Bion «Catastrophic Change» and Winnicott's «Breakdown»

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ReferênciasGaddini, R. (1981). Bion «Catastrophic Change» and Winnicott's «Breakdown». 27(3-4), 610-621.

Bion «Catastrophic Change» and Winnicott's «Breakdown»1Renata Gaddini, authorFor a long time the real meaning of Bion's term «catastrophe» and its relationship with Winnicott's«breakdown» were not clear to me. The word catastrophe, it is known, comes from Greek«kata»— down, and «strephein» — to turn. Chambers Twentieth Century dictionary defines«Catastrophe» as follows: «An overturning; a final event; an unfortunate conclusion; a calamity».

Bion has spoken of «catastrophic change», never of catastrophe, in various places in his work,and particularly, in Chapter 12 of «Attention and Interpretation» ( 5 ), in «Learning from experience» ( 2 ) and, most of all, in «Transformations» ( 3 ). In 1966 he had given a paper to the British Society which was entitled «Catastrophic Change» ( 4 ). That paper was not published separately. It appeared, however, in the Bulletin o the BritishPsychoanalytic Society and it is printed almost exactly the same in «Attention and Interpretation».

The image of the catastrophe and of the extreme confusion which the analyst experiences whenworking in depth with adult psychotics has been associated by Bion with the experience of thearcheologist who exscavates in the ruins of a buried city and, in the course of his excavation, dueto movements the various geological strata have undergone in the course of years, meets the

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various layers of the city in confusion, and finds rocks and stones which belong to the moreancient layers mixed with vases and amphorae, and with objects of the more recent periods.Similarly, Bion notes, the analyst who works in depth with individuals who present thoughtdisorders finds, in their mind, a confusion of no less degree than that which is found among theruins of the old buried city, as the more recent «layers of personality» are confused with thearchaic ones.

Oliver Lyth ( 9 ), one of Bion's most careful readers, pointed out to me that the word «catastrophe» in English hasbecome more and more associated with «disaster» but «as so often with Bion he uses it veryaccurately, and retaining its earlier meaning of an evolutionary change, as well as the disasterelement». This lost evolutionary meaning, dramatic in character, according to Lyth, wassuperimposed on by the «disaster» element, which seems now to prevail in the current meaning

Tustin ( 11 ) feels differently. She recalls having had a long discussion in Summer 1977 at tea with Dr. Bion inthe Tavistock about the topic of «catastrophe», as she was concerned not to travesty his meaningin her paper «Psychological Birth and Psychological Catastrophe» which she was, at the time,writing as a contribution to the Festschrift for Bion's 80th year . The sense which Tustin gave tothe word «catastrophe» in her contribution was of a calamity, a total disaster, a trauma whichstopped a normal psychological birth, and distorted growth. It was clear to her — she reports —that for Bion it was appropriate to link the two concepts (psychological birth and psychologicalcatastrophe) together. In this context the realization by the child that the part of the mother he hadtaken for granted as being part of is body, was not so, is the trauma par excellence. According toTustin, Winnicott refers to this trauma as lying at the roots of infants' psychotic depression. It is adisaster which either a) halts or b) distorts and confuses psychological growth. In the first case a)we get unintegration and in the second b) we get disintegration .

Winnicott's «breakdown»( 12 ) as we know, is in fact, quite close to disintegration, his «fear of breakdown» is, for me, the fearwhich Bion refers to, which holds back the patient in analysis from changing and growing. Both the«fear of breakdown» as well as the «fear of catastrophic change» are the equivalents of the fearwith which one meets, in the course of the analysis, and these hold back the patient, desperatelycohesive fearful of changing, as if he were on the very edge of a catastrophe or a precipice.

A young patient of mine dreams:

«I had a small motor-scooter. I was going along a long, narrow road. On my side of the roadthere was an iron railing, with vertical and horizontal bars, and a parapet. Beyond this parapet

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there was a precipice. What precipice was unknown… There was something different beyond thisparapet… it was unknown whether it were the same green meadow or what… It was a place oneleaves from… a little pier, perhaps…» He associates: «One leaves on a boat and one leaves on atrain… You know what: every time we talk like today I find myself thinking of committingsuicide…». For the rest of the hour the patient filled the room with excited narrations, so as to«cover» (patient's word) and to confuse the analyst.

Tustin points out that Bion does not write about «non-integration» because this is not seen in adultpatients to the massive degree it is encountered in autistic children, particularly in those withinfantile autism (Kanner type). There may be a pocket of unintegration in neurotic patients, butBion did not write about this. On the contrary, Winnicott's work has taken place, for a long time,mostly with children, who presented various psychopathological conditions, and this meant to himthat he encountered unintegration, virtually in pure culture.

