#wilfred bion

[power-chords]

#ha ha ha... YES! #samuel beckett #wilfred bion #psychoanalysis

[jacobwren]

"Maybe you're thinking I should take everything my friend Lun-Yu tells me with a grain of salt. She also told me that day one of her favorite psychoanalytic theorists was Wilfred Bion. I'd never read Bion before, so after she left I read a bit about him, and I found online the complete text of a seminar he held in Paris in 1978. The beginning of this seminar is very interesting. At least it was to me. Bion says that he wants his listeners to imagine a scenario: they're seeing a new patient, a twenty-five-year-old man who comes in complaining of some dissatisfaction in his family life. Bion says he's not sure what family the man is referring to, and asks his age, which the man gives as forty-five. Bion is confused. He just said the man was twenty-five, and then he notices that the patient has wrinkles, and appears in his sixties. He asks his listeners to consider this confusing state of affairs and to determine whether they would, under the circumstances, take on such a patient.

He says the question is much like the question of what you would do if you walked into a bookstore, picked up a book, and read the scenario he just described. He asks you if you would continue reading this book. Then he says, imagine it's not a book, but a piece of music. Or a building you're in, and you see the way the light falls, you see the colors coming through the window. Do you want to think about the window some more?

I imagine these questions were somewhat perplexing to some of the participants in the seminar. At one point in the transcript, someone in the audience makes an "inaudible reference" to "psychotic experience." Bion calls that a very "cerebral" question, not a practical one to the analyst. He says that analysts shouldn't be blinded by labels like manic-depressive or schizophrenic. Rather, they should be asking themselves what kinds of artists they are and whether there's an interesting spark that occurs with a potential analysand that might lead to something productive in the consulting room or, as he puts it, the "atelier." Somebody asks what an analyst is supposed to do if he's not really the artistic type, and Bion says that if that's the case, then the person's in the wrong line of work. In fact, he says, he doesn't even really know what would be the right line of work, since a person needs to be an artist in everyday life.

The he throws out the term artist, which has obviously become meaningless. The point is, he tells them, that reducing things to "scientific" diagnoses or narrow definitions is really the death of things. "You will have to be able to have a chance of feeling that the interpretation you give is a beautiful one, or that you get a beautiful response from the patient. This aesthetic element of beauty makes a very difficult situation tolerable."

Obviously I loved that. I wrote Lun-Yu and told her about the seminar I'd read and how it had moved me. She said, "Oh, that's the 'bad' Bion, from his mystical phase. That's also the part I love best." Apparently sometimes he wasn't quite so wacky."

- Barbara Browning, The Gift

#barbara browning #wilfred bion

[fredericolimablog]

"Mas o ponto significativo não é o filho e o pai, ou o adulto humano e Deus, mas o relacionamento entre os dois – o vínculo. É no vínculo que algo permanece constante e algo estará mudando. A área utilizável para a psicanálise inspecionar é como um universo em expansão."

— Wilfred Bion in Conferências brasileiras 1, 1974, p. 34.

#wilfred bion #conferências brasileiras 1 #psicanálise

[araxnula]

Neraki kai wilfred bion euxomai

[psikiyatristalikeyvan]

[dionysian-sadness]

Psychoanalysis with Wilfred R. Bion

Contemporary Approaches, Actuality and The Future of Psychoanalytic Practice

[acr398]

The Tavistock Seminars

Wilfred R. Bion

“If anybody is at all curious, you can stuff an answer down their throat or into their ears and that will stop them doing any further thinking.” (Bion, 1976 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 8)])

“And if the worst comes to the worst, the person can always commit a crime to match the feeling, so that the morality will actually precipitate the crime as a kind of therapeutic attempt; the person concerned can feel, “Yes, I may feel guilty, but who wouldn’t? Look what I have done.” In reality, I think that someone can really commit a murder in order to be able to feel that at least his murderous feelings of guilt are rational. But all this usually means that the so-called rational event is one that we are capable of understanding according to our logical rules. This is a matter of human limitations – it has nothing to do with the universe in which we live.” (Bion, 1976 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 9)])

“But at some point it can become clear to you that a change has taken place: the patient is, in fact bothered by something he can do something about. Then it becomes important to be able to draw his attention to this: that while he is talking in the same way as yesterday, or last week or last year, it doesn’t sound as if that is the case. Of course, you do not want to be flattering, but the patient is much more likely to believe that you are sating this to suggest some improvement.” (Bion, 1976 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 9)]) 

