritual flight from the self Ferenczi points out that traumatic abuse may cause the child to leave his earthly self and seek contact with an all-knowing, omniscient part which he called astra or astral (Ferenzci 1988, p. 2067). In the process, however, the emotional bond, already damaged by the parents behaviour, is now further severed by the child. The bond to his or her own feelings is severed as well, and the child, essentially, is in flight from his self. A distinction needs to be made between a true spiritual perspective and infantile fusion with the mother. If oneness with the universe is based on that primitive

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fusion, it has as its essence ambivalent feelings of love and hate and confusion between the two. Without a containing mother, the childs split or fragmented psyche ascends to an illusion of oneness with an idealized mother, so that what seems like mental expansion is really the self, bleeding out into an unbounded mental universe in a manic identification with a primitive and concretized God. Neurobiological studies show that problems in attachment between infant and caregiver cause damage to the infants pre-frontal cortex of the brains right hemisphere, resulting in damage to the childs capacity for affect regulation. Ensuing states of fear, despair and rage, when unmodified by the mother, can give rise to states of dissociation. The escape to the astra may be viewed as a form of dissociation which disengages the infant from the painful feelings. As Schore points out, this is accompanied by psychobiological and neurobiological effects, including metabolic shutdown to conserve energies . . . feigning death to allow healing of wounds, and elevated heart rates in unfamiliar situations (Schore 2003, p. 9). Laura has often experienced this kind of frozen state, which gave way, as emotional thawing began, to symptoms of frantic heart racing, especially during breaks in the treatment. Our knowledge of early socio-emotional interchanges and the effects of trauma on neurophysiology still does not explain, however, why the sequelae of rage, shame and dissociation accompanying trauma results in murder or suicide or psychosis in some, and in others in a love of God or higher truth. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center We will skip to the session of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, the day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. The next four sessions take place on consecutive days following September 11th. Session no. 2September 11th, 2001 Laura came in sobbing. She described visions shed had while watching the towers collapse.
I saw the souls of the people in the buildings as they died, she said, they were terrified . . . but there were millions of angels surrounding them, helping them. I asked how these angels looked to her and she replied, In a way they were people with wings but in a way they were just loving presences . . . I dont know how to describe it. Still crying, she said she thought shed dreamt it and recounted a terrible nightmare shed had the day before (Monday mornings dream), which so disturbed her that she almost called to tell it to me.

Dream
I was on a plane flying very low in New York City on its way to L.A. It was going to crasheveryone was panicking, but I was calm. I said, Were going to crash, some will survive, some wont. We crashed and hit the city. Then I was in another plane

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and it was going to crash too. Again, I wasnt panicked. I went into the cockpit and there were four pilotstwo were American Airlines pilots because I saw those pins with the little wings. I didnt see the other two pilots but I kept saying, Why are there four pilots? Did the other two kill the American pilots? Did they have heart attacks? Why are there four pilots? Again it crashed into the city. In the next part Jason and I were going to get on a plane that was going to crash. I thought, thats just the way it is these days when you get on a planeit crashes. This plane was also going to LA but it was in Pennsylvania or Washington DC. We were waiting in a little French restaurantthe waitresses were speaking French. The plane was leaving at 4 or 5 and I said, Come on, we have to leave! We ran out but we didnt make it and we saw the plane crash into a field. I wanted to talk to you about it.

This uncanny dream presaged the events of September 11. As she had dreamt, two planes had crashed in New York and hit the city, one had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, which she seemed to have condensed with the fourth crash in Washington DC. It was certainly possible that the two American Airlines pilots were killed by the other two pilots (the hijackers). I asked Laura how she knew it was a psychic dream. It was quieter, she said, it doesnt feel like it comes out of the confusion of my mind. Although Im totally there, it just doesnt totally seem like mine, it has a listening quality. She compared it to the feeling in the city today . . . its quiet but its not peaceful. Associations Laura cried inconsolably through much of the session. Though convinced this was a prophetic dream, there were personal elements as well. I took the discrepancies between the content of the dream and the actual facts of the disaster to be unconscious productions which needed to be interpreted. For instance, why four or five oclock, I asked her, when in fact the planes had crashed in the morning? Lauras association to five oclock was that at that time on Sunday there had been an earthquake. And why, I asked, wasnt she panicked as these planes crashed? She related this to Jasons terror during the earthquake, while she was calm. The French waitress was also clearly a personal element relating to her family (of French ancestry). She said she wanted to talk to me in the dream because she knew I would be able to help her think about all of this. Interpretation I told Laura that although she seemed to have intuited these terrible events before they occurred, and that her feelings about this tragedy were certainly understandable on that realistic level, I also wanted to draw her attention to another aspect of the dream which reflected her own internal struggle. Seeing the insanity, chaos and violence stimulated for her the insanity and violence of her family. For a sensitive child it was like watching their destruction over and

