Through a richly detailed close reading of Wilfred R. Bion’s work on dreaming, as scattered across multifarious and largely unworked texts, this book argues that Bion’s thinking can form a unified theory of dreams which extends and has further implications as a visionary model of the mind. The central quality of Bion's visionary model of the mind is the belief that all that is interesting in the human mind pulsates with an unreadably complex dynamic beyond the unknown, the unknowable and the unthinkable. However, rather than interpreting this negatively, the author understands the inevitable unknowability of the human mind as a call to perplexity and wonder which actively encourages the intuition of fundamental insights into who and what determines our internal lives. A major implication of this belief is that psychoanalysis is itself essentially about the unknown, and Monteiro generates informed observations about how this may influence psychoanalytic work. Providing renewed insight into psychoanalytical understandings of dreams, this book is essential reading for any psychoanalyst wishing to broaden their knowledge of the importance of Wilfred R. Bion’s dream work.

This impressive work constitutes an important and timely addition to existing dictionaries of psychoanalytic ideas. It is not intended to replace the reading of Bion’s original texts nor is it a biography of W.R. Bion, the man. A brief history of Bion’s life is offered in the introduction to illuminate the conscious and unconscious factors that may have been an influence on his work, but the aim of this volume is to serve as an insightful and comprehensive guide to the often obscure meanings and terms explored and created by Bion throughout his many years, first as a psychiatrist and later as a psychoanalyst. It is an essential companion to the works of Bion that brings clarity and understanding to his absorbing concepts and is a vital addition to the library of anyone who has read and wondered over the writings of W.R. Bion.

In this illuminating volume, Rodrigo Barahona takes up the question of transformations in hallucinosis in Wilfred Bion’s work. The book discusses how the analyst’s functioning, his receptivity and ability to make sense out of what is unconsciously occurring between himself and the patient, and the ability to find words to represent it—the basic psychoanalytic task—is enhanced when the distinction between two basic types of transformations in hallucinosis can be borne in mind: transformations in positive hallucinosis and transformations in negative hallucinosis. In the psychoanalytic literature, this distinction has not been formally established, with the general term “transformations in hallucinosis” used for both processes. This book cuts a clearer distinction between the two, describing their distinct though overlapping metapsychologies, and charts the clinical implications. In making these distinctions, the book draws on André Green’s work, arguing for a continuity between Green’s negative hallucination and Bion’s theory of thinking and transformations in negative hallucinosis. The clinical implications of working with this concept are discussed in relation to the work of contemporary psychoanalytic authors such as Civitarese, Cassorla, Mawson, and Meltzer. By drawing comparisons and making specific connections between the work of Bion and Green, and extending these connections to the clinical and metapsychological writings of leading contemporary analysts, Negative Hallucinosis in Wilfred Bion’s Theory of Transformations will be of great interest to practitioners and scholars at all levels interested in the work of Wilfred Bion and this extension to his theory of transformations.

Considering that introductory books cannot replace an author's original words,and that Bion’ s concepts are often found to be difficult to grasp, Dr Sandler has compiled an unusual style of dictionary. He assembles. He assembles relevant quotations from Bion's texts together with the meaning of concepts and their place in the history of their development.

Wilfred Bion’s theories of dreaming, of the analytic situation, of reality and everyday life, and even of the contact between the body and the mind offer very different, and highly fruitful, perspectives on lived experience. Yet very little of his work has entered the field of visual culture, especially film and media studies. Kelli Fuery offers an engaging overview of Bion’s most significant contribution to psychoanalysis- his theory of thinking- and demonstrates its relevance for why we watch moving images. Bion’s theory of thinking is presented as an alternative model for the examination of how we experience moving images and how they work as tools which we use to help us ‘think’ emotional experience. ‘Being Embedded’ is a term used to identify and acknowledge the link between thinking and emotional experience within the lived reception of cinema. It is a concept that everyone can speak to as already knowing, already having felt it - being embedded is at the core of lived and thinking experience. This book offers a return to psychoanalytic theory within moving image studies, contributing to the recent works that have explored object relations psychoanalysis within visual culture (specifically the writings of Klein and Winnicott), but differs in its reference and examination of previously overlooked, but highly pivotal, thinkers such as Bion, Bollas and Ogden. A theorization of thinking as an affective structure within moving image experience provides a fresh avenue for psychoanalytic theory within visual culture. Wilfred Bion, Thinking, and Emotional Experience with Moving Images will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as scholars and students of film and media studies, cultural studies and cultural sociology and anthropology, visual culture, media theory, philosophy, and psychosocial studies.