“I find it extremely dull having questions answered that I haven’t asked. So I think it would be preferable if I give you a rough idea of what I propose to say, and then if you will ask any questions you care to. I don’t say that I shall answer them, but I can usually find a few more questions to ask you – a natural development, because most questions cause a whole lot more to occur. We never seem to get to the point of an answer unless we look back on it and think we have apparently gathered some kind of experience in the meantime.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 13)])

“We never seem to get to the point of an answer unless we look back on it and think we have apparently gathered some kind of experience in the meantime.” – Bion

“For instance, you will hear something like this: “Will you come and look after these people in this particular ward of the hospital – they are terminal cancer patients.” Terminal cancer: you only have to think about it to realise what a ridiculous phrase it is. How do they know what is terminal? Terminal of what? What is it the end point of? And in any case, we are not really concerned with funeral arrangements or something of that nature. What we are concerned with are living people, and if there is a job to be done for making the lives of people in a particular ward bearable for such time as they have to live, then there is something to be done. That has nothing to do with “terminal cancer”; it has to do with making such life still to come, still left over, still “in the bank” so to speak, tolerable and available, and finding some method by which patients can be given a chance of getting onto that wavelength where you bother with what can be done and don’t bother overmuch with what you can’t do.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 15)])

“And in any case, we are not really concerned with funeral arrangements or something of that nature. What we are concerned with are living people, and if there is a job to be done for making the lives of people in a particular ward bearable for such time as they have to live, then there is something to be done” – Bion

“The trouble with the myelinated fibres is that the person who has them is often so rigid, so structured, that you can’t get another idea through their myelin. On the other hand, if you have a reasonably intelligent baby and quite early in the proceedings you put it on a potty, its non-myelinated bottom seems to know what to do and then proceeds to perform adequately without any fuss or bother.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 15)])

““Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” – the question asked by Macbeth referring to Lady Macbeth sleepwalking. The answer would presumably have to be something like, “Well, not at the moment, but in four hundred years come along again and I’ll tell you what we can do.” Similarly today: “Come along again in four hundred years and we’ll give you an idea.” But in the meantime, each one of us lives this very short, ephemeral existence in which we can possibly use this hypothetical “mind” I am talking about to contribute something to the general fund.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 16)])

“I would like to consider the patient you will see tomorrow. I have a great advantage because I know nothing whatsoever about it, so I am not so easily misled as you, who probably thinks that you saw or heard that patient today. But I suggest that while it has its advantages, it is also a bit of a nuisance because it stands in the way of the fact that the patient has gone on living and thinking and will not be the same patient tomorrow as today – or at the end of the session as at the beginning. This point is curiously difficult to grasp in the actual practice – and that is what I am trying to talk about here. I am not very interested in the theories of psychoanalysis or psychiatry or any other theories; the important point is what I call “the real thing”, the practice of analysis, the practice of treatment, the practice of communication. The question which then arises is: how are you to speak to this patient, the one you have never seen before but are liable to think that you have because you saw him yesterday? The difficulty is this: when you are dealing with a mind or character, the boundaries are not so clearly marked as they appear to be when you are dealing with the anatomy or physiology.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (pp. 16-17)])

“I am not very interested in the theories of psychoanalysis or psychiatry or any other theories; the important point is what I call “the real thing”, the practice of analysis, the practice of treatment, the practice of communication. The question which then arises is: how are you to speak to this patient, the one you have never seen before but are liable to think that you have because you saw him yesterday?” - Bion

“we can talk about the past, about infancy: in infancy the patient felt such-and-such, had this-or-that trauma and it had this-or-that effect. That is very useful if you consider the patient as developing in a line: born-married-died, hic iacet, finished. But the patient you see tomorrow is not like that; you don’t see somebody who is “born-married-died”. It is very difficult indeed to see what goes on between the beginning of a session and the end of it. One reason for this is that the noise is so deafening, the information we are constantly bombarded with through our auditory apparatus is so deafening. You know so much about your history, so much about the patient’s history, so much about psychoanalysis, medicine, physiology, music, painting and so on, that it is very difficult to detect “thing” that we are really observing – or wanting to observe. That is one reason why I think it is easier to “forget” what you know and “forget” what you want, get rid of your desires, anticipations and also your memories so that there will be a chance of hearing these very faint sounds that are buried in this mass of noise.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 17)])

