Bi-logic and symmetric-logic analysis of the unconscious

1. Introduction

Version followed: Ignacio Matte Blanco's bi-logic as set out in The Unconscious as Infinite Sets (1975) and Thinking, Feeling and Being (1988), applied clinically after Rayner (1995; Rayner & Tuckett's introduction to the 1988 book), the Chilean group's "bi-logic of interpretation" (Casaula, Coloma, Colzani & Jordán 1994), and the Rome line of Bria & Lombardi (2008) and Lombardi (2009, 2016).

Bi-logic is mainly a theory of mind, not a manualised therapy. It has no manual, no protocol, no fixed phases, no session counts and no fidelity measure. Clinicians use it inside psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a way of listening and of building interpretations. Everything below that turns it into a procedure is marked [synthesis]. [source: Matte Blanco 1975, 1988 tables of contents; IPA Encyclopedic Dictionary entry; Lombardi 2016 review]

Who and where. Matte Blanco (1908–1995) qualified in Chile, trained in London (Maudsley; British Psychoanalytical Society member 1938), co-founded the Chilean psychoanalytic society after 1943, and worked in Rome from 1966. [source: Wikipedia biography]
Core idea. Unconscious functioning follows two principles. Generalisation: an individual is treated as a member of a class, and that class as a subclass of a wider class. Symmetry: a relation is treated as identical to its converse. Together they make up the "symmetrical mode of being". Conscious thought is asymmetrical: it divides, orders and sequences. Actual thinking always mixes the two, which is what "bi-logic" means. [source: Matte Blanco 1975, p. 38, cited in Goldreich 2025; Bornhauser & Pineda 2016]
Emotion. Emotion is the lived form of symmetry. "the greater the degree of symmetry, the greater the magnitude of the affects" (1975, p. 174). [source: Goldreich 2025]
How change happens. Through the translating or unfolding function (Italian dispiegamento). Symmetrical, infinite, undivided experience is unfolded into asymmetrical, time-ordered thought that a person can bear and use, without losing its emotional truth. Words are "the asymmetrical tools of the translating-unfolding function" (Matte Blanco, cited in Murtagh 2014). The Chilean group summarises the clinical move as taking the patient "from symmetry to asymmetry through symmetry" and attributes the phrase to Matte Blanco (Casaula et al. 1994). The Rome line adds a precondition for deep, psychotic or bodily levels: reverie and holding come first, and the work then concentrates on the body and on time. [source: Routledge TOC of 1975 book ("The Translating or Unfolding Function"); Casaula et al. 1994; IPA Dictionary; Lombardi 2016 review] [uncertain: dispiegamento is my rendering of the Italian term. The Italian text is not drawn on.]

2. Framework

The primary sources contain no phases. Matte Blanco offers a map of depth, not of treatment stages: five strata, ordered by the proportion of symmetry. The book also includes a short note on therapy (Thinking, Feeling and Being, German edition p. 84). That note is not drawn on. [source: Wikipedia; Psychosozial-Verlag TOC] [uncertain]

Format and dose. Use the analytic frame you already work in (couch or chair, one to five sessions a week, open-ended). Lombardi reports high-frequency analysis for an adolescent in acute psychotic crisis. None of the sources gives session counts. [source: Lombardi 2016 review] [uncertain: dose not specified]

The depth map: five strata (descriptions from secondary summaries; the "Clinical signs" column is [synthesis])

Stratum	Logic (source)	Clinical signs [synthesis]
1	Mostly asymmetrical, everyday conscious thinking	Clear sequence, bounded feelings, "this person, this time"
2	Significant symmetrisation, as in being in love	Idealisation, "she is everything", intense but organised affect
3	Classes form; parts are treated as the whole	One feature stands for the whole person ("a man who raises his voice = a dangerous man")
4	Wider symmetrised classes, contradiction recedes	Global "always / never / everyone", opposite feelings held without strain
5	Near-total symmetry; asymmetry breaks down	Self–other and inside–outside confusion, delusional certainty, timelessness

[source: Wikipedia summary of Matte Blanco 1975; IPA Dictionary (deepest stratum as an "indivisible symmetric mode of being")]