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over again. Her ability to intuit telepathically the suffering of others derives from a deep capacity for love, which could not develop properly in the face of such traumatic early, becoming rather an idealized spiritual love. Her primitive efforts to rescue her parents by identifying with them meant that she too was felt to be going down with the two crashed planes. However, in leaving the French restaurant and French waitress she is leaving her mother, indicating some boundaries for her self, and her desire to talk to me in the dream underlines her wish for further consciousness to help her escape the family madness. I also told Laura that her desire to get on the third plane may have shown her ambivalence and lingering confusion about her responsibility to her family, and the question arises for her here in a profound waywhat is her responsibility to the larger family of humanity to whose suffering she is so attuned that she has dreamt it before it happened? I pointed out that her desire to help her family in this way became a tremendous burden to her, for having identified with them she feels psychically bound to help them [as internal objects] indistinguishable from herself. Lauras association links her lack of panic during the crashes in the dream to her lack of fear during the earthquake. Her first comments about the angels and the souls of the victims reveal the spiritual perspective of this dream, from which vertex her lack of fear refers to her awareness that her higher self could remain intact despite the fact that the earth was quaking or her family crashing around her, or within her. I interpreted her feeling of having removed herself to a place of pure angelic love where she could survive her terror, but while this escape [to the astra] appears to make her safe it also divides her, as part of her stays with her family emotionally and part of her leaves. In this defensive dissociation to the archetypal level she is felt to escape her feelings and so does not have to panic, for that part of her feels safe. Some will survive, some will not, she says philosophically, and by all the accounts Ive heard of her troubled family, she seems to be, mentally and spiritually, the only survivor. The next dreams follow closely after September 11th.

Session no. 3 Lauras psychic intuition was greatly intensified by the terrorist attack and continued to pose a dire emotional threat to her. Feeling fragile and broken, more visions came while watching the rescue efforts on television.
The souls are gone but the angels are still there, like a dome over the city. Theyre surrounding the people below because if the souls of the living had felt the panic of their loved ones who died, it would have added to their confusion and panic as they tried to hang on to the dead, to go to them to help.

Laura felt overwhelmed by this vision. She said that she had been trying not to go to those dead souls but that the pull was very strong to go and help. After

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what we talked about yesterday I knew that if Id gone there to take care of all those souls, I would have died . . . I know it, I would have literally died, had a heart attack or something . . . Four or five thousand souls [the estimated dead at the time] is just too much. Dream
Throughout this dream I saw images of bulldozers clearing debris. Jason and I were at Jills house. A woman was going to photograph me and Jill said I should make my old blue dress into a skirt to wear for the picture. I thought it was too old but she said, The materials still good. I agreed to try it. Then I was making a short video about my work. Jills brother, Danny, was doing a love scene and fell in love with his co-star. It was his first kiss and it was really sweet, but I didnt know how much of his personal life I should put in the video since it wasnt part of my work in the scene.

Associations They had in fact had dinner at Jills the night before and had been able to help each other with good food and emotional nourishment. Danny is a shy, sensitive young boy, she said, whos never had a girlfriend, but is interested in someone now. Laura associated this with Jason, in whom shed sensed a feeling of love and relaxation yesterday after his session with his therapist. She felt hopeful that he was getting help. Maybe, she said, his therapist was the girl he was kissing in the dream. My old blue dress was my favourite dress, she said, I wore it for years but it was worn out and out of date so I threw it out. She associated having her picture taken with publicity for an upcoming exhibit in Europe which was being advertised as an important cultural event. She was excited but nervous, and added, If Im going to move forward in my work I need to start advertising in L.A. as well. Interpretation I felt a shift in this session, starting with the images of debris being cleared away and the positive feelings toward her friends, her self and her work. I told Laura that in her dream her effort not to use her mind in the old way by communicating psychically with the dying victims (or her family) reflected her awareness that if she wants to move forward she has to advertise for herself, i.e., be herself, staying within her own mind and emotions rather than being a container for everyone elses. [This struggle with boundaries included resisting the pull to invade Jasons mind and his therapy, which we had seen in recent sessions as her jealousy]. I pointed out her awareness in this dream that keeping her cameraher minds eyetrained on Jasons mind as she does at first

