The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion

Author: Joan Symington
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134870914
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
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.

Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works

Author: Gerard Bleandonu
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1635421306
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
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.

Clinical Seminars and Other Works

Author: Wilfred Bion
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042991198X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Book Description
This selection of clinical seminars held by Wilfred Bion in Brasilia (1975) and Sao Paulo (1978) is the nearest we shall ever get to experiencing his application of his theories and views to consulting-room practice. It is also likely to be the only printed record of this area of his work. As those who underwent analysis with Bion will testify, nothing can approach the experience of the thing itself, but, failing that, these seminars may help to fill the gap now that his voice can only be heard through his published writings and lectures.

A Beam of Intense Darkness

Author: James Grotstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429910207
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
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.

Bion and Being

Author: Annie Reiner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429911440
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
With his concept of "O," Wilfred Bion provided a new psychoanalytic space in which to explore the mind. Dr Annie Reiner's new book, Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind, examines the similarities between this psychoanalytic space and the artist's creative sensibility, as well as mystical and religious states. This most mysterious and revolutionary of Bion's analytic ideas reflects what is essentially a state of being, an experience of mental integrity and union between emotional and rational functions of the mind which is the basis of thinking and creativity. In an effort to provide emotional understanding to Bion's theoretical ideas, Dr Reiner uses examples of artists, poets, writers, theologians, and philosophers, including Rilke, Cummings, Shakespeare, Beckett, and Nietzsche, to illustrate these psychoanalytic concepts. She also presents detailed clinical examples of patient's dreams to explore the obstacles to these states of being, as well as how to work clinically to develop access to these creative states.

Learning From Experience

Author: Wilfred R Bion
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000955451
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
Wilfred R. Bion was one of the foremost psychoanalysts of his generation, whose work has shaped and enriched psychoanalysis and psychotherapy indelibly. Renowned for some highly original and sometimes cryptic ideas, such as the alpha function and theory of the grid, Learning from Experience is arguably his most important and enduring work. Bion brings knowledge into the psychoanalytic spotlight. What forces, he asks, interfere with knowledge? Crucially, Bion doesn't mean knowing only facts, but the lifelong process of understanding and coming to know things that is a consequence of the development of knowledge. However, Learning From Experience is perhaps best-known for its emphasis on the way emotion and knowledge are interwoven. Bion links the emotional capacity to develop and know to the capacity to tolerate frustration: if we can hold ourselves in check whilst we endure frustration, then we can come to know things. A remarkable and brilliant work by a fascinating psychoanalyst and thinker, Learning From Experience continues to inspire psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Robert Hinshelwood.

Bion Today

Author: Chris Mawson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723074
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
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.

Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained: Bion's Continuing Legacy

Author: Howard B. Levine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415617413
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
This book contains state of the art studies in Bion scholarship that are directly applicable to clinical and theoretical thinking.

The Italian Seminars

Author: Wilfred R. Bion
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429906935
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
The Italian Seminars, previously unpublished in English, comprises lectures W.R. Bion gave in Rome, in 1977. The volume consists of questions from the floor and Bion's fascinating and, at times, controversial answers. The lectures are divided in two: the first part was organized by the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the second by the Via Pollaiolo Research Group. Bion's replies examine such diverse subjects as difficulties in the interaction between the therapist and the patient; music and psychoanalysis; non-verbal communication in the consulting room; and methodology in psychoanalysis.

Explorations in Bion's 'O'

Author: Afsaneh Alisobhani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429814852
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
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.