Working sequence for one theme or episode [synthesis, built from the sources cited in each step]

Orientation. Listen for generalisation and symmetry and estimate the stratum. Goal: know how much asymmetry the patient can use right now.
Containment (strata 4–5, or symmetric frenzy). Goal: lower the intensity through reverie and holding, attention to the body, and a stable frame. Put systematic interpretation on hold. [source: IPA Dictionary on Lombardi; Lombardi 2016 review]
Unfolding or translation. Goal: turn the symmetrical statement into an asymmetrical one (who, when, which part, which feeling) while staying inside the emotion. [source: Matte Blanco 1975; Casaula et al. 1994]
Consolidation. Goal: make the new asymmetries last, for example time, separateness, the body as one's own, and coexistence expressed as "and" rather than "or". [source: Lombardi 2016 review; Matte Blanco 1988 introduction p. 20]

When to move between steps [synthesis]

Step 2 to step 3: the patient can take in a remark about their state without it raising their arousal. In the dictionary's words, interpretation is then felt as "emotionally meaningful and not infinitely dangerous". [source: IPA Dictionary]
Step 3 to step 4: the patient starts making distinctions without your help ("it felt like my father, but you aren't him"), can place events in time, and can hold two feelings about one person.
Moving backwards: expect it under stress, separations and breaks. Matte Blanco treats movement across strata as normal and the blurring of strata as the pathology. [source: Wikipedia]

3. Guiding principles

Principle of generalisation. Listen for the class, not the individual: "which set has this person been put in?" [source: Matte Blanco 1975 p. 38]
Principle of symmetry. When roles, directions or sequences collapse ("I hurt her" also meaning "she hurts me"), name both directions. [source: Matte Blanco 1975 p. 38]
Consequences of symmetry. Timelessness, no contradiction, part equal to whole, and psychical reality treated as external reality: read these as logic at work, not as error. [source: Goldreich 2025 citing 1975 pp. 39, 43]
Bi-logic is universal. Every statement mixes the two logics. Ask "how much symmetry?", not "is this conscious or unconscious?" [source: Wikipedia; Bornhauser & Pineda 2016]
Symmetrical being cannot be observed directly. It shows only through asymmetrical traces, so you work with derivatives, not with "the unconscious itself". [source: Matte Blanco 1998 ed., cited in Murtagh 2014]
Emotion signals symmetry. The more intense the affect, the deeper the stratum. Pace the work by intensity. [source: 1975 p. 174]
Translating or unfolding function. The analyst's job is to unfold, not to replace. Keep the emotional truth and add structure. [source: 1975 TOC; Murtagh 2014]
From symmetry to asymmetry through symmetry. Join the emotional experience before you separate it out. [source: Casaula et al. 1994]
Asymmetry can be felt as aggression. Separating and distinguishing can feel like an attack, so soften how you deliver it. [source: Casaula et al. 1994]
Fundamental antinomy. The indivisible and the dividing modes cannot be reconciled once and for all. Aim for a livable coexistence, not for the victory of logic. [source: Matte Blanco 1988 title and TOC]
"And", not "or". Contradictory elements coexist in the unconscious. Interpretations should keep the "and" ("you love and hate her"). [source: Rayner & Tuckett / Matte Blanco 1988, German ed. p. 20]
Reverie and holding before interpretation at deep levels. Contain first. Interpretation needs some capacity for asymmetry. [source: IPA Dictionary on Lombardi]
The body is an object of working-through. Do not assume a body–mind link. Help the patient establish it. [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Time is an organiser. Session limits, breaks and sequence are therapeutic material, not just logistics. [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Binocular vision. Hold both logics at once and do not collapse the ambiguity into a premature logical explanation. [source: Lombardi 2016 review (reviewer's phrase)]
The analyst's emotion is symmetrical cognition. Your own sense of "madness" or merger is information. Neutrality means using emotion consciously, not abstaining from it. [source: Casaula et al. 1994]
Aim modestly. The aim is to understand patients better, to come "nearer to the inner self" (1975, p. 385), not to formalise them. [source: Goldreich 2025]

4. Intervention inventory

This section covers the techniques Matte Blanco and his clinical interpreters actually describe. Matte Blanco himself gives concepts and clinical illustrations, not step-by-step techniques, so every "Steps" list below is [synthesis] unless it is tagged otherwise. Example lines are my own wording.