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with Dannys first kiss, is not part of her work, which includes her professional work as well as our analytic work of discovering her emotional and mental boundaries. In a sense she is faced with the choice of what internal video she wants to makehers or everyone elses. We discussed the old blue dress as a symbol for this dilemma, for it represents the past; it may have fit once but its day is done. I wondered then how to understand Lauras agreeing with Jills suggestion to salvage the material from the old dress. I realized that this represented the notion that even though the old way of using her gifts is destructive to her, it doesnt mean that those gifts are to be thrown out, rather, like the dress, they need to be refashioned for use in another way. It was important to show Laura that the fabric of these gifts was good, for it is made of her own intuition and quest for higher truth, even though the primitive way she had first learned to use it was destructive, born of defences against her helplessness, jealousy, rage and confusion. Using them as before would lead to further confusion, splitting and fragmentation, even, as she says, death, but she can still use those same valuable intuitive gifts in her creative work. Lauras fear of being overwhelmed by the souls of the dead reflects a threat to her mental survival. About the souls relationship to the unconscious, Jung wrote, In a sense this is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead (Jung 1961, p. 191). There is awareness both of Lauras capacity to connect intuitively with the archetypal realm but also of the threat this fascination with archetypal energies poses to the soul (Speicher 2002, p. 151) as long as it remains disconnected, unbalanced by her visceral existence. Session no. 4 Laura spoke at length of her intense rage at the terrorists. Shed dreamt of an icy ocean that was melting, which Id interpreted as her long frozen rage and terror at her mother and family beginning to thaw. She dreamt too of searching for the best restaurant in town . . . very expensive, but upon arriving found nothing there . . . a ghost town. She was later satisfied with a plain but healthy meal somewhere else. Her associations placed the expensive restaurant in her home town, and I interpreted that finding nothing there reflected her dawning awareness that her ideal mother/self who can help everyone is an illusion, with nothing really there but a fearsome ghost of her old rage and fear. The expensive best restaurant is emotionally expensive, for it leads her to abandon her feelings. I went on to describe her feeling that her meal with me, while healthy, is felt to make her into a plain girl with ordinary feelings, depriving her of that inflated state. The shock of 9/11 has stimulated Lauras early trauma, which so damaged her mind, her hope, that she was forced to an idealized reality, split off from emotional experience. I could now see her compelling pull to help all the victims

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in NY in a new light, for while in part an admirable intention, it is bound up with that inflated, idealized self which served as protection from terror and rage. Session no. 5 Dream
I was with a four year old girlI felt such deep love for her. She was setting the table and instead of stainless steel she kept saying stained steel. I kept trying to explain to her that it was stainless, that you could clean it and wipe off the spots.

Associations Laura said that she and Jason had just bought new flatware, and discarded the broken, mismatched flatware her mother had given her years ago. The pretty new ones gave her pleasure . . . The little girl in the dream was confused, she kept trying to understand but couldnt. Setting the table was Lauras job as a child, so she felt she was the little girl. Despite the broken horrible silverware I always tried to make it pretty . . . Laura started to cry as a visual memory emerged, and she remembered feeling stained because of the incest.
Im sitting there in my bed after theyd all gone . . . I was really little, about 3 or 4. I didnt know where they all went or what had happened, I was so confused . . . like if they did this to me didnt that mean we were supposed to be together? To play or something? But I was all alone . . . I felt dirty . . . I always felt dirty and that I could never be fixed, that no one could ever love me. I dont feel that now. Its unbelievable that Im in a loving relationship.

Interpretation Although seemingly less inflated here, more in touch with her little girl feelings, the dream revealed the split between the ideal mother and Lauras painful primitive feelings. In the transference, I felt that the little girls confusion also reflected Lauras difficulty accepting what I had said yesterday, and so I told her that it felt like a big leap for her to give up her sense of herself as the ideal mother who can save the world, which had for so long protected her against unthinkable pain. In the dream she becomes a loving mother/me explaining patiently that its stainless steel, though she still feels like that stained child who cannot understand that these feelings can be washed off. In view of the rage shes been feeling, I went on to say that this stain seemed to represent her rage at parents who terrorized her as a child. Her fear of having damaged them with her rage helps us understand that the need to help all the victims reflects her guilt for the war she unconsciously waged against her family. It is this old rage she cant wipe away, and which needs to be cleaned up. She was also feeling angry at me, not only [in the transference] as her inept mother who could not help her, but also for challenging her ideal self.

