When two or more characters
or personalities meet, an ‘emotional storm’ is created.
If they make sufficient
contact to be aware of each other or even to be unaware of
each other, an emotional state
is produced by the conjunction of these individuals, these
personalities, and the resulting disturbance is hardly
likely to be something which could be regarded as
necessarily an improvement on the state of affairs had they
never met at all.
But since they have met, and
since this emotional storm has occurred, then the parties
to this storm may decide to make the best of a bad job.
The result of remaining
silent, or the result of making a remark, or even saying
“Good morning” or “Good evening”,
again sets up what appears to be an emotional storm. What
that emotional storm is one does not immediately know; but
the problem is how to make the best of it.
This means a capacity to
turn the circumstance to good account.
Adapted
from Wilfred Bion 1979