4.1 Listening for the class (detecting generalisation)

Purpose and when to use: find the implicit set into which a person, event or part of the self has been placed. Use it all the time, and especially when a reaction is out of proportion to its object or when different people are felt as "the same". Rayner calls this unconscious attention to "propositional functions or abstract attributes" predicate thinking. [source: Matte Blanco 1975 p. 38; Rayner 1995 p. 50, cited in Murtagh 2014]
Steps:
1. Note disproportion: an affect bigger than the event can explain.
2. Collect the members: who or what else has drawn the same reaction?
3. Put the shared property into words as "x is someone who ___".
4. Gauge how wide the class is. "Older men who criticise" is narrow. "Anyone who can leave" is wide, and a wider class means a deeper stratum.
5. Treat the class as a hypothesis. Look for one more member before you voice it.
Example language (illustrative): "Your manager, your father, and today me. We seem to have landed in one group: people who decide about you without asking."
Watch for: the patient adding members on their own (the class is live), then starting to notice differences between members (unfolding has begun). Flat denial or rising alarm means you named a class that is too wide, too early.

4.2 Detecting symmetrised relations (reversal of converse relations)

Purpose and when to use: spot moments where a relation and its converse are treated as identical: attacker and attacked, giver and receiver, parent and child, container and contained. Matte Blanco's example is that if John is Peter's father, then Peter is John's father. Klein's link between "I am angry" and "someone is angry with me" is offered as a clinical bridge. Use it with persecutory material, projective identification and role confusion. [source: Matte Blanco 1975 p. 38, cited in Goldreich 2025; Wikipedia; Matte Blanco 1988, Part Three on projective and introjective processes (TOC only)]
Steps:
1. Map who does what to whom in the narrative.
2. Mark the points where direction flips within one emotional episode.
3. Write both directions down for yourself ("I attack her" and "she attacks me").
4. Ask which direction the patient cannot bear to own.
5. Interpret both directions joined by "and", starting with the more bearable one.
Example language (illustrative): "When you're furious with her, it seems to become, almost at once, her being furious with you. Both are there, and it's hard to tell which came first."
Watch for: recognition and relief. If confusion grows, the stratum is deeper than you thought: switch to containment (4.9).

4.3 Estimating the depth of symmetrisation (stratum assessment)

Purpose and when to use: decide how much asymmetry the patient can use right now. Do it continuously, and always before a substantial interpretation. [source: the five strata (Matte Blanco 1975, via Wikipedia); the affect–symmetry rule (1975 p. 174)]
Steps:
1. Rate the intensity of affect, since greater intensity means more symmetry.
2. Gauge how wide the active classes are (see 4.1).
3. Check tolerance of contradiction: can the patient say "both"?
4. Check orientation in time and place ("then" versus "now", "here" versus "there").
5. Check how distinct self and other are.
6. At strata 1–3, use unfolding (4.5) and transference work (4.7). At strata 4–5, use containment, body and time work first (4.9–4.13).
Example language (illustrative, a note to yourself): "Classes very wide, time collapsed, she says she is her mother: stratum 4–5. Hold, don't interpret."
Watch for: depth shifts within a single session. Re-estimate after breaks, separations and sexual or aggressive material.

4.4 Reading emotion as an infinite set (omnipotence, omniscience, idealisation)

Purpose and when to use: take the "infinite" qualities of emotion as accurate reports of symmetrical experience rather than exaggerations: total, eternal, everything, nothing. Matte Blanco devotes chapters to "Emotion and the Infinite Sets" and to "Omnipotence, Omniscience and Idealisation". Use it with idealisation, despair, rage and love. [source: Routledge TOC of 1975 book; 1975 pp. 174–175, cited in Goldreich 2025] [uncertain: the terms "maximisation" and "irradiation" of emotion, often attributed to Matte Blanco, were not in the sources]
Steps:
1. Listen for markers of infinity: always, never, everyone, totally, forever, the whole world.
2. Acknowledge the infinite quality first, without correcting it.
3. Then offer one finite element: one occasion, one person, one part.
4. Let the patient find the contrast between the infinite feeling and the finite event. Do not argue for it.
Example language (illustrative): "Right now it feels endless and total, as if this is all there is. Can we look at the piece of it that hit you on Tuesday evening?"
Watch for: "But it IS forever" means you introduced asymmetry too fast. Go back to acknowledging. Working signs: the patient's own time markers ("since Tuesday") and partial qualifiers ("mostly").