Bion writes about «disintegration» which he encountered in adult schizophrenics, which was hisarea of study. He never treated children, though, much of what he has discovered is helpful intreating them. In any cases, Bion did not differentiate «unintegration» from «disintegration» theway Winnicott did.

In Winnicott's ( 12 ) words, breakdown is the equivalent of the lack of a defensive organization, an organization whichwould have helped to cope with environmental difficulties and vicissitudes during primary states. Itis a failure of a defense organization. «In the area of psychoneurosis it is castration anxiety thatlies behind the defences, whereas in the more psychotic phenomena… it is a breakdown of theestablishment of the unit self that is indicated». The loss of psychosomatic collusion, withdepersonalization as a defense, and the loss of a sense of reality wich is typical of psychoticconditions, with primary narcissism as a defense, may be found one beside the other, when heenumerates primary agonies: non-integration and disintegration are the closest, one to another.

As mentioned above, Tustin has dedicated special attention to the definition of the term«catastrophe», and she got a clear impression that Bion views the «catastrophic change» assomething which implied, for the patient, a calamity, which he dreaded, in the same way he hadbeen terrified at the time of his primary experience, when he had gone through it for the first time.On the same occasion (summer 1977) she also got the impression that Bion was inclined to seethis primary terror as interfering, in some cases, with normal psychological birth, i.e., with theprocess which takes place in the first months, of life, in the human infant, through the babycontainement on the part of the mother's mind. This containment gives emotional meaning tothings and events, and in so doing, makes infant's early sensations gradually grow into affects andthoughts. It is on the basis of sense data, we know, that the complex mental operations of lateryears will take place.



It may be noted here that Bion and Winnicott made many discoveries, indipendently from eachother, whic we may look at as equivalent, at times even superimposable, at times only close innature to one another. It will be hard, therefore, for me, to limit myself in this presentation to theconcept of «catastrophe». Both these authors, as is known, following a line which had beenopened up to them by Melanie Klein, dedicated themselves to the study of the very primary levelsof development. In this context. Winnicott described the concept of «primary maternalpreoccupation» and Bion the concept of reverie, two concepts which have indeed much incommon. Furthermore, Winnicott's «holding» and Bion's «containment» have also much incommon. In relationship with the mother's nutritional function, we may wonder whether in Bion'scontainment the mother's capacity of receiving the infant's projective identifications, is perhapssomething which is more mental, when compared with Winnicott's holding situation. Bion is clearon this matter: «The term reverie may be applied to almost any content. I wish to reserve it only forsuch content as is suffused with love or hate. Using it in this restricted sense reverie is that state ofmind which is open to the reception of any «objects» from the loved object and is thereforecapable of reception of the infant's projective identifications, whether they are felt by the infant tobe good or bad. In short, reverie is a factor of the mother's alpha-function». (Learning fromExperience, p. 36)

It has to be noted that, on the subject of reverie, Bion does not talk about containment. In Bion'sidea of «containment» there is, beyond container's and content's interactions, the containment ofinfant's (or patient's) evacuations which would otherwise overflow. Meltzer's ( 10 ) image of «Mummy-napkin» or «Mummy-toilet» fits well to describe the particular mother'sfunction of firmly containing evacuations. If mother is cracked and she can't contain, she can'tprevent evacuations overflow from taking place. Under these conditions, there will be, therefore, acontinuous passing from inside to outside without a clear demarcation of an inner world whereinternal objects may be retained. It may be noted, on this matter, that at these primary levels ofdevelopment, evacuation, more than projection is the mechanism through which infant (or patient)frees himself of his uneasynesses, and/or of his anxious feelings, loosing continuously parts ofself, which could otherwise be used in the construction of a personal inner world

A woman dreams:

«…A public garden… There is Stephanie (daughter), and a young child. I hand over this baby toStephanie, and I walk out. Stephanie picks her up… Soon I come back, and I put baby to sleep, inthe parents bed, on the side of my mother… Stephanie takes care of the baby normally… noprotest… Later I teach the baby not to wet… I take her to the bathroom… a pink bathroom… and Iput her on the toilet… She does little business and big business… some of it gets out of thetoilet… I take it and put it back into the toilet…». business and big business… some of it gets outof the toilet… I take it and put it back into the toilet…».