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As Lauras ocean of frozen emotions melts, so do her manic and omnipotent defences, and she becomes terrified of the increasing guilt, shame, terror and rage she will have to feel. However, her ability to begin feeling that rage is a first step in the developmental movement from Kleins paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position, which makes reparation and resolution of her guilt possible (Klein 1975, p. 1415). Session no. 6 Laura said ominously, I had another vision. I saw the terrorists all over America . . . sitting calmly, planning their next attack. She felt that she could have seen more specifically who and where they were, but was terrified she couldnt handle it. People on the streets looked angry and their cars appeared to her like sharks. Dream
I was with Jason in a beautiful new house. He was sitting at the table surrounded by a domelike the dome of angels I saw over the World Trade Centerand there were shafts of light pouring down on him. I was covered with light too and I heard Gods voiceI heard Gods voice! It said, What this house needs is meditation. Then I was at my apartment. A terrorist was lurking in the bushes and I went inside. A new neighbour, Otis, wanted to see my apartment, he asked if I liked it. Yes, I said, its light and airy. I didnt like his energy though so I went inside and locked the door. I was holding the door closed because the lock wasnt good, but then I thought, Its better to see who he is. I let him in and . . . he was manic, I wanted him to leave. Jason wasnt there and I felt terrified. Finally, I shouted, OUT! He left.

Associations Laura described the new house as reminiscent of one she and Jason had rented on vacation when both felt happy and relaxed. She described Otis much as he appeared in the dream, then spoke at length about the terrible situation the country was in. Almost as an afterthought she mentioned that she and Jason had an argument last night. Shed felt attacked when he became moody and withdrawn after shed shared good news about her work. He eventually admitted feeling envious of her success. Interpretation I found myself feeling confused in this session. When I understood Lauras dream I realized that I had absorbed an early level of her massive confusion concerning the blurring of boundaries between inner and outer, between self and other. This was a pivotal dream regarding the central dilemma of someone with this kind of visionary gift. I felt cautious in interpreting it, however, for

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while trying to amplify the primitive unconscious feelings, I did not want her to feel her capacity for transcendent vision inhibited or judged. I made it clear that in hearing the voice of God she seemed to have made contact with her wise higher self, but that in this case it was impelled by her anger and terror at seeing Jasons jealousy turn him into a hard and manic Otis. Essentially, this had fuelled her leap into the astra, where she could commune with Jasons pure soul beyond the disturbed emotional self seen in his envious withdrawal. I therefore considered the beautiful house, bathing him in brilliant light and recalling a happier time of love, as a symbol with dual aspects. While it reflects the archetypal realm of transcendent truth, on a personal level it also reflects her idealization of Jason, meant to quell her fear and anger. Her reluctance to mention their argument to me revealed her resistance to challenging that idealization, but then confusion arises, for the cost of making contact with Jason in that pure realm is the denial of her feelings about who he is on an earthly level. She then projects her rage (the shark-like cars and the terrorist in the bushes), afraid of what it would do to her feelings of love. I pointed out this fear of what Jasons unconscious feelings could do to that love and her need to split him too [like Kleins good and bad mother], into a Jason bathed in light and an Otis/Jason whose energy is manic and crazy (Klein 1975, p. 34). [From this perspective, the flight to the astra can be seen as a function of the paranoid schizoid position, a function then, not of psychosis but of primitive psychotic defences.] Concerning the locks on the door, Laura has often mentioned that her brothers, overwhelmed by jealousy of her as the only girl, a gifted girl at that, with a special place in their fathers life, would often violently intrude into her bedroom, which had no lock on the door. In the context of her associations, the jealous Jason/Otis becomes her father and brothers invading her sexually and mentally. In her hallucinations of sharks we see her unconscious projections of rage at this constant abuse. No boundaries were permitted in her household, and this becomes a central dilemma for someone with this kind of visionary gift related to early trauma. I pointed out Lauras struggle in this dream between her desire to lock out her awareness and her desire to know the truth, and so I too become a terrorist, a brother or father who wants to get in to rape her with that awareness. However, though shed prefer to lock Otis/Jason out of consciousness, she does let him in, and her statement, It is better to see, demonstrates her faith in me and our work. We discussed the daunting confusion represented here between her fear of her brothers violent jealousy and rage and her fear of her own rage secondary to their abuse. Whose rage is it? She cannot know what to lock out and if fuelled by this emotional confusion Lauras visions create an unstable situation in her mind. Without knowing whose rage it is and what to claim as hers, she cannot close the door against the hatred of others and ends up containing their hatred as well as her own. Her boundaries continue to be flooded as the attacks and the confusion cause her boundaries to become porous.

