Night Vision

Wilfred Bion's Epistemological Poetics and the Experience of the First World War

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

549 kr

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All his life, Wilfred Bion strove to find a narrative form for the traumatic experiences he went through as a tank commander in the First World War. The body of his autobiographical and literary works documents his efforts to wrest a biography of his own from the most devastating processes of world history. As a whole, it is the result of a lifelong struggle to express something unspeakable, to restore something destroyed. What emerges is something like the prehistory of the psychical catastrophe from which Bion was unable to escape until his death. As such, however, these autobiographical fragments also reflect the prehistory of the historical catastrophe under whose spell the world still stands today.This book is the first comprehensive study of Bion’s autobiographical and literary writings. Drawing on the concepts of experience and thinking developed in his theoretical and clinical works, with which they are genetically linked, it discusses Bion’s strategies of writing and cognition, and for the first time systematically places a hitherto unexplored part of his work in the context of his entire œuvre.Following the chronological thread of his life, from childhood in India through youth in England to his experience of the First World War in France and Belgium, the book traces how Bion developed his unique method of writing. Detailed narrative analyses reveal the painful work of coming to terms with the war experiences which had haunted him throughout his life – a crippling trauma whose causes extended far beyond the individual and private. The book thus provides deep insights into Bion’s life, his thinking, and his writing, and offers the reader a portrait of the primal catastrophe of the twentieth century and its devastating effects.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-04-10
Mått152 x 229 x 13 mm
Vikt365 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SeriePhoenix Publishing House
Antal sidor248
FörlagKarnac Books
ISBN9781800133112

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Dominic Angeloch, Priv-Doz Dr phil, is senior lecturer for comparative literature at the Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, and managing editor of Psyche: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen (Klett-Cotta publishers). He teaches at various universities and has held professorships in comparative literature and international literatures (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Tübingen). He is the author of numerous articles published in international journals and several books.

About the authorIntroductionPart IExperience, cognition, writing—and their failure: Philosophical, psychological, philological aspectsChapter 1: Night visionChapter 2: Dangers of understanding: Virgil’s Palinurus as an allegory of cognitionVirgil’s PalinurusBion’s PalinurusEclipse of PalinurusPart IIWilfred Bion’s epistemological poeticsChapter 3: Wilfred Bion’s “late work”: Autobiography and “literary turn”Biography: Childhood in India, youth in England, First World WarOn the structure of Bion’s autobiographical writingsThe Long Week-End 1897–1919 and War Memoirs 1917–1919All My Sins Remembered: Another Part of a LifeThe trilogy of novels: A Memoir of the FutureThe presence of the past in a dream that interprets itselfDream–dream interpretation—“construction”—dream text“The only thing I am not quite clear about …”—Bion’s theory of the dreamA first step in a new languageEntering into the unknownChapter 4: “Psychological impossibilities”: Childhood and child’s experience in Wilfred Bion’s The Long Week-EndChapter 5 : “A sense of disaster, past and impending”: Youth and boarding school life in England before the First World WarExperiences beyond description: “Such cataclysmic disasters cannot be described”Close reading: The Long Week-End, “England”, Chapter 1“Misery at school had a dynamic quality”: Everyday life in the boarding school panopticonGlory and flannel: “England at war. Myself with nothing but my tiny little public school soul”Part IIIWilfred Bion’s epistemological poetics and the experience of the First World WarChapter 6: A sub-thalamic fear”: Wilfred Bion’s War Memoirs 1917–1919Bion’s War Memoirs 1917–1919 and “a great unsolved puzzle”PalimpsestsMemory is figurative communication of emotional experience“I died there”: Life after (psychical) death“The ghosts look in from the battle again”: The psychological catastrophe of survivalThe “Amiens” report of 1958: Another attempt to describe the indescribableCrater landscapesHow to describe the indescribable?The silence in the combat breaks“Cracking up”“I shall try to give you our feelings at the time I am writing of ”: OutlookChapter 7 : Writing the ineffable: The experience of the First World War in The Long Week-End 1897–1919Experience and narrativeYpres: Map and territoryAmiens: August 8, 1918Amiens: Map and territoryThinking under fire: Measurements in the fog of fearSweeting’s deathPanorama of working through a catastrophic traumaOverview of the external eventsSweeting’s death: The first text version from the war diary of 1919Sweeting’s death: The second text version in the “Amiens” fragment of 1958Sweeting’s death: The third text version in The Long Week-End“We will remember them”: A tomb for SweetingPostscript: (Aesthetic) experience and epistemological poeticsReferencesIndex

‘This remarkable text considers the almost impossible dialectic between traumatic experience and written text. It deals with Bion’s personal struggle, all his life, to manage his unmanageable war experience. It is traced through his various expositions, especially his literary/autobiographical writing. In the process, Dominic Angeloch accepts the challenge of capturing and expressing Bion’s distress in the wider and impressive landscape of historical and poetic cultures.’