4.5 Translating or unfolding interpretation (dispiegamento)

Purpose and when to use: this is the central technique. Translate a symmetrical statement, which is undivided, timeless, part-equals-whole and contradiction-free, into asymmetrical terms the patient can think with, keeping its emotional truth. Words are "the asymmetrical tools of the translating-unfolding function". The Chilean group shows the analyst first developing an unspoken understanding internally as a chain of propositions, then choosing "to unfold this understanding into an interpretation" (their phrase, translated from Portuguese). Use it at strata 1–3, or at 4 once the patient is contained. [source: Matte Blanco 1975 chapter "The Translating or Unfolding Function"; Murtagh 2014 citing Matte Blanco p. 115; Casaula et al. 1994, "Caso Joan"]
Steps:
1. Let the understanding arrive as an emotion in you first.
2. Unfold it privately into a chain of propositions, for example: analyst leaving = mother leaving = everyone leaves = abandoned forever.
3. Pick the one symmetrical link that carries the most emotion.
4. Choose one dimension to unfold. Who separates the members of the class. When brings back time and sequence. Where separates inside from outside and psychical reality from external reality. Which part separates the part from the whole. Which direction separates a relation from its converse.
5. Phrase it so the feeling stays whole and only one asymmetry is added. Use "and", not "or".
6. Unfold further dimensions in later sessions rather than all at once.
Example language (illustrative): "When I said I'd be away next week, it was as if everyone who has ever gone was going, and for good. I am going, and it is for one week, and you'll be here on the Monday I'm back."
Watch for: intellectual agreement with no change in affect, which means you translated the logic and lost the emotion. Feeling flat or "emptied" means the translation was too complete. Working signs: the patient spontaneously distinguishes members or times, or the affect becomes bounded rather than gone.

4.6 "From symmetry to asymmetry through symmetry" (joining before separating)

Purpose and when to use: separating things out can be felt as aggression, so first share the symmetrical experience, then add the asymmetry. The Chilean group treats the analyst's emotion as a form of symmetrical cognition, including a felt "madness within me" shared with the patient. They treat neutrality as the conscious use of emotion, not abstinence. They also hold that a non-verbal act inside the frame can work as an interpretation. Use it when interpretations bounce off or feel to the patient like attacks. [source: Casaula et al. 1994, Discussion; phrase attributed to Matte Blanco]
Steps:
1. Allow yourself a partial identification and notice what it feels like to be "in it" with the patient.
2. Put the shared experience into words first (the symmetry).
3. Only then introduce the distinction (the asymmetry).
4. Soften the delivery of the asymmetry through tone, timing and a non-verbal sign of staying with them.
5. Check the frame: any non-verbal act must keep within setting and neutrality.
Example language (illustrative): "I can feel how it pulls me in too, as if there were no way out for either of us. And I notice we are two people in this room, and one of us can think about it a little from the outside."
Watch for: the patient feeling accompanied, not dropped. A risk is staying in the shared symmetry too long, so that it turns into collusion.