““forget” what you know and “forget” what you want, get rid of your desires, anticipations and also your memories so that there will be a chance of hearing these very faint sounds that are buried in this mass of noise.” – Bion

“Physicians usually call these things “diagnoses”, but in fact they are interpretations – interpretations of the information brought to them by their senses. What information is brought to your patients by their senses one doesn’t know, but you can get an idea of what information is brought to you by your senses if those sense have a chance of seeing, hearing, smelling whatever it is that does present itself; and then you can try to transcend those senses to find their meaning, their origin.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 19)])

“Physicians usually call these things “diagnoses”, but in fact they are interpretations – interpretations of the information brought to them by their senses.” – Bion

“Putting this very crudely: in an analytic situation there is the analyst, a patient and a third party who is watching – always. So there are three people anyhow; very often there are others, much more shadowy – relatives, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children. Those “objects” – I use the vague word deliberately – exert an influence. So I am aware of something I call “hearsay evidence”, the evidence I hear said, and I rate that very low indeed. If I try to evaluate it, I could say that the evidence I get from my senses while the patient is with me is worth 99, and all the rest share the remaining 1 between them; it is of such a low order that it is hardly worth bothering with. I can hear all kinds of things the patient has heard about me, has been told or believes, but what I want to hear is something that is buried in all this noise.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 19)])

“I think the theory of the conscious and the unconscious – which is extremely useful and, like all these things, becomes a bit of a pest after a time because it gets in the way of being able to see other things that one doesn’t know – stands in the way of one’s own ignorance, so that there is very little chance of investigating this realm of ideas that have never been conscious and this state of mind that is not available when  person is talking to you with all his wits about him in broad daylight, and you are listening to him with all your wits about you.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 21)])

“there is very little chance of investigating this realm of ideas that have never been conscious and this state of mind that is not available when  person is talking to you with all his wits about him in broad daylight, and you are listening to him with all your wits about you.” – Bion

“I have tried to tell people that no matter how difficult , how awkward, how obstructive your patient happens to be, there is one thing it is as well to realise, because as you realise it, it becomes more and more useful – that the best collaborator you are ever likely to get is not your supervisor, or your teacher, or whoever you go to for a second opinion, but your patient: you are going to get your real cooperation from this person who appears to be so hostile, so negative, so uncooperative.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 22)])

“the best collaborator you are ever likely to get is not your supervisor, or your teacher, or whoever you go to for a second opinion, but your patient” – Bion

“I haven’t had the experience of analysing somebody who has become a composer, but I see no reason why a patient should not find that he is, in fact, capable of being a composer or a painter. Those are things that might come about if the person concerned allows his ideas to germinate in the way they would. Unfortunately it is much more difficult than it sounds; it is extraordinary how much one has an itch to want the patient to say it in his own words. But it may not be his method of communication anyway – he ought to be learning to draw or paint or compose music. That is what makes the actual practice of analysis difficult: you are trying to listen and observe, but you may be observing it in the wrong spot. If you do that, you don’t observe where the germ is germinating in the patient because your mind is focussed in the wrong direction.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (pp. 22-23)])

“it is extraordinary how much one has an itch to want the patient to say it in his own words. But it may not be his method of communication anyway – he ought to be learning to draw or paint or compose music.” – Bion

“In your practice you will find yourself under pressure. You say whatever you have to say, and then there is an entirely new situation. You don’t really know what is going on because it isan entirely new situation, things will not be the same. It is likely enough that the patient will say, “Why don’t you say something?” Or if not the patient, the relatives – “Why don’t you dosomething?” So you are always under pressure prematurely and precociously to produce your idea. Poor little thing! Pull it up by the roots and have a look at it – it hasn’t got a chance. So you have to act as a sort of parent to the idea – protect it and give it a chance to grow in spite of these pressures; you have to be able to tolerate this state of ignorance. Coming towards the week-end break or some other break, you are under pressure to produce some sort of result. I say “some sort of result”, but what you are really hankering after is spectacular cure, something you could really notice, that could really be shown.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 23)])

“you are always under pressure prematurely and precociously to produce your idea. Poor little thing! Pull it up by the roots and have a look at it – it hasn’t got a chance. So you have to act as a sort of parent to the idea – protect it and give it a chance to grow in spite of these pressures; you have to be able to tolerate this state of ignorance.” – Bion

