W.R. Bion Tradition

Giuseppe Civitarese is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI) and a member of the of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He lives and is in private practice in Pavia, Italy. He is the editor of the 'Rivista di Psicoanalisi', the official journal of the SPI. Howard B. Levine is a member of the faculty at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East, a member of the faculty and supervising analyst at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and is in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is a founding member of the Group for the Study of Psychoanalytic Process and the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc.

• Series Editors’ Foreword -- Editors’ Preface -- Personal, Historical -- Impressions of my analysis with Dr. Bion -- A long meeting with Bion -- Non-analytic influences on the psychoanalytic theorizing of Wilfred Bion -- W. R. Bion: his cultural, national, and historical background, and its impact on his thinking -- “I shall be blown to bits”: towards Bion’s theory of catastrophic trauma -- Previously Unpublished Supervisions -- Supervision A34 -- Commentary on supervision A34 -- Supervision D14 -- Commentary on supervision D14: a language for the job -- Supervision A42 -- Commentary on supervision A42 -- Clinical/Theoretical: One -- Turbulence and growth: an encounter between Ismalia and Isaura -- Mental states and emotional relations in the analytic setting: implications for therapeutic work -- The function of evocation in the working-through of the countertransference: projective identification, reverie, and the expressive function of the mind—Reflections inspired by Bion’s work -- The truth object: growing the god within -- Making contact with psychotic and autistic phenomena: container/contained and autistic transformations -- Clinical/Theoretical: Two -- Changes in technique and in the theory of technique in a post-Bion field model -- Containing systems in the analytic field -- The hat on top of the volcano: Bion’s ‘O’ and the body-mind relationship -- Bridging the gap: from soma-psychosis to psychosomatics -- A Note and a Short Story -- Flying thoughts in search of a nest: a tribute to W. R. Bion -- A Clinical Exchange -- A silent war: dreading recovery -- Dreaming into being -- St. Sulpice -- Sense, Myth, and Passion -- Sense, sensible, sense-able: the bodily but immaterial dimension of psychoanalytic elements -- Myth, dream, and meaning: reflections on a comment by Bion -- Passion -- Late Papers and Basic Concepts -- “Notes on memory and desire”: implications for working through -- On Bion’s text “Emotional turbulence”: a focus on experience and the unknown -- On “Making the best of a bad job” -- Reflections on “Caesura” (1977) -- Evidence -- Is the concept of O necessary for psychoanalysis? -- Groups -- Affect, reverie, mourning, and Bion’s theory of groups in our time -- Containing primitive emotional states: approaching Bion’s later perspectives on groups -- Bion and the large group -- The influence of Bion on my research -- Aesthetics -- Using art for the understanding of psychoanalysis and using Bion for the understanding of contemporary art -- The buried harbor of dreaming: psychoanalysis and literature—towards a Bionian, non-archaeological approach -- Communicating pictures: aesthetic aspects as a developmental tool for the container-contained interaction

'This book is a wonderful achievement.. It shows how vital and expansive is Bion's thinking, it gathers high-quality papers from the most influential analytic centres, written by the best-known Bion scholars, and it provides stimulating new insights into this most creative of analytic authors. I recommend this book with enthusiasm and admiration, because it shows vividly how a tradition is able to continuously renew itself, and stimulate new paths for thinking and dreaming.'- Claudio Laks Eizirik, former President of the International Psychoanalytical Association'Bion once wrote to his children that with certain books, one does not simply "read" them, one has to have the emotional experience of reading them, adding that it is hard to give oneself the conditions necessary for such an experience, the chief one being time. This is such a book. Requiring a particular openness in the reader for involvement with each of its chapters, its authors allow the reader to witness the unfolding of their thinking as they investigate and apply Bion's ideas in their own individual ways. In carrying forward this project, the editors and authors show how much fertile life there is in making use of Bion's conceptions. While this is a challenging text, it repays richly the emotional engagement necessary to read it closely and succeeds amply in its intention to inspire Bion's generativity.'- Chris Mawson, Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Editor of The Complete Works of W. R. Bion