4.7 Interpreting transference as generalisation or symmetrisation

Purpose and when to use: the transference is read as the analyst being placed in a class (generalisation) and as displacement. The standard illustration is a boss experienced as a dangerous father, unconsciously the same class and so identical. Lombardi treats symmetrical transference as generative, not only as repetition, and postpones transference interpretation with psychotic patients. [source: IPA Dictionary; Goldreich 2025 (generalisation underlies transference); Lombardi 2016 review]
Steps:
1. Identify the class the analyst currently belongs to (see 4.1).
2. Assess the stratum (4.3). In psychotic or stratum 4–5 states, do not interpret the transference yet.
3. At workable depth, name the class membership and one way in which the analyst is a different member.
4. Treat the symmetrical transference as material in which something new is forming, not only as an error to correct.
Example language (illustrative): "I seem to have become one of the people who are bound to let you down, and at the same time I'm someone you've kept coming back to for a year."
Watch for: a stronger transference after a premature interpretation, especially in psychosis. Working signs: the patient comments on how the analyst differs from the class.

4.8 Reading bi-logical structures (simassi, alassi, tridim, multidim)

Purpose and when to use: make sense of condensed, contradictory or spatially impossible material in dreams, symptoms and bodily fantasies. Matte Blanco names several bi-logical structures, including Simassi, Tridim, "multidim" spatio-temporal structures and symmetrised vector structures. His introduction criticises writing "or" where "and" is meant, because the unconscious holds incompatibles together. [source: Matte Blanco 1988, German ed. TOC pp. 92, 265, 340; Rayner & Tuckett intro p. 20] [uncertain: the definitions below come from my knowledge of the 1975 book and were not verified. Simassi = simultaneous asymmetrical–symmetrical; Alassi = alternating asymmetrical–symmetrical; Tridim = a many-dimensional emotional reality squeezed into three-dimensional representation, which yields condensation and impossible spaces]
Steps:
1. Two logics at once in a single image or statement ("she is my mother and she is me"): read it as simassi and interpret it as both at once.
2. Oscillation between a sober statement and a symmetrised one: read it as alassi and name the switching, not the content.
3. Figures that merge or occupy impossible spaces: read it as tridim and unpack the condensed figure into its components, one at a time.
4. Keep "and" in your phrasing.
Example language (illustrative): "In the dream the house was your mother's and also your own body, both at once. That doesn't have to be sorted into one or the other yet."
Watch for: the patient trying to resolve the contradiction prematurely, often out of anxiety. Working signs: the patient can stay with "both" with curiosity instead of panic.

4.9 Recognising and containing symmetric frenzy

Purpose and when to use: "frenzy" names states where symmetrisation spirals and containment fails, leaving the subject flooded or paralysed. Matte Blanco discusses symmetric, bi-logical and bi-modal frenzy, illustrated with a dream analysis. Lombardi links this to Bion's catastrophic change and describes erotic frenzy built on a symmetry of the prey and predator roles. The clinical aim is to move the patient away from the centrality of frenzies toward calmer relationships. At these depths, reverie and holding may need to come before systematic interpretation. Use it with escalating erotic or aggressive states, panic, acute psychotic turbulence, and states where the patient is both pursuer and pursued. [source: Matte Blanco 1988, German ed. Part Four TOC p. 325; Lombardi 2009 IJP; IPA Dictionary; Lombardi 2016 review]
Steps:
1. Recognise the signs: escalation, roles flipping quickly (victim and attacker), loss of the sense of time, and interpretations taken as fuel.
2. Stop interpreting content.
3. Lower your own pace, your volume and the number of words.
4. Offer reverie-based, short, concrete statements anchored in the here and now (the room, the time, the body).
5. Keep the frame steady: same time, same ending, no extra contact unless risk requires it.
6. Once the patient has settled, unfold the episode afterwards (4.5).
Example language (illustrative): "Let's slow right down. You're here, it's ten past four, we have half an hour. We don't need to understand it yet."
Watch for: your own pull into the frenzy, whether as rescuer, persecutor or seducer. Working signs: breathing and speech slow down, the patient can again tell "then" from "now", and interpretation later lands without fresh escalation.

