An Introduction to W.R. Bion's 'A Memoir of the Future'

An Introduction to W.R. Bion's 'A Memoir of the Future'

Author: P.C. Sandler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 0429910746

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This book intensifies the stuff of W. R. Bion's contributions by offering us an evocative, enticing work which constantly forces the reader to face up to a most important issue: the attempt to read Bion demands patience and tolerance, as if it were an exercise.


A Memoir of the Future

A Memoir of the Future

Author: Wilfred R. Bion

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 0429910355

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A Memoir of the Future, Bion's unorthodox attempt to cast psychoanalytic speculation in fictional form, is composed of three semi-autobiographical novels: The Dream (1975), The Past Presented (1977), and The Dawn of Oblivion (1979). Presented here for the first time in one volume, they appear together with the Key to A Memoir of the Future, a glossary of terms and concepts compiled by Wilfred and Francesca Bion.


Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Author: Giuseppe Civitarese

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-06

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1351709283

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This book examines the importance and continued relevance of A Memoir of the Future in understanding and applying Bion’s work to contemporary psychoanalysis. Bion continued to innovate throughout his life, but the Memoir has been largely overlooked. Focusing on A Memoir of the Future is not only of deep interest in terms of the author’s biography, or even only in function of a better understanding of his theoretical concepts, but can also be considered, for all intents and purposes, the final chapter of an ingenious creative enterprise While by some it was thought as the evidence of Bion’s presumed senility, this book challenges that perspective, arguing that it represents the last challenge he issued to the psychoanalytic Establishment. In each chapter, the authors explore this notion that A Memoir forms an essential part of Bion’s theory, and that in it he establishes a new ‘aesthetic’ psychoanalytic paradigm. With an international list of distinguished authors, this is a key book for any analysts interested in a comprehensive understanding of Bion’s work.


Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

Author: James S. Grotstein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 1011

ISBN-13: 0429912854

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All the contributors to this compilation knew Bion personally and were influenced by his work. They include: Herbert Rosenfeld, Frances Tustin, Andre Green, Donald Meltzer and Hanna Segal.Wilfred R. Bion has taken his place as one of the foremost psychoanalysts of our time, yet it is only within recent years that the impact of his achievements are being felt. His death has stilled his pen and voice but demands a restatement of his view by those who have been most influenced by him. Bion's greatness lay, not only in the odd vertices of his incredible observations, but in the resources of his epistemological vastness, his respect for truth obtained in the disciplined absence of memory and desire, and his paying such scrupulous attention to and interpreting of recombinant constructions he achieved with mental elements their functions, and their transformations. His was the Language of Achievement, which is the tongue begotten by patience. Of note is his introduction of Plato's theory of forms and Kant's categories into psychoanalytic metapsychology, to say nothing of his mathematical, group and religious theories.


W.R. Bion as Clinician

W.R. Bion as Clinician

Author: R. D. Hinshelwood

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-29

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1000820327

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Underpinned by rigorous close readings of his oeuvre, this book provides a comprehensive guide to the development, practice and evolution of Wilfred Bion’s clinical psychoanalytic work. Starting with the significance of Kant during Bion’s years as a student, the author traces the key influences on Bion in his psychoanalytic and personal development, progressing through Bion’s particularly productive pre-psychoanalytic work based on social field theory, his well-known elaboration of Klein’s schizoid mechanisms known as the theory of containment, all the while with his deeply thoughtful clinical approach inspired latterly by an understanding of literary creativity. Extending this unique emphasis on Bion’s clinical work, rather than his theory, Hinshelwood also explores how Bion’s early traumatic experiences helped shape his attitudes and approach to effective clinical work. With comprehensive coverage of the key tenets of Bion’s work, this should be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training who seek a clear guide to the practical applications of his theory.


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.


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.


Bion, Intuition and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Theory

Bion, Intuition and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Theory

Author: Antònia Grimalt

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-06-09

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1000598810

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Bion, Intuition and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Theory illuminates how Bion’s work on intuition has changed the landscape of contemporary psychoanalysis through his understanding of its supra-scientific and non-sub-scientific condition. Based on the work of the biannual Bion conference, this book includes contributions from the most eminent voices on Bion’s work. The global cohort of contributors in this volume examine topics such as dream work, the Infinite Unconscious, the Spectral model of the mind, the realm of the minus and observation and intuition. Each chapter explores different elements arising from Bion’s insistence on learning from experience and establishing the difference between knowing and becoming as an experiential process of the mind as a container in relation to its contents of sensations, feelings, dreams and thoughts. This book will be of key interest to analysts and analytic therapists of all schools and is an essential resource for those that follow the work of Bion.