Wilfred R. Bion’s Psychoanalysis Between Epistemology and Mysticism: The Dark Night, Transformation in O, and Mental Growth

Abstract This article examines Wilfred R. Bion’s psychoanalysis in its unique interplay between epistemology and mysticism. It then explores the potential of Bion’s concept of O for an alternative understanding of religion within psychoanalysis and beyond. Rather than seeing religion as an archaic relic of human history, Bion makes it possible to understand the encounters with the numinous (the experience of the presence of the godhead, absolute truth or ultimate reality) described in religion as processes of transformation of an open reality. The attitude that Bion requires in order to make these transformations possible is explained on the basis of his own references to the mysticism of John of the Cross, in particular to the Dark Night described by him.