4.10 Unfolding the unconscious body (body–mind work)

Purpose and when to use: Lombardi holds that "the unconscious and the infinite find their roots in the primitive experience of the body". He takes the body as a specific object of mental working-through and does not presume a body–mind link. Drawing on Ferrari, development runs from the concrete body toward articulated emotion. Use it in psychosis, with adolescents, in somatising and dissociated states, and wherever verbal interpretation fails because the material is pre-symbolic. [source: IPA Dictionary; Lombardi 2009 JAPA; Lombardi 2016 ch. 3–5 and review]
Steps:
1. Notice references to sensation such as hard or soft, hot or cold, heavy, empty, numb. Notice also when the body is missing from the material altogether.
2. Invite description of the sensation as it is now. Do not interpret it.
3. Help locate and own it: whose sensation, where in the body, since when.
4. Link sensation to emotion only when the patient can bear the step from body to feeling.
5. Track change over sessions. In one reported case, the material moved from the hardness of a piece of ice toward an inner warmth.
Example language (illustrative): "Before we think about what it means, what is it like in your body right now? Where is it?"
Watch for: denial of the body ("I don't feel anything there") as the central defence, not as a lack of insight. Working signs: the patient spontaneously reports sensations, and bodily states become linked to feelings and to particular times.

4.11 Using the analyst's own bodily sensations as data

Purpose and when to use: at levels too deep for words, the patient's state may reach the analyst first as sensation. In the review of Lombardi's book, the analyst's nausea is used as information about the patient's hatred. Use it with silent, deadened or hate-filled patients. [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Steps:
1. Register the sensation, such as nausea, heaviness, sleepiness or chill.
2. Treat it as a hypothesis about the patient's unformulated state, not as a verdict.
3. Process it silently first, through reverie.
4. Use it to shape timing and tone. Disclose it only rarely and in modulated form.
Example language (illustrative, rarely voiced): "Something in here feels very hard to stomach today, and I wonder whether that's something you've had to carry alone."
Watch for: confusing your own state with the patient's. Check against the session material and against your own day before you use it.

4.12 Working with time (session limits, breaks and time perception)

Purpose and when to use: time is an asymmetrical organiser that the symmetrical mode dissolves. Lombardi works on the spatio-temporal organisation of the mind, not only on object relations. For example, he works through adolescent, borderline and psychotic patients' intolerance of session endings, which in turn changes affect and object relations. One reported delusion about the "theft of time" was understood through recognition of time and the working-through of death anxieties. Use it when patients cannot tolerate endings or breaks, or show timeless repetition, or when lateness and missed sessions are frequent. [source: Lombardi 2016 ch. 6, 7, 9 and review]
Steps:
1. Keep session times exact and predictable, since the frame is the asymmetry.
2. Explore the patient's experience of endings, starts and breaks as primary material.
3. Name time markers explicitly: "this session", "next week", "since you were twelve".
4. Link timeless states ("it's always like this") to concrete moments.
5. Where death anxiety appears behind timelessness, approach it gradually.
Example language (illustrative): "When the session ends, it seems to feel like being cut off for good. It ends at five, and it starts again on Thursday at four."
Watch for: the patient beginning to anticipate endings and refer to sequence. Escalating protest at endings can mean the work is touching the core issue, so don't give up the limit.

4.13 Musical reverie

Purpose and when to use: the analyst's reverie, whether musical, visual, olfactory, kinaesthetic or auditory, supports spatio-temporal integration during intense exchanges. In the cases reported, one patient's panic attacks decreased and another's rigid obsessional defences loosened. Use it in intense or chaotic sessions and with rigid, affectless patients. [source: Lombardi 2008 "Time, Music and Reverie" (JAPA); Lombardi 2016 ch. 7 and review] [uncertain: the review gives only an outline of the technique; the paper itself is not drawn on]
Steps:
1. Let your own reverie run, including tunes, rhythms and images, without forcing it.
2. Treat its tempo and mood as a reading of the session's emotional rhythm.
3. Use it to regulate your own pace and to shape what you say.
4. Occasionally offer an image or a rhythm in words, for example a description of the session's "tempo".
Example language (illustrative): "Today it feels like something played very fast and very loud, with no pauses. Maybe we can find a slower beat."
Watch for: reverie that serves the analyst's escape rather than the patient. Working signs: the session rhythm settles and the patient's affect emerges in a more modulated form.

