Alterity between epiphany and intuition

Abstract: Questioning the processes and phenomena associated with intuition has ancient roots. The earliest references associate intuition with a special kind of attention that allows for direct and immediate perception of certain elements of reality that are not evident to everyone. In psychoanalysis, W.R. Bion, one of the frequent users of this term, employs intuition in a complex form, best defined by his own words: “If you hear me using it often, I hope you’ll get a rough idea of what I mean. It will highlight a pattern where it would seem appropriate to say: Aha, that’s what intuition means!” (Bion 1976, 42). However, the phenomena and processes present in what we might call intuition can also be found in other authors, even if they do not use this term. An extremely interesting perspective, when we attempt to explore intuition in psychoanalysis, is the one proposed by Piera Aulagnier, who introduces the notion of the pictogram to capture the earliest forms of organizing complex contents in the primary register and how they change to become interpretations. But how is intuition applied as a psychoanalytic technique in the analysis of mystical phenomena, where the term used is epiphany?