She associates: «I felt I was different from my mother. When people used to say that I lookedlike one of my parents, I always hoped they'd say «my father» rather than mother… Maybe I didnot feel like being up to her… In the dream, there is a pink bathroom… The pink bathroom wasthat into which, as a child, I used to close myself to manage my tantrums. Once I wrote a note; Iseem to remember it was to my older brother. I wrote that I was going to throw myself out of thewindow…».

I have just said that, for me, Bion's concept of «catastrophic change» and Winnicott's «fear ofbreakdown» have much in common and so do the concepts of containment and that of holding,and the concept of reverie and that of «primary maternal preoccupation»

What I found most different, among the two authors, is the way they use to express themselves. Incontrast with Winnicott's subtle verbal research, tending to find words for that which he felt cannotbe expressed in words, Bion's thinking, which is itself abstract and theoretical, is often expressed— in an almost reactive way — with descriptive and concrete images, and maintains itself at analmost cognitive level. This «cognitive» style is typically conferred by Bion to most of his studies ondepth

The description ( 5 ) of the man who, while he was talking about an emotional experience in which he was deeplyinvolved, begun to stutter, a description which Bion makes use of, in order to illustrate the fractureof relationship between container and content, which is implied in his concept of catastrophe, is agood example in this sense:

«…a man speaking of an emotional experience in which he was closely involved began tostammer badly as the memory became increasingly vivid to him. The aspects of the model that aresignificant are these: the man was trying to contain his experience in a form of words; he wastrying to contain himself, as one sometimes says of someone about to lose control of himself; hewas trying to contain his emotions within a form of words, as one might speak of a generalattempting to ʻcontainʼ enemy forces within a given zone

«The words that should have represented the meaning the man wanted to express werefragmented by the emotional forces to which he wished to give only verbal expression; the verbalformulation could not ʻcontainʼ his emotions, which broke through and dispersed it as enemy forcesmight break through the forces that strove to contain them. he wished to give only verbalexpression; the verbal formulation could not ʻcontainʼ his emotions, which broke through anddispersed it as enemy forces might break through the forces that strove to contain them.

The stammerer, in his attempt to avoid the contingency I have described, resorted to modes ofexpression so boring that they failed to express the meaning he wished to convey; he was thus no



nearer to his goal. His verbal formulation could be described as like the military forces that areworn by the attrition to which they are subjected by the contained forces. The meaning he wasstriving to express was denuded of meaning. His attempt to use his tongue for verbal expressionfailed to ʻcontainʼ his wish to use his tongue for masturbatory movement in his mouth.

Sometimes the stammerer could be reduced to silence. This situation can be represented by avisual image of a man who talked so much that any meaning he wished to express was drownedby his flood of words.

I hope that I have conveyed my meaning to the reader by virtue of the verbal transformations ofvisual images that I have used. However, the communication is not satisfactory. The visual imagesare too concrete to be suitable for expressing the relationship of the mystic to the group. They aretoo evocative of a penumbra of associations which they already carry. In short, the situation issimilar to that of the stammerer whose words, or lack of them, contain rather than communicate hismeaning. Alternatively, the meaning is too powerful for the verbal formulation; the expression islost in an ʻexplosionʼ in which the verbal formulation is destroyed». (Attention and Interpretation,pp. 93-95).

Let us go back now to Oliver Lyth, and to his interpretation of «catastrophic changes». May I saythat an evolutionary idea of the patient, who finds himself in a particular time of the analyticprocess which he feels threatening, is, for me, strictly connected with the idea of catastrophe.

Bion's idea of «learning from experience», on the other hand, clearly contains an evolutionaryelement. It implies learning through «elaboration», a process which brings forward new productsand new states, on the basis of data acquired during infant's (or patient's) previous experience.Hasn't Bion spelled for us, again and again, that feelings and thinking are based on sense data?Looked upon in this light, knowledge and learning may be seen as a sort of biological adaptationsimilar to any other adaptation, except for the fact that we are dealing with the mind and withthinking, where the conflict between the subjective and the objective soon comes in.

The very same analogy of the Ur burial, violated by brave robbers who dared to defy the taboos ofreligion and myths, and to rob the treasures hidden in a spot which was guarded by evil anddangerous spirits, may be looked upon as similar to the adventure that patient and analyst livetogether, when approaching the unconscious. They too — patient and analyst — break togetherthrough the wall of religion and tradition, to search for repressed values. Fear is great. In Bion'swords: «In every consulting room there ought to be two rather frightened people, the patient andthe psychoanalyst. If they are not, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyoneknows» ( 6 ). The fear they have in analysis, breaking through «the ghostly sentinels» of traditions, is fear tomeet with the different-from-self, and with changing. This changing may be feared as catastrophic



in the same way as it has been experienced the first time. The idea is that in analysis thingshappen suddenly, and violently, and things are never the same again.