In Dreaming and Being Dreamt, John Schneider illustrates the central concept of all emotional functioning: that we are most alive in our dreaming, and that it is dreaming that brings us to life. Building upon the theoretical foundations of Ogden and Bion, the book explicates the way in which it is the unconscious goal of the patient, and the task of the analyst, to engage in dreaming the patient into existence in a fuller way than the patient has been able to dream. It goes on to develop the idea that all dreams are psychological works in progress, containing aspects of emotional experience that are entirely or partially too disturbing to dream on one’s own. Each chapter of this book offers rich clinical exchanges between patient and analyst in analytic sessions. Schneider clearly shows how he dreams the analytic session with patients and the importance of "talking-as-dreaming" in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. With new insights on theory and rich clinical vignettes, this book will be indispensable for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wanting to engage with the latest thinking on dreamwork.

In Bion in Film Theory and Analysis: The Retreat in Film, Carla Ambrósio Garcia introduces the rich potential of the thinking of British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion for film theory. By so doing, she rethinks the space of the cinema as a space of retreat, and brings new insights into the representation of retreat in film. Presented in two parts, the book seeks to deepen our understanding of the film experience and psychical growth. Part I places Bion’s view on the importance of the epistemophilic instinct at the heart of a critique of the pleasure-centred theories of the cinematic apparatus of Jean-Louis Baudry, Christian Metz and Gaylyn Studlar, proposing an idea of cinema as ‘thoughts in search of a thinker’. Garcia then moves from Bion’s epistemological period to his later work, which draws on mysticism, in order to posit an emotional experience in the cinema through which the subject can be or become real (or at one with ‘O’). Part II examines representations of retreat in four European films, directed by Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Georges Perec and Bernard Queysanne, and Manoel de Oliveira, showing them to articulate a gesture of retreat as an emotionally turbulent transitional stage in the development of the psyche – what Bion conceptualizes as caesura. Through its investigation of the retreat in cinema, the book challenges common understandings of retreat as a regressive movement by presenting it as a gesture and space that can also be future-oriented. Bion in Film Theory and Analysis will be of significant interest to academics and students of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and film and media studies, as well as psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

'This book offers a definitive reading of Bion's remarkable autobiographical writings from a perspective embedded in the poetry of the ages, that of the Romantics in particular. It is at once learned and, utterly freshly, able to explore the inside story of Bion's life and mind. The volume is a distillation and elaboration of the work of many years. Whilst ostensibly an extended commentary on the autobiographical works themselves, it is also, in its own right, a tour de force, engaging, as it does, with the heart of the matter: with the development of a psychoanalyst, of a life, a self, a mind, thoroughly inward with the "dark and sombre world of thought".'- Margot Waddell, psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

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.

Written by pioneering analyst and creative thinker, James Grotstein, A Beam of Intense Darkness offers a thorough overview and illuminating insight into the often-complex work of W. R. Bion. This psychoanalytic classic sees Grotstein introduce over 30 key Bionian theories, comprehensively explaining them to the reader before offering his own insight and commentary. Grotstein first encountered Bion as his analysand and, later, as his friend. This book offers a level of insight only possible through such a close relationship, and offers a dialogue between Bion and Grotstein as they delve into the inner workings of the human psyche. Throughout, Grotstein offers his own original thoughts on topics such as projective transidentification, transcendent position and the truth drive. With a new introduction from Nicola Abel-Hirsch, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in Bion’s work and legacy.