A beam of intense darkness : Wilfred Bion's legacy to psychoanalysis

401 Pages·2007·1.665 MB·English

by  James S. Grotstein

A BEAM OF INTENSE DARKNESS

A BEAM OF INTENSE DARKNESS
Wilfred Bion’s
Legacy to Psychoanalysis
James S. Grotstein
KARNAC
First published in 2007 by
Karnac Books
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2007 by James S. Grotstein
The rights of James S. Grotstein to be identified as the author of this work have
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–85575–448–5
Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crafts
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
To Wilfred Bion
My gratitude to you for allowing Me to become reunited with me —
and for encouraging me to play with your ideas as well as my own.

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION xi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR xv
Prelude and prologue 1
1 An introduction 9
2 What kind of analyst was Bion? 27
3 What kind of person was Bion? 34
4 Bion’s vision 36
5 Bion’s legacy 44
6 Bion’s metatheory 65
7 Bion on technique 82
8 Clinical vignette encompassing Bion’s technical ideas 98
vii
viii CONTENTS
9 Bion, the mathematician, the mystic, the psychoanalyst 102
10 The “Language of Achievement” 109
11 Bion’s discovery of O 114
12 The concept of the “transcendent position” 121
13 The quest for the truth, Part A:
the “truth drive” as the hidden order
of Bion’s metatheory for psychoanalysis 135
14 The quest for the truth, Part B:
curiosity about the truth as the “seventh servant” 139
15 Lies, “lies”, and falsehoods 147
16 The container and the contained 151
17 “Projective transidentification”:
an extension of the concept of projective identification 168
18 Bion’s work with groups 190
19 Bion’s studies in psychosis 197
20 Transformations 213
21 Psychoanalytic functions and elements 235
22 Points, lines, and circles 239
23 The Grid 243
24 Fetal mental life
and its caesura with postnatal mental life 256
25 What does it mean to dream?
Bion’s theory of dreaming 259
CONTENTS ix
26 Dreaming, phantasying, and the “truth instinct” 290
27 “Become” 305
28 P–S ↔ D 308
29 L, H, and K and passion 311
30 Faith 315
31 Bion’s discovery of zero (“no-thing”) 319
Epilogue 327
W. R. BION BIBLIOGRAPHY 333
REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 341
INDEX 361