On the basis of his explorations with psychotic patients on the pathological forms of projectiveidentification and of omnipotence, Bion has provided us with a model of development of the mentalapparatus. Development of thought is due, for him, to the meeting of a preconception with arealization ( 2 ) The preconception is the innate expectation of a breast, is the open valence, as I am used myselfto represent this idea for myself. «When the infant is brought in contact with the breast, thepreconception becomes a conception, in so far as he takes for granted a realization».

Concepts are therefore associated with the emotional experience of satisfaction. Development ofthought, on the other hand, is tied to frustration, with a non-breast. This non-breast is, at first,experienced as a bad object, and expelled, in the infant's omnipotent fantasy. He may haveacquired enough tolerance to frustration, however, to the point of not expelling this bad objectimmediately. He may come to recognize, with time, that the bad thing he has inside is a product ofhis own mind, that it is not real. The moment he is able to do this, it is a transformation. Bioncomes to the conclusion: «Without breast, therefore thought» ( 1 ).

The crucial element of this «getting to know» is the decision to modify himself (therefore ofevolving) or, as an alternative, to evade frustration. Here we find Freud's two priciples of mentalfunctioning which Bion demostrates on the basis of his clinical work with patients.

In theoretical terms, primary experiences are, in Bion's view, controlled by beta elements asprimary processes are. «They are the basic ingredients of sensory and emotional experiences, inwhich the psychic cannot be distinguished from the physical. They bring only to projectiveidentification» ( 1 ).

These primary elements are projected into the breast, and the breast turns them into alfaelements, which have mental significance. The alfa elements may be accumulated, repressed,further elaborated, symbolized. They are the elements of dream thought and of fantasy. It ismother's response to infant's projection which gives sense and significance to his experience. Ifmother's response is adequate, infant may re-introject the breast as a container capable of alfafunctions, the function which translated beta-elements into alfa-elements.

In closing, I like to illustrate these different ways of being and functioning with the case of a boynow 16, who has been seen in early childhood because he used to ruminate. The patient quitted



ruminating when he was four, but resumed it once more at 11, with school stress reinforced byenvironmental changes which took place when his family moved from the South to the North.

The relevant characteristics which manifested themselves during treatment are evacuation ofthoughts non-organized in concepts and symbols (lack of alfa function), the incapacity of learningfrom experience, in so far as there is a withdrawal from reality, and no real experience can beincorporated, introjected and elaborated and — most of all — the trend to obsessive, mysticidealization, which means, for him, «to be one thing with God», i.e., to maintain the primitive fusionwith mother

Antonio is a second born premature of an elderly couple, whose sister is six years his elder. Hismother's nipples were cracked: so, after two weeks of «battling» with a bleeding breast («heregurgitated all my bloody milk») Antonio was weaned. Cow's milk in various forms was thenforced into him and, when regurgitated, patiently fed once more to the struggling baby

These forced feeding manipulations went on for Antonio's first year. By the end of this year hehad become a ruminator, namely, had become able to bring the ingested food back into the mouthand then, slowly, to reingest and swallow it in a reiterated way. able to bring the ingested foodback into the mouth and then, slowly, to reingest and swallow it in a reiterated way.

He walked at 12 months, and spoke at 25 months. His way of beginning to talk was that ofrepeating mother's songs and lullabies. He also repeated sister's counting: 2 - 4 - 5. Parents'comment about that period of his life is that his speech could not progress because he could onlyimitate sounds. They also recall «obsessionally» his talking in front of a mirror at age 4. At thatage, his repetitive capacities appeared astonishing. He was then able to copy a prayer (Fig. 1)without knowing the alphabet. A pediatrician who saw him at the time felt he was «peculiar» andspoke about «mental confusion». Because of this «strange behaviour» he was brought to myattention. He had just begun to go to nursery school, but «was withdrawn and could not share withchildren». Rumination did not appear at the time a main reason of preoccupation for the parents (itdisappeared shortly after starting school) as much as were the words pronounced by thepediatrician: «mental confusion». At age 11 he resumed ruminating. It happened when he wentfrom elementary school in Calabria to a high school in Perugia, where he appeared in distress. Hisschool performance, which represented his obsessive thinking 24 hours day, particularly inrepetitive things and in maths — continued to be good. But he felt persecuted by the class and bythe teachers. His persecutory ideas were also of being attacked genitally by schoolmates; he wasteased and was made the brunt of their jokes. In addition he felt clumsy, and his mechanisms ofpotentiating his mind vs a non-integrated sense of his body self, did not seem successful, at thetime.