4.14 Addressing intense affect at a general level, not in the transference

Purpose and when to use: with one patient, Lombardi found it more productive to speak about hatred in general than to address it directly to the analyst. This keeps unbearable symmetry ("I hate you" = "you hate me" = annihilation) at a workable distance. Use it with hatred, murderous or suicidal feelings, and paranoid transference. [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Steps:
1. Notice the affect is too hot to be located between the two of you.
2. Speak of it as a human phenomenon or in the third person.
3. Move it closer, toward the patient's own life and then the relationship, only as tolerance grows.
Example language (illustrative): "Hatred can feel so total that it seems to wipe out everything, including the person who feels it."
Watch for: generalising as a way of avoiding the issue, on your side or the patient's. Working signs: the patient begins to own the affect ("I think I hate...").

4.15 Working with stubborn silences as "playing dead"

Purpose and when to use: Lombardi devotes a chapter to stubborn silences understood as "playing dead". The reported case involved deadly silence, hatred, suicidal urges and mental "deadness". An atemporal repetition of past emotional discharge gave way to engagement with present reality. Use it with long, deadened silences. [source: Lombardi 2016 ch. 8 and review] [uncertain: technique details are not drawn on. The steps are synthesis consistent with 4.9–4.12]
Steps:
1. Tolerate the silence without filling it compulsively.
2. Attend to your own bodily and reverie responses (4.11, 4.13).
3. Offer occasional present-tense, here-and-now observations that bring in time and aliveness.
4. If suicidal urges are present, carry out a standard structured suicide risk assessment in parallel.
Example language (illustrative): "It's very still in here. It's Monday, twenty to six, and I'm here with you in it."
Watch for: silence deepening into actual withdrawal or risk. Working signs: small signs of life such as movement, a remark, or a reference to today.

4.16 Working with delusional material as stratum-5 symmetry

Purpose and when to use: Matte Blanco re-read Freud's case of paranoia through bi-logic and infinitisation, especially the confusion of inside with outside and of psychical with physical reality. Lombardi works with delusions by identifying the asymmetry they abolish, for example time in the "grey men / theft of time" case. Use it with psychotic patients, alongside psychiatric care. [source: IPA Dictionary; Lombardi 2016 ch. 9 and review]
Steps:
1. Do not argue with the delusion's content.
2. Ask which basic asymmetry it erases: time, the body, inside versus outside, self versus other, or life versus death.
3. Work on that asymmetry indirectly through frame, body and time (4.10–4.12).
4. Approach the underlying anxiety, such as death or separation, gradually.
Example language (illustrative): "It sounds as if time itself is being taken from you. Let's notice the time we do have here today."
Watch for: decompensation. Coordinate with psychiatric management, and use standard risk assessment.

4.17 Recognising configurations of the fundamental antinomy

Purpose and when to use: Thinking, Feeling and Being presents clinical examples of the antinomy between the indivisible mode and the dividing mode, under headings that include "denial and expulsion", "denial and delegation" and "plundering". It also treats levels of depth in projective and introjective processes: the region of events, the basic matrix, and intermediate stages. [source: Matte Blanco 1988, German ed. TOC pp. 221–300] [uncertain: chapter text is not drawn on. I give the headings only so that you can look them up; I do not reconstruct their content]
Steps: none are given in the sources. Read Part Ten of the 1988 book before using these as categories.
Example language: none (not available).
Watch for: the temptation to apply the labels without the source text.

5. Handling problems

The primary sources give little direct guidance on difficulties. Responses marked [synthesis] are my own and are derived from the principles above.