“I have often felt that that man, who had had no chance of education after the age of fourteen, knew what a university was, while I very much doubt whether I or many of my contemporaries at Oxford knew that, even when we left. You could get a swimming blue, a rugger blue, a third in classics, a first in Greats, and so on through the list, but all those are irrelevant compared with having learnt what a university is. We had plenty of mental nourishment – so much, indeed that I think the main point escaped us.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 26)])

“We had plenty of mental nourishment – so much, indeed that I think the main point escaped us.” – Bion

“I would be tempted to think that he hadn’t learnt anything if he thought he had learnt it exactly… We ought to have a great deal more to say about probability than anybody. When we are dealing speculative reasons and speculative imagination, our only justification is to say, “This is not an exact science, it is not exactly anything.” We could say that that introduces a certainty, but in this particular area where there simply is not enough evidence to amount to a fact, we resort to probability – it is probable that such-and-such will happen – and we have to be content with that. We have to leave the certainties to other people, and when they have got tired of the certainties they will want to know a bit more about the probabilities.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (pp. 26-27)])

“I would be tempted to think that he hadn’t learnt anything if he thought he had learnt it exactly.” – Bion

“where there simply is not enough evidence to amount to a fact, we resort to probability – it is probable that such-and-such will happen – and we have to be content with that. We have to leave the certainties to other people, and when they have got tired of the certainties they will want to know a bit more about the probabilities.” – Bion

“People seem to talk frequently as if they thought that the human character or the actual person behaves logically and rationally, but when you look into the matter that really means the person behaves in a way comprehensible to the analyst – which is quite possible if they obey the laws of ordinary social intercourse, the laws of grammar, the laws of articulate speech. But the fact the something is comprehensible to a mere human being is no justification for believing that therefore the universe in which we exist obeys the laws of human grammar, reason or logic.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 28)])

“the fact the something is comprehensible to a mere human being is no justification for believing that therefore the universe in which we exist obeys the laws of human grammar, reason or logic.” – Bion

“I remember being asked a long time ago, “Does the analyst ever do anything except talk?” I said “Yes, he remains silent.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 29)])

“Does the analyst ever do anything except talk?”

“Yes, he remains silent.” – Bion

“La réponse est le malheur de la question (“The answer is the disease, or misfortune, of the question.”). In other words, that is what kills curiosity. When you have the question answered, that’s the end of your curiosity if it is allowed to happen too often.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 30)])

““The answer is the misfortune of the question.” In other words, that is what kills curiosity. When you have the question answered, that’s the end of your curiosity if it is allowed to happen too often.” – Bion

“I find it useful to suppose that there is something I don’t know but would like to talk about… I think one is a prisoner of the information one’s senses bring – sense of touch, sight, hearing and so on. I don’t think, though, that it is a good thing to suppose that there is nothing except what is open to our senses – that seems to me to verge on the ridiculous.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 33)])

“I find it useful to suppose that there is something I don’t know but would like to talk about” – Bion

“I think one is a prisoner of the information one’s senses bring – sense of touch, sight, hearing and so on. I don’t think, though, that it is a good thing to suppose that there is nothing except what is open to our senses – that seems to me to verge on the ridiculous.” – Bion

“If an individual finds that he cannot see, then the chances are that he will use a stick which he waves about, prods the ground, and seems to rely upon it to give him information. He learns how to use it and appears to be able to diagnose or interpret what he gets from striking other objects or feeling that the ground is soft or sandy. What kind of stick or instrument do we use when we are concerned with what is supposed to be the human mind in order to supply us with facts we might be able to interpret? Psychoanalysis is alleged to be one of them.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 40)])

“there continue to be people who think they have had an experience they would like to communicate. Melanie Klein was one of them; Abraham another; Jung, Stekel, and many more. But suppose someone thought that music might be a way of exploring – that is one human activity that plays a great part; philosophy is another; mathematics another.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 41)])

“I had occasion not so long ago to talk to some rather distressed parents and a very distressed teacher; the child in question could not learn mathematics. There didn’t seem to be much the matter with the child – quite intelligent, but an absolute b.f. when it came to mathematics. Very puzzling: “2 and 2 makes 4”; he could learn that by heart one day but had forgotten it the next. I asked the teacher, “You must be able to hear what he says about this.” “Yes.” “So, can you tell me what he says 2 and 2 doesmake? Obviously it doesn’t make 4 – that is something he has picked up from you and his school. But even so, he cannot grasp what it means, and forgets it.” It turned out that the teacher didn’t know what 2 and 2 meant to the child, so I said, “You had better listen to this boy doing mathematics and find out what hismathematics are, and what 2 and 2 does add up to.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 41)])