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Creating containment for her emotions allows openness to her higher knowledge without her mental boundaries being compromised and overwhelmed. The dualities described above reflect what is important about this session, for we are dealing here with good and evil. As we see, these can so easily become confused, especially in the face of frequently fluid boundaries between the two. However, it is a confusion which lies at the heart of all mental illness, for no mental balance can be found if one cannot distinguish the source of love or goodness from that of hatred or evil, the source of light from that of darkness. One is then at odds with the only light that can restore balance in the mind ones own consciousness. Laura turns her hatred of the attacking Jason into love of the idealized Jason, but without consciousness of her hatred she cannot sort out the two. Her apprehension of Gods light, and of a loving Jason, would seem to have a basis in reality at an archetypal level, but when split from her consciousness of his bad aspects, and from her love of herself, it becomes a function of darkness, or evil. This corresponds to Fordhams idea of splitting of light and dark as an archetypal defence against the self (Fordham 1985, p. 196). Session no. 7 (a week later) I will end the clinical material with brief descriptions of two more dreams. Laura dreamt of her maternal grandmother, a devout Catholic who had wanted to be a nun but instead was married off to a violent man. In her dream Laura had to carry her infirm grandmother across a river. She felt this as an overwhelming burden, yet when a man came by and offered to help, she refused, then got her grandmother across by walking on the water. Laura spoke at length about her childhood, the mental illness in her extended family and her difficult, cold grandmother. She described the man in the dream as bald with innocent wide eyes. At first I thought this fit the description of a baby, that she was rejecting help from her own baby self both her feelings of need as well as the babys instinctual wisdomand becoming identified with an idealized or grand mother. Her unbearable disappointment in her actual mother, someone who, as we see here, could not emotionally carry her, but had to be carried by her, causes her to idealize her. I interpreted to Laura that her grandmother represented this exalted or grand mother, the nun, married to Christ, and Laura, is felt to be like her, or like Christ, walking on water. I was aware of the dual aspect in this, for her idealized self is also the knowing childthe divine childjust as the grand mother is also the Madonna, the nurturing pole of the Mother archetype. However, in this context what I felt most strongly was the presence of the damaged child, compelled to deny her awareness of her mentally ill parents and ancestors, and refuse help and her own emotional needs. Laura became very angry with me for speaking so strongly to her about her identification with Christ and the Madonna, angry, I thought, that I had exposed the heart of her idealization. This anger was crucial to the process of

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our work, for it allowed her to challenge her need to see me as this idealized mother, now infirm as its power was challenged in her internal world. Although one always feels the energy of such violent projections, I had a strong intuitive conviction that this was the source of her anger. I had long been aware of Lauras need to keep me as an ideal figure, and so I welcomed this wearing away of that rigid defence. This understanding made it easier to differentiate myself from the harshness of the negative transference and keep from absorbing too deeply the negative aspects of the grand mother being projected into me. There are, after the fact, any number of plausible interpretations, although ultimately one can rely only on ones intuition in the moment. From a Jungian perspective Laura might also be seen as putting herself in an inflated, messianic position, refusing help from the man who may represent the animus, her masculine aspect of logic or reason. This does not seem incompatible with my view of the dream, for my idea of the infant self includes the divine child who carries the ancient wisdom, profound intuition of the union of opposites good/evil, male/femalewhich characterizes the mind or self. Bions theory of container and contained reflects the minds duality, using male and female symbols to represent its dual functions (Bion 1970, p. 106). propos of this, my later association to the bald man whose help Laura refuses was to Bion, whose bald head and wide innocent eyes were defining attributes. Since we carry the imagoes of our teachers, I thought that Laura might have intuited this male figure within me, so that the man might represent Bion, a wise analyst/me whose help she refuses, preferring instead to walk on water and remain in that inflated position. I felt this session as a turning point in the treatment for Laura was soon surprised to feel that not only did she not have to save her mother, and the world, she didnt want to. Guilt, her need to make amends for her unconscious rage, and the shame of denying her self, had kept her imprisoned in this role all her life, compensated by the inflation and omnipotence of the idealized self. The challenges to her omnipotence allowed Laura to challenge her internal idealized mother, which was accompanied by more anger at me in the transference. This led to a dream of a baby, a sick baby with poison in all its cells, surrounded by chaotic movement [the orgies], but having created some distance from her mother, and her ideal mother/self, finally allowed Laura a visceral experience of this sick baby filled, as she bitterly sobbed, with all that sperm. She became increasingly able to depend on me as a loving object, instead of activating her ideal mother, in me or in herself, on which she had so long depended. Concluding remarks While more questions may have been raised than answered about this ineffable realm, hopefully some aspects of its mystery have been brought to