Stuck client, "everything is the same, always". The material sits at a wide-class, timeless stratum. Stop interpreting the class as a whole and unfold one member and one time (4.4, 4.5). Introduce time through the frame (4.12). [synthesis, from Matte Blanco 1975; Lombardi 2016]
Intellectualised "stuckness". The patient discusses symmetry and classes fluently and nothing changes, because the asymmetry is being used against the emotion. Go back to "through symmetry": stay with the feeling before you separate it out (4.6). Never teach bi-logic to the patient. [synthesis; Casaula et al. 1994]
Resistance as defence against asymmetry. Distinguishing can be felt as aggression or as separation. When interpretations are repeatedly refused, soften delivery, join first (4.6), and consider a non-verbal containing act within the frame. [source: Casaula et al. 1994] [synthesis for the application]
Overwhelm and symmetric frenzy. Suspend interpretation and use reverie, holding, body and time anchoring (4.9–4.13). Interpret afterwards. [source: IPA Dictionary; Lombardi 2009, 2016]
Non-adherence (missed sessions, lateness, wanting to stop at breaks). Treat it as time material: an attack on, or flight from, the asymmetry of endings and sequences (4.12). Hold the limit steady and explore it. [source: Lombardi 2016 review on intolerance of session limits] [synthesis for missed sessions]
Rupture after an interpretation. The patient may have heard the asymmetry as rejection ("you said 'one week' so you don't care"). Acknowledge the emotional truth of the experience, own the pace, and re-offer the distinction later, more softly. [synthesis; Casaula et al. 1994]
Transference intensifies after transference interpretation (especially in psychosis). Stop interpreting the transference. Work on body, time and general-level statements instead (4.10, 4.12, 4.14). [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Erotic or idealising transference becoming frenzied. Recognise the prey–predator symmetry. Stay calm and steady, never reciprocate, and restore the frame. [source: IPA Dictionary on erotic frenzy] [synthesis for frame steps]
The therapist symmetrises (modality-specific). You feel merged, certain, "just like my own mother", or swept into rescue or retaliation. Use it as symmetrical cognition, but reflect on it in supervision before you act on it. Re-establish your own asymmetries: time, role, and what is yours versus the patient's. [source: Casaula et al. 1994 on the analyst's emotion] [synthesis for supervision]
Over-translating (modality-specific). You unfold every symmetrical statement and the patient becomes flat, compliant or depleted. Unfold one dimension per intervention and leave some symmetry intact, since it also carries love, creativity and meaning. [synthesis; Goldreich 2025 on symmetry and boundless affect]
Using bi-logic as jargon (modality-specific). Labelling ("that's simassi") replaces listening. Keep the terms in your notes, and use ordinary language in the room. [synthesis]
Concrete or body-denying patients. Verbal interpretation will fail. Begin with sensation and the frame (4.10) and expect slow progress. [source: Lombardi 2016 review]
Suicidal urges, deadness, "playing dead". Carry out a standard structured suicide risk assessment and safety planning in parallel with the analytic work. Coordinate with psychiatric care where indicated. Do not rely on interpretation alone. [synthesis; Lombardi 2016 review reports suicidal urges in one case]
Acute psychosis. Bi-logic informs listening but does not replace psychiatric management. Avoid confronting delusions, and work on the erased asymmetries (4.16). [synthesis; Lombardi 2016]
Uncertainty about the theory's terms. Several key terms (Alassi, the strata details, the Italian dispiegamento, Bria's own technique) were not verified in primary text here. Check The Unconscious as Infinite Sets chs. on the translating function and levels of depth, and Rayner 1995, before teaching them. [uncertain]

Sources

Sources

Further reading (not drawn on in full)

Matte Blanco, I. (1975). The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: An Essay in Bi-Logic. London: Duckworth.
Matte Blanco, I. (1988). Thinking, Feeling, and Being: Clinical Reflections on the Fundamental Antinomy of Human Beings and World. London: Routledge (New Library of Psychoanalysis); introduction by E. Rayner & D. Tuckett.
Rayner, E. (1995). Unconscious Logic: An Introduction to Matte Blanco's Bi-Logic and Its Uses. London: Routledge.
Bria, P. & Lombardi, R. (2008). The logic of turmoil. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89, 709–726.
Lombardi, R. (2008). Time, music, and reverie. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 56. [uncertain: volume and pages not verified]
Lombardi, R. (2009). Symmetric frenzy and catastrophic change. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 90, 529–549.
Lombardi, R. (2009). Through the eye of the needle: The unfolding of the unconscious body. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 57, 61–94.
Lombardi, R. (2016). Formless Infinity: Clinical Explorations of Matte Blanco and Bion. London: Routledge.
Casaula, E., Coloma, J., Colzani, F. & Jordán, J. F. (1994). Bilógica da interpretação. Revista de Psicanálise SPPA, 1(3).

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