Rumination went on and off for 2 years, and is now an occasional symptom which limits itself tofluids. Another symptom however appeared at 14, which brought him back to me, this time asking



for an analysis.

He had become aggressive with his mother and could not stand the view of «naked women». Heappeared obsessively religious, and life events used to be inscribed in compulsive rituals. Hecompulsively plays the piano and does school work, claiming that «he has to realize himself»,meaning with that — as it appeared in the short analytical experience — that he wants to be, as aprotective manoeuvre from breaking down. His stereotyped repeating «I have to realize myself» isan equivalent of saying: «I have to be». Being (mother, object, outside world) appeared to be, forhim, a way of surviving ( 7 ).

His poor capacity for mental metabolism struck me even more at this time, as well as his«ruminating» rather than reflecting of mental operations. There was an extreme tendency toidealization — the sun source of life, (God, mother, all sources of life, of divine love) — and anattempt to abstract, idealization and abstraction proceeding in parallel as primitive defencesagainst early instinctual drives. Instinctual excitement is experienced as a threat and even a panic,as it seems to mobilize primary agonies and fears of break-down. Defensively, he keeps awayfrom body excitement, and moves towards religion and music, in the most ritualistic andstereotyped way. His learning through imitation rather than through identification, due to hisexpulsive rather than retantive capacities, give his cognitive processes a quick grasping characterinstead of reflective assimilation. Besides, there is, in his thinking, no personal point of view. Hekeeps re-producing mother, teacher, books, outside world, (imitation allows him «to be» what heimitates) ( 7 ) although with an element of deep rivalry and defiance. His being the other (never losing contact)seems to be at the basis of his speedy, compulsive, non-constructive learning, both manual as wellas verbal, and of his giving symbols a concrete character, as his ruminated food used to be aperpetually self-enacted image of his feeding and re-feeding mother ( 8 ). «Infants do not know they are happy: should I go back to infancy, now I would be able to know…But I should have to face school once more…», was a consideration I heard from him lately, beforeseparating.

The lacking psychic element which is at the basis of Antonio's precocious distortions, which areauto-aggressive, in so far as it is the child's body which is invested rather than the outside world, isthe initiating element of psychosomatic pathology. In this way, all forces are bound to the body inthe course of his maturational process, and the symbolic functions — the alfa functions — remaininsufficient. This becomes a manifest risk condition at the time verbal thought is implied. Bion'sbeta elements of thought take place in this case, the latter having more to do with evacuations orwith primitive imitation than with the individual's creative capacities which set in through the



incorporated experiences. A severe failure in mental functioning takes place then, and thinkingrests on facts rather than on ideas. This developmental failure, or gap, — catastrophe, in Bion'ssense, or non-integration, in Winnicott's sense ( 12 ) — are the basis of that which not unfrequently is met with in minor forms even in the course of«normal» maturational processes, which interferes with the capacity of developing an authenticexpression of the original self, such as a transitional object, which is the protoype of self-creation,with all instinctual elements included. This lack of «primary» symbolization of the self is indicativeof an early break between the biological roots of instincts and psychic functioning.

The clinical vignettes I have reported seem appropriate to me to illustrate Bion's contribution toclinical psychoanalysis, and give me the opportunity of expressing my debt of gratitude to twogenial map-makers of the human mind, such as Bion and Winnicott.

Footnotes Meeting in honor of W.R. Bion. Rome, March 27th-28th, 1981. Panel C: «Bion in the

psychoanalytic practice».

Human Development Research Unit., University of Rome.

Shortly after our «meeting» on Bion, Lyth died. I like to use this occasion to remember him withgratitude.

As it may be known, the Festschrifs were abandoned by Aronson Publ. They have appeared inthe Caesura Press Publ. edited by J. Grotstein, with the title: «Do I dare to disturb the Universe? Amemorial to Wilfred R. Bion».

Discussions with Parthenope Bion, whom I thank here, have further helped me in clarifying theseconcepts.

This publication is protected by US and international copyright lawsand its content may not becopied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or downloadcapabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This content is intended solely for the use ofthe individual user., 1981; v.27 (3-4), p610 (12pp.)RPSA.027.0610A

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Bion «Catastrophic Change» and Winnicott's «Breakdown»