“It turned out that the teacher didn’t know what 2 and 2 meant to the child, so I said, “You had better listen to this boy doing mathematics and find out what his mathematics are, and what 2 and 2 does add up to.” – Bion

“Indeed, I feel that most people reach an age where they have so much knowledge that they can’t penetrate through to the wisdom – it’s a new kind of forest that you can’t see for the trees: you can’t see the wisdom for the knowledge. It is peculiarly harassing to listen to someone like that; it comes over in this way: “yes, I know”, “yes, I know”, “yes, I mean to say”, “but you know…”, “what I mean is…”, and so on ad infinitum. Rather more harassing, because it appears to be slightly more meaningful, is the command of masses of psychoanalytic theory. The noise that those theories make is so great that you can hardly hear yourself think. I find it is then useful to be able to shut off one’s awareness of what is going on so as to cut down the turmoil enough for some relevant fact to get through, something we could call “evidence” on which to base our judgement.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 43)])

“Rather more harassing, because it appears to be slightly more meaningful, is the command of masses of psychoanalytic theory. The noise that those theories make is so great that you can hardly hear yourself think.” – Bion

“when the patient enters the consulting-room, I regard myself as fortunate because he is so cooperative as to have taken the trouble to get there and present himself, and I am lucky enough to have a chance to observe this person who is not me.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 43)])

“The communication, whether it is what I can see or hear, presents me with what I now think of as “mental debris” – all this stuff that has accumulated between the time of birth and that particular morning; the stuff learnt in school, from parents, from the senses… I can see that in this sense the debris I am talking about can be a very considerable collection.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 43)])

“Somewhere hidden amongst all this debris you can get a glimpse of actual suffering. It is rather difficult for analysts because we get almost hardened to human suffering – like doctors or surgeons who become so used to hearing about anxiety and so forth that they forget that it hurts. So we have to beware thinking that we are hearing about the real thing when what we are really hearing is the remnant of psychoanalysis. We cannot discard it on the grounds that it is simply a remnant. Therefore, we have to go through it all, whatever we are feeling like, on the off-chance that buried somewhere in this stuff is something that really matters.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 45)])

“As he goes on talking – it may be for as much as a month or so – I begin to feel there is a pattern of his behaviour that shows he is not experiencing the kind of events that I am experiencing. There are lots of words like “hallucinations”, “delusions” and so on; they are very inadequate formulations because the experience I appear to be witnessing is much more subtle – so much so, indeed, that I couldn’t very well give you a description of it.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 47)])

“If I were offered the choice of seeing how Shakespeare thought that human beings behave, or the chance of hearing a psychoanalyst’s description of how a human being behaves, I think I would get a much better impression from Shakespeare. What he says reminds me of people; it makes me think that the sort of person he is talking about could possibly behave just like that. But most scientific papers don’t throw me in that way; I don’t look forward with a vast and vivid interest to the next edition of a learned journal, because I don’t think it’s going to remind me of how human beings behave or, indeed, of how I or other people I see for myself behave.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 47)])

“But what is “perfectly obvious” is of no importance; what is important is what is behind that. If the patient finds that the universe he lives in isn’t good enough and he has imaginatively to construct a better one, then what matters is why he has to construct a better one. Is it just cussedness on his part? Or is there actually something wrong with the universe we occupy?” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 48)])

“what is “perfectly obvious” is of no importance; what is important is what is behind that. If the patient finds that the universe he lives in isn’t good enough and he has imaginatively to construct a better one, then what matters is why he has to construct a better one.” – Bion

“Kleinian theories bear a great resemblance to sin: everybody is against them, but everybody practices them in secret.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 50)])

“I do sometimes wonder if the human race has reached the end of the road: its capacity for thinking clearly is just not adequate for the job that has to be done.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 50)])

“The laws of chemistry etcetera seem to me to be not of much higher status than the laws of grammar or English speech - very useful for purposes of verbal communication – but to suppose that the universe itself obeys the laws of English grammar seems to be entirely futile. And yet we often behave as if there really were these laws that are something more than symptoms of our logical capacity.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 51)])

