Wilfred R. Bion is considered a ground-breaking psychoanalyst. His thinking is rooted in Freud and Klein from where it takes an original flight. Reading Bion shows the evolution of his seminal insights in psychic functioning and puts them in a wider context. Rudi Vermote integrates a chronological close reading and discussion of Bion’s texts, with a comprehensive approach of his major concepts. The book is divided in two main parts: Transformation in Knowledge: Bion’s odyssey to understand psychic processing or the mind Transformation in O: in which Bion reinterprets his former concepts from the dimension of the unknown and unknowable The running text is put against a background of biographical data and scientific, artistic and philosophical influences on his work, which are highlighted in boxes and separate chapters. Bion’s concepts are important for anyone dealing with the mind. His ideas have an ongoing deep impact on psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychopathology. His concepts help to understand psychic change, creativity, individual psychodynamics and small and large-group phenomena. The discovery of their value for studies on art, literature, sociology, religion, economics has just begun. Reading Bion starts from the very beginning so that it is instructive for people who are new to his work, but the close reading and background information make it a meaningful companion for experienced psychoanalysts and psychotherapists studying his work.
Bion Today explores how Bion’s work is used in contemporary settings; how his ideas have been applied at the level of the individual, the group and the organisation; and which phenomena have been made more comprehensible through the lenses of his concepts. The book introduces distinctive psychoanalytic contributions to show the ways in which distinguished analysts have explored and developed the ideas of Wilfred Bion. Drawing on the contributors’ experience of using Bion’s ideas in clinical work, topics include: an introduction to Bion clarification of the inter-related concepts of countertransference and enactment concepts integrating group and individual phenomena clinical implications of Bion’s thought Bion’s approach to psychoanalysis. Bion Today will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all those who are interested in learning more about Bion’s thinking and his work.
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.
Intended to help anyone who teaches, this book has something of a cult following. Drawing on extensive teaching experience, the author presents a personal account of good practice, written in an engaging and accessible style and based on extensive scholarly sources. Part I 'Learning' and Part II 'Teaching' complement one another, and the book as a whole offers an insight into how to teach in any set of circumstances. It does so without being prescriptive, instead helping teachers to think through their own problems and situations. As a result When Teaching Becomes Learning is a book to which teachers will return on countless occasions. This edition has been updated throughout and now has 2 new chapters - Reflections of Educational Technology, and Why Teach? Chapters are now also divided up so they are each shorter and more user-friendly than before.
This collection of papers by distinguished international contributors explores formative influences affecting Bion's emotional and intellectual development. The authors revisit in depth the origins of Bion's ideas, his contact with Trotter, and his later work with the Tavistock Clinic and psychoanalysis.
Wilfred Bion described "O" as "the unknowable and the unreachable ultimate truth". In this fascinating collection, a range of authors offer their own theoretical, clinical and artistic approaches to exploring this enduring but mysterious idea. Drawn from contributions from the 8th International Bion Conference in 2014, the book examines how "O" can be experienced in all aspects of internal and external reality and within all relationships, from an individual relating to the mother to their emotional relationship with their self. It features insights into "O" drawn from the area of faith as well as its manifestations in clinical practice, while also included is a chapter exploring the links between Bion’s ideas and those of Winnicott, Lacan, Green and Freud. Featuring contributions from some of the world’s leading Bion scholars, this will be essential reading for any psychoanalyst interested in exploring the concept of "O", as well as scholars in philosophy and theology.
Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan by Marilyn Charles takes concepts from the psychoanalytic literature and translates them into user-friendly language. In this book, Charles focuses on clinical work with more severely disturbed patients, for whom trauma has impeded their psychosocial development. Introducing ideas from Bion and Lacan, such as "empty speech" and "attacks on linking," she shows the reader their clinical utility. Her use of clinical moments, rather than more lengthy vignettes, invites readers to recognize that type of dilemma and imagine how they might use the concept in their own work.
'It is characteristic of some forms of scientific genius to alter not just what we see in the world, but how we see it - not just the view, but the lens. One thinks of Freud's discovery of the transference, or of Melanie Klein's attention to the play of children. Wilfred Bion's study of groups and group processes also has this quality. More than the content of what he saw and captured in the concepts of two modes of mental functioning in groups and in the differentiation of the basic assumptions, it was the way he saw or, more broadly, the way he sensed the emotional life of the individual in the group, and in the first instance his own, that opened up a quite new territory for exploration. Those of us whose practice takes place primarily in the institutional or social domain can find in his more psychoanalytic work seeds of new thought extending beyond the consulting room.Going "beyond the confines" might perhaps more generally stand as a metaphor for Bion's enterprise.
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.