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light for further examination. While I have observed a relationship between early trauma and openness to unconscious communications, it does not answer the question as to why one individual becomes capable of this extra-sensory travel through space-time while another victim of abuse become mired in psychotic process. We are dealing with the limits of our knowledge and as Jung humbly reminded us, The nature of the psyche reaches into obscurities far beyond the scope of our understanding (Jung 1960, para. 815). There is no satisfactory answer to the question of why certain people develop psychic intuition, or indeed any other kind of creative gift, for music, poetry or the visual arts, as there is no recipe for the mixture of environmental, psychological and genetic components which contribute to creative talents. In Lauras case we can, however, point to certain factors. Early encouragement for her potent imaginationironically from the father by whom she was so tormentedmay have helped prevent the more serious illness to which Neumann refers when the Mother archetype is activated in cases of trauma without an outlet to express it (Neumann 1949/1973, p. 81). While a permeable threshold between conscious and unconscious often makes psychotic patients capable of psychic intuitions as well, the psychotic is under the direct influence of the unconscious (Jung 1960, para. 134), which Laura, who remains firmly rooted in reality, clearly is not. Cambray explains that an ego weakened by chronic stress gives rise to an archetypal field that is not well mediated, and so, . . . the more dramatic forms of synchronicity often occur in the treatment of psychotic and borderline patients . . . synchronicities also tend to come into play in highly traumatized states (Cambray 2002, p. 422). Like Jung, however, he makes it clear that the synchronistic effect is a normal rather than a psychotic phenomenon (ibid., p. 421), and this too is evident in Lauras case. However, I have tried to show that in the presence of trauma destructive elements may attach themselves to this normal mental phenomenon. Also, although we can see similarities in the minds of the analyst and the psychic in that both exercise deep intuitive capacities which can be brought to bear on a transcendent realm, the analytic state of mind is achieved through discipline and thought rather than the primitive action of a mind in flight from itself. Bion commented on the fact that madness is often seen to be akin to genius: It would be more true to say that psychotic mechanisms require a genius to manipulate them in a manner adequate to promote growth or life (which is synonymous with growth) (Bion 1970, p. 63). I suggest that, like artistic or scientific inspiration, the capacity for psychic intuition may represent a flash of genius which lifts the child out of emotional trauma to a new state informed by a higher self, a state, however, imposed upon an undeveloped mind not yet capable of integrating it emotionally. Without a nurturing caretaker to contain the emotional aspects of thought, the thought will remain extraneous to the minda split off part of the psyche.

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Summary In the case presented of severe early trauma, Laura is someone with great openness to the transcendent realm, someone already conversant with angels, and my work often necessitated helping her to experience contact with a less developed, split off emotional self which had begun strangling her innate talents. Paradoxically, the gift for psychic intuition may serve both as protection from more serious illness pursuant to trauma, while creating certain weaknesses in emotional development. The capacity for unconscious communication reflects access to that transcendent self, but too early access to this awareness as a response to trauma or lack of emotional containment can obstruct mental development, fragmenting the minds capacity to contain or regulate emotion. There are significant similarities between Jungs and Bions views of the unconscious, in particular that it is not only, like Freuds unconscious, a receptacle for repressed feelings, but also has a transcendent aspect beyond psychical reckoning. Like Jung, Bion views the unknown and unknowable as the appropriate focus of the analysts attention (Bion 1970, p. 27). Bion suggests that for the analyst the preferable state of mind is faith, faith that there is an ultimate reality and truth (ibid., p. 31). He makes the critical point that this faith must be untainted by memory or desire (ibid., p. 32), and this is precisely the problem weve seen in the case discussedthe stain of primitive memories on the traumatized childs faith in knowledge and higher truth leads to a faith that is really the fragmentation or erosion of the boundaries of the ego. I have tried to shed light on how the relationship to the transcendent self may be facilitated by early trauma, but later, paradoxically, also obstructed, and how emotional awareness can ameliorate the obstacles, facilitating access to that transcendent self. Awareness of unconscious emotional states can help to repair boundaries separating spiritual from emotional knowledge, integrating split off emotional states so that transcendent intuitive gifts may be used in the service of evolution toward higher states of knowledge and wisdom.

TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT
Cet article tudie la relation quil peut y avoir entre un traumatisme prcoce svre et le dveloppement dune intuition psychique. Une prsentation de cas clinique incluant de faon extensive le travail des rves illustre cette connexion avec une exploration de la signification psychologique chez un patient de sa rceptivit aigu aux communications inconscientes. Larticle inclut aussi une revue historique des attitudes de Freud envers loccultisme, attitudes qui sont diffrentes des points de vue psychanalytiques dvelopps par la suite, y compris ceux de Bion. De nombreuses conceptions ont plus de points communs avec la perspective de Jung quavec celle de Freud, en particulier avec les rfrences relatives aux diffrences spirituelles et religieuses. Bion a clairement dit que

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Freud et les psychanalystes se sont concentrs sur le phnomne et pas sur le numen, que Bion considre comme tant lessence du point de vue psychanalytique.

Dieser Artikel untersucht die Beziehung zwischen schwerem Fruehtrauma und der Entwicklung uebersinnlicher Intuition. Ein Behandlungsfall mit ausfuehrlicher Traumarbeit, in dem die psychologische Bedeutung akuter Empfaenglichkeit des Patienten fuer unbewusste Kommunikationen erforscht wird, veranschaulicht diese Beziehung. Der Artikel enthaelt einen historischen Ueberblick von Freuds Einstellung zum Okkulten, im Gegensatz zu spaeteren psychoanalytischen Ansichten, einschliesslich derer von Wilfred Bion. Etliche von Bions Ansichten haben mehr mit der Jungs als mit Freuds Perspektiven gemeinsam, insbesondere mit Bezug auf geistige und religioese Unterschiedlichkeiten. Bion sagt klar aus, dass Freud und Psychoanalytiker sich auf Phenomena, und nicht auf Noumena, konzentriert haben, welche Bion als den wesentlichen Kern psychoanalytischen Denkens betrachtet.

In questo lavoro si esamina il rapporto che sussiste tra gravi traumi precoci e lo sviluppo della capacit intuitiva. La presentazione di un caso con un ampio lavoro sui sogni ci aiuta ad illustrare tale connessione esplorando il significato psicologico dellintensa ricettivit di un paziente a comunicazioni inconsce. Questo lavoro include una panoramica storica sullatteggiamento di Freud nei confronti delloccultismo, come distinto dai punti di vista di psicoanalisti pi tardi, inclusi quelli di Wilfred Bion. Molti dei punti di vista bioniani hanno pi elementi in comune con quelli junghiani che non con quelli di Freud, con particolare riferimento a differenze spirituali e religiose. Bion dichiara chiaramente che Freud e gli psicoanalisti hanno focalizzato la loro attenzione sul fenomeno e non sul noumeno, che Bion considera lessenza del punto di vista psicoanalitico.

Este trabajo examina la relacin entre los traumas tempranos y el desarrollo de la intuicin psquica. La presentacin de un caso acompaado de extenso trabajo onrico ayuda a ilustrar esta conexin mediante la exploracin el significado psicolgico de la aguda receptividad de un paciente de las comunicaciones inconscientes. Este trabajo incluye una revisin histrica de la actitud de Freud hacia el ocultismo, como diferente a las opiniones psicoanalticas posteriores, incluyendo aquellas de Wilfred Bion. Muchas de los conceptos de Bion tienen mas en comn con los enfoques de Jung que con los de Freud en particular en lo referente a las diferencias de lo espiritual y lo religioso. Bion establece claramente que Freud y los psicoanalistas se han enfocado primordialmente en los fenmenos y no en lo noumenal (esencial), lo cual Bion considera la esencia del punto de vista psicoanaltico.

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[MS first received February 2003, final version January 2004]