Grid
The grid is an instrument for classifying psychoanalytic material, coming from either the patient or the analyst, proposed by Wilfred R. Bion in his Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963). Classification is made along two axes, with the vertical axis representing the genetic evolution of thoughts or ideas, and the horizontal axis representing the uses or functions attributed to thoughts or ideas. By combining the vertical categories with the horizontal uses or functions, a grid is obtained that makes it possible to classify the "elements of psycho-analysis"—the term Bion applies to the thoughts and emotions of the patient-analyst dyad.
Bion does not advocate using the grid as a working method during sessions. Rather, it is conceived as a tool that the analyst can use outside of the sessions to clarify their ideas or reexamine material.
By means of the grid and other abstract systems of notation, Bion sought to bring a greater degree of specificity to psychoanalytic theory. For example, in the theory of the Oedipus complex that helped Sigmund Freud to found psychoanalysis, there are elements that are constants, fixed through their association with other elements. Thus, in the classic oedipal scheme, it would be impossible to detach any of the following from the whole: sexual agitation, sexual curiosity, or castration. Bion's use of new methods of notation began with his book entitled Learning from Experience (1962) and reached its height with Transformations: Change from Learning to Growth (1965), where the reader finds a profusion of mathematical signs, Greek words, arrows, dots, and lines, the assimilation of which (when it is possible) adds little to analytic understanding. Bion himself admitted his failure, referring to his mathematics as "Dodgsonian," in reference to Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The grid was not as ill-fated as Bion's other notation systems and has even become emblematic of his research.
Arranged along the vertical axis of the grid are the following: A) beta-elements; B) alpha-elements; C) dream thoughts, dreams, and myths; D) preconception; E) conception; F) concept; G) a scientific deductive system; H) algebraic calculus.
The horizontal axis essentially presents the functions the mind uses to have access to the real: 1) definitory hypotheses; 2) denial; 3) notation; 4) attention; 5) inquiry; 6) action.
If, in the horizontal axis, Bion draws from Freud's 1911 article, "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning," the vertical axis instead reflects the influence of Immanuel Kant's epistemology.
As a whole, the grid recalls Kant's categories (much more than it does Dimitri Mendeleev, contrary to what some have suggested). Like in Kant's faculty of thought, there are three levels in the grid: sensibility, understanding, and reason. Sensibility, in Kant's work, is predominantly passive and serves to receive impressions from the outside (the equivalent of Bion's lines A, B, and C). Understanding is active; it takes sensibility's components and forms them into judgments and real knowledge (the equivalent of Bion's lines D, E, and F). Reason is the final stage in the operations of knowledge, which are begun by the senses and continue through the understanding.
For all its interest, Bion's grid did not achieve the degree of abstraction he believed was desirable in the development of any scientific theory. The grid did not produce the desired combinatory effects, in the same way that psychoanalytic theory is not at the level of a predictive scientific system. Perhaps the ascent into abstraction is not possible for psychoanalysis, just as it is not possible for the other human sciences. Walking in the footsteps of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and Bertrand Russell, Bion did not take into account the methodological obstacles raised when one attempts to assimilate the natural and human sciences—obstacles evoked by Wilhelm Dilthey in his Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society and History and by Georges Politzer in his Critique of the Foundations of Psychology: The Psychology of Psychoanalysis, among others.
Bibliography
Bion, Wilfred Ruprecht. (1963). Elements of psycho-analysis. London: Heinemann.
——. (1965). Transformations: Change from learning to growth. London: Heinemann.
Politzer, Georges. (1994). Critique of the foundations of psychology: the psychology of psychoanalysis (Maurice Apprey, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1928)
—PEDRO LUZES
