Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism
Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism

Author: Naomi Wynter-Vincent

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-08

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1000439879

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Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism introduces the work of the British psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion (1897–1979), and the immense potential of his ideas for thinking about literature, creative process, and creative writing. There is now renewed interest in Bion’s work following the publication of his Complete Works but the complexities of his theory and his distinctive style can be forbidding. Less well-known than Freud or Lacan, the work of Wilfred Bion nevertheless offers new insights for psychoanalytic literary criticism and creative writing. For newer readers of his work, this book offers an engaging introduction to several of Bion’s key ideas, including his theory of thinking (the ‘thought without a thinker’), the container/contained relationship, alpha-function; alpha-elements, beta-elements, and bizarre objects; K and -K; the Grid, O, and the caesura. It also offers a way in to Bion’s astonishing and challenging experimental work, A Memoir of the Future, and explores the impact of his devastating personal experiences as an officer during the First World War. Each chapter of Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism draws on one or more specific aspects of Bion’s theory in relation to creative texts by Sigmund Freud, Stevie Smith, B.S. Johnson, Mary Butts, Jean Rhys, Nicholas Royle, J.G. Ballard, and Wilfred Bion himself. The first full-length study to explore the potential of Bion’s ideas for literary criticism, Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism introduces his complex and extensive work for a new audience in an accessible and engaging way, and will be of great interest to scholars of creative writing, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis with Wilfred R. Bion
Psychoanalysis with Wilfred R. Bion

Author: François Lévy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 100049733X

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Psychoanalysis with Wilfred R. Bion is the product of François Lévy’s efforts over a period of twenty years to represent clearly the classical elements and the innovatory propositions of the thought and work of Bion, who offers both new and modified ways of practising and thinking about the psychoanalytic experience. Bion’s thought, methodical and intuitive, gave rise to profound modifications in the approach to the psychology of groups, clinical work with psychoses, and the conception of the genesis of thought. Some of his original notions – psychic growth, processes of thinking, transformations, alpha function, maternal reverie – constitute valuable tools for rethinking psychoanalytic practice. This book places Bion’s thought within a filiation that is faithful to those of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein. It shows the parallels that exist between Bion’s formalisations and those of Lacan. It also lays emphasis on the mechanisms of thought arising from the negative (André Green), from logic (Lewis Carroll), from causalist philosophy (David Hume), from literature (Milton, Blanchot) and from the physical sciences (Stephen Hawking). Finally, Lévy underlines the importance of placing individuals within the collective from which they have originated. Psychoanalysis with Wilfred R. Bion will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists looking to draw on the ideas of one of the most important and influential figures in the history of psychoanalysis.

The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion
The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion

Author: Joan Symington

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-31

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1134870914

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Winner of the 2013 Sigourney Award! Psychoanalysis seen through Bion's eyes is a radical departure from all conceptualizations which preceded him. In this major contribution to the series Makers of Modern Psychotherapy, Joan and Neville Symington concentrate on understanding Bion's concepts in relation to clinical practice, but their book is also accessible to the educated reader who wishes to understand the main contours of Bion's thinking. Rather than following the chronological development of Bion's ideas, each chapter looks in depth at an important theme in his thinking and describes how this contributes to his revolutionary model of the mind.

Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion
Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion

Author: Joseph Aguayo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1000858898

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Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion takes a fresh approach to this much revered analyst, focusing on the unique contributions to be found in his analytical and supervisorial work and developing of received Kleinian theory. Starting from his childhood in India and his schooldays, through his experience in the Great War and later life, this book considers the way in which Bion’s personal experience informed his later work as an analyst. Aguayo looks at how Bion’s loyalty to Kleinian theory, especially in his work on psychosis, and how the subsequent in-fighting rife within the psychoanalytic community impacted his approach. Aguayo also considers the epistemological work done by Bion in the early 1960s while President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, as well as his seminars from Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. The book concludes by proposing that the spate of recently published Clinical Seminars, fresh with new clinical examples from Bion’s analytic and supervisory work, now represent a potential for a ‘new wave’ of interest among analysts and scholars alike. Aguayo also engages the work of important contemporary specialists in Bion studies, such as: Ron Britton, Giuseppe Civitarese, James Grotstein, Robert Hinshelwood, Betty Joseph, John Steiner and Rudi Vermote. As Bion’s clinical work continues to inform contemporary psychoanalysts, this book will be essential reading to all analysts interested in Bion’s work and the legacy it holds in contemporary psychoanalysis.

Wilfred Bion
Wilfred Bion

Author: Wilfred R. Bion

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0429924062

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Wilfred Bion's unpublished lectures at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in April in 1967 represent a unique opportunity for students either new to or continuing in the study of the author's unique psychoanalytic vertex. Here one can both read - and hear - the author's clear exposition of his clinical and theoretical thinking to an audience of primarily Freudian trained American analysts, most of whom were new to his ideas. The first lecture sets out the author's ideas on 'memory and desire' in a paper that set the benchmark in the origins of contemporary Kleinian clinical technique. The author discusses the various factors that facilitate optimal listening receptivity in the analyst, for example how one differentiates the 'K' link vis-a-vis 'transformations in O.' In the second lecture, the author defined projective identification, container/contained and 'beta elements'- and how these ideas serve as an orienting template for the analyst's understanding of 'proto-mental' states of mind, either in psychotic, borderline or neurotic patients. He clarifies these ideas while engaging with the queries of renowned American analysts, such as Ralph Greenson.

Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works
Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works

Author: Gerard Bleandonu

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1635421306

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Wilfred Bion was one of the most original and influential thinkers in recent psychoanalysis. His ideas, which can be traced in direct line in the development of psychoanalytic theory from Freud to Melanie Klein, are difficult to grasp because his writing style was often enigmatic and ambiguous. This is the first full biography and the first comprehensive explication of his significant contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Dr. Bleandonu takes us through Bion's personal and intellectual explorations and gives clear accounts of his key concepts, including work groups and basic assumption groups, psychotic processes, catastrophic change, abandonment of memory and desire, the mystic, and ultimate truth. In addition, the grid is carefully laid out and explicated; the emergence of the idea of links, and attacks on them, as a core theme for the rest of Bion's working life is given proper attention; and Bion's attempt to creat an extensive psychoanalytic epistemology is discusses. Finally Bleandonu guides the reader through the fantasy writings in Memoir of the Future, the masterpiece that is Bion's autobiography, and his final writings, including the posthumous Cogitations. Significant reading for anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and the development of psychoanalytic thought, this volume will be valued by professionals and students alike.

A Beam of Intense Darkness
A Beam of Intense Darkness

Author: James Grotstein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0429910207

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The author surveys Bion's publications and elaborates on his key contributions in depth while also critiquing them. The scope of this work is to synopsize, synthesize, and extend Bion's works in a reader-friendly manner. The book presents his legacy - his most important ideas for psychoanalysis. These ideas need to be known by the mental health profession at large. This work highlights and defines the broader and deeper implications of his works.It presents his ideas faithfully and also uses his ideas as "launching pads" for the author's conjectures about where his ideas point.

Reading Bion’s Transformations
Reading Bion’s Transformations

Author: Luis Cláudio Figueiredo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-13

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1040111033

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Reading Bion's Transformations is an in-depth reading of Bion’s 1965 work, Transformations, and investigates the epistemological concept of "O" introduced by Bion. Throughout the book, Bion’s conceptual and unconventional text is discussed step-by-step, with a focus on the first three and last three chapters. The epistemological references are highlighted and analysed, allowing the reader insight into how to do a deconstructive psychoanalytic reading, acknowledging that Bion raised psychoanalytical thought and practice to new levels. The authors’ reading both de-focuses and re-focuses several theoretical statutes of O discussed by Bion in 1965. Reading Bion’s Transformations is an essential read for those approaching Bion’s work for the first time, as well as those seeking to better understand his theories and the metapsychological and epistemological impact of the concept of transformation within psychoanalysis.

Bion's Sources
Bion's Sources

Author: Nuno Torres

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1136772634

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There are an increasing number of publications concerned with the work of Wilfred Bion (1897-1979). Many have sought new ideas from his writing however, little attention has been paid to the intellectual context in which Bion wrote. Bion’s Sources traces where Bion’s new ideas came from, what job he required of them, how successfully he used his context and how that has fertilised psychoanalysis. Expert contributors provide chapters on areas of the intellectual context separate from or adjacent to clinical psychoanalysis in Britain which have clearly influenced the texts Bion left (those published in his life time, or subsequently). Chapters explore the influences deriving from Wilfred Trotter, Henri Bergson and process philosophy, Kurt Lewin and group dynamics, Immanuel Kant, R. B. Braithwaite and the philosophy of science, the mathematics of notation and transformation, as well as the work of psychoanalysts who have applied their theories to social science, psychosomatics, and literature and the humanities. By contextualising Bion in the wider culture of ideas, and removing him from the exclusive world of Psychoanalysis, Bion’s Sources aims to moderate his ‘genius’ by showing how it was shaped by very wide influences. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, clinicians and those interested in the history of psychoanalytic ideas.

A Beam of Intense Darkness
A Beam of Intense Darkness

Author: James S. Grotstein

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-06

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1003804284

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Written by pioneering analyst and creative thinker, James Grotstein, A Beam of Intense Darkness offers a thorough overview and illuminating insight into the often-complex work of W. R. Bion. This psychoanalytic classic sees Grotstein introduce over 30 key Bionian theories, comprehensively explaining them to the reader before offering his own insight and commentary. Grotstein first encountered Bion as his analysand and, later, as his friend. This book offers a level of insight only possible through such a close relationship, and offers a dialogue between Bion and Grotstein as they delve into the inner workings of the human psyche. Throughout, Grotstein offers his own original thoughts on topics such as projective transidentification, transcendent position and the truth drive. With a new introduction from Nicola Abel-Hirsch, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in Bion’s work and legacy.