“The capacity to think has so very few prizes to offer, in contrast to material possessions, that it is hard to get people to realise that there might be something to be said for thinking as being both enjoyable and useful” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 50)])

“But there are things that seem to me to suggest this combination between the body and the mind. Why do the old anatomists call part of the brain the “rhinencephalon”? Why a nose brain? Why is a patient always complaining of rhinitis? Psycho-somatic? Soma-psychotic? Take your choice “Pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheekes, and so distinctly wrought, that one might almost say, her body thought” [Donne, “The Second Anniversary”]” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 51)])

“Although I am concerned with talking to the patient, I am also concerned with the fact that he has a body and a mind. That division – body and mind – is convenient for conversational purposes, but it is a distortion of the facts because he is not “a body and a mind”: I find it useful to think of a person as “your Self”.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 57)])

“these patients are not only improved but are more sensitive in a way that most people are not. The result is that they can become painfully aware of the reality or hostility and envy. Whether they are able to stand finding out what sort of universe they live in will depend on how robust they are. I use the word “universe” to mean anything from their private and immediate contacts to the society of which they are members.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 65)])

“Comment: "I am wondering if there is a psychoanalytic way to the truth"

Bion: "None whatever... Any idea that it inevitably causes you to speak the truth or discover the truth is pure rubbish." (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 87)])

“Psychoanalysis is an attempt to know what it is that interrupts us, or makes it impossible to think clearly or to have any respect for the facts that are available to us; it is an attempt to investigate what it is in ourselves that causes so much trouble, not because we cause trouble but because it is the only thing about which we can say anything at all. We can do nothing about these powers and forces that are out of our control.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 91)])

“what we really need is to be able to detect is where the blockage occurred and what form the collateral circulation has taken. I am sure that analysts who work with children must be familiar with the situation in which they feel the real blockage is something between husband and wife, and the collateral circulation is to send their child to an analyst. So the analyst + child is a kid of collateral circulation of something that lies outside that relationship. This is one the complexities of our approach to these difficulties; that is why I say it is the old system of co-ordinates by which one can localise the pain. It is quite easy to flog away at the relationship between analyst and analysand, to go on analysing ad infinitum – as I said before, transference, countertransference and so forth – without really being able to locate where the real trouble lies.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (pp. 93-94)])

“In psychoanalysis, when approaching the unconscious – that is, what we do not know – we, patient and analyst alike, are certain to be disturbed. In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 104)])

“In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.” – Bion

“I sometimes think that an analyst’s feelings while taking a group – feelings while absorbing the basic assumptions of the group – are one of the few bits of what scientists might call evidence, because he can know what he is feeling. I attach great importance to feelings for that reason.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 105)])

“You as an analyst can see for yourself what a shocking, poverty stricken vocabulary it is for you – I’m frightened, I feel sexual, I feel hostile – and that’s about it. But that’s not what it’s like in real life. In real life you have an orchestra: continuous movement and the constant slither of one feeling into another.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 105)])

“When human beings are born, they change from a watery fluid to a gaseous fluid – the air. The person takes some kind of fluid with him in the form of mucus; the nose can still operate but on a greatly diminished level. Of course, if there is too much of it, then we have what we call catarrh and the watery element downs our sense of smell… You’ve got to be a gatherer of your sense impressions, but it is fatal if you allow yourself to be drowned in impressions – so much mucus, so to speak, that you can’t even smell – so that instead of your perception being an advantage, it becomes a liability.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (pp. 105-106)])

“You’ve got to be a gatherer of your sense impressions, but it is fatal if you allow yourself to be drowned in impressions” – Bion

“I don’t know of anyone who can say at what point animate changes into inanimate. Take, for example, a dung heap. It seems inanimate, and then maggots appear, and it becomes animate. What usually happens is that institutions (societies, nations, states and so forth) make laws. The original laws constitute a shell, and then new laws expand that shell. If it were a material prison you could hope that the prison walls would be elastic in some sort of way. If organisations don’t do that, they develop a hard shell, and then expansion can’t occur because the organisation has locked itself in… The curious thing is that the mind itself seems to be able to produce a shell of its own. People say things like “I don’t want to hear any more of these new ideas. I’ve been very happy. I don’t want to have my ideas upset. If you start making me think of this and that, well then, I might have to bother about the troubles of Los Angeles. Why can’t I live here in peace and quiet?” I think there is always resistance to development and change and a tendency to think what a horrible thing this maggot is that tries to animate the dung heap.” (Bion, 1977 [The Tavistock Seminars, 2005 (p. 107)])

“What usually happens is that institutions (societies, nations, states and so forth) make laws. The original laws constitute a shell, and then new laws expand that shell. If it were a material prison you could hope that the prison walls would be elastic in some sort of way. If organisations don’t do that, they develop a hard shell, and then expansion can’t occur because the organisation has locked itself in.” – Bion

“The curious thing is that the mind itself seems to be able to produce a shell of its own. People say things like “I don’t want to hear any more of these new ideas. I’ve been very happy. I don’t want to have my ideas upset. If you start making me think of this and that, well then, I might have to bother about the troubles of Los Angeles. Why can’t I live here in peace and quiet?” I think there is always resistance to development and change and a tendency to think what a horrible thing this maggot is that tries to animate the dung heap.” – Bion

[lanuitlennuie]

exercices bioniques = théâtre + Bion = écrire des scènes à partir des fils de dialogues qui dépassent du livre de Wilfred R. Bion sur ses recherches sur les petits groupes.

[lewis-lafontaine]

Michael Fordham was the last of the founders of a movement in psychoanalysis, and like the other founders – for instance Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, or Wilfred Bion – he tapped into something essential in analysis. [Carl Jung] Certainly the historical circumstances which gave Fordham the opportunity to do so will never be repeated, any […]

#ha

[psychoanalysissy]

anxieties thrusting me into anxious thought, constantly disrupting, and taking me out of the moment and into this deprived mental state. So maybe I have to engage in more self-analysis in order to resolve some of the neuroses or anxieties that take me out of the moment, so that I can finally reach a state of consciousness that feels like genuine living.

I quoted Wilfred Bion years and years ago in one of my papers examining this kind of consciousness, and he wrote "the aim of the psychoanalyst as being without memory or desire, by that he meant being able to think without consciously trying to remember what the patient has said and without having any particular aim for an outcome but really being utterly open to what comes at you... at the best of our form in mental life, we are open to what comes at us and our mind isn't cluttered up by too much conscious thinking." And I have come no nearer to achieving this ideal than then, but find myself in constant flight from it, moving further and further away by the day.

I'm almost half way into the second chapter on the Driving Forces in Neuroses, and I have to say I've already identified with some of the neuroses that she's talked about. The need for approval, another's admiration, the need to compete or to feel like I have to beat or be better than others.

[ofresonance]

Gershom Scholem: All mysticism has two contradictory or complementary aspects: the one conservative, the other revolutionary.

Massimo Recalcati: The power of speech animated by faith tends to clash with its institutionalization. It’s a theme that has been taken up forcefully in psychoanalysis by Wilfred Bion and Elvio Fachinelli: the mystical always comes into conflict with the religious.

Vladimir Lossky: In a certain sense all theology is mystical, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation. On the other hand, mysticism is frequently opposed to theology as a realm inaccessible to understanding, as an unutterable mystery, a hidden depth, to be lived rather than known; yielding itself to a specific experience which surpasses our faculties of understanding rather than to any perception of sense or of intelligence. If we adopted this latter conception unreservedly, resolutely opposing mysticism to theology, we should be led in the last resort to the thesis of Bergson who distinguishes, in his Deux Sources, the ‘static religion’ of the Churches from the ‘dynamic religion’ of the mystics; the former social and conservative in character, the latter personal and creative.

[ivanrosadx]

Reverie de Beatriz Vignoli

El psicoanalista británico Wilfred Bion llamó reverie (del francés rêverie, ensoñación) a la función materna que habilita al bebé la transformación de afectos crudos en pensamientos. Ese es el título que eligió Beatriz Vignoli para esta autoficción sin ficción, cuya prosa se mueve entre lo narrativo y lo ensayístico, entre el original y la cita. El relato se dispara en un solsticio de invierno con la adopción de Didí, un gato de seis años que con su contundente corporalidad, sus maullidos y sus intervenciones en el teclado, repondrá el presente simple cada vez que el diario personal amague con convertirse en memoria o tratado. Los dos seres vivos -ambos en duelo- comparten un espacio doméstico, de cuya intimidad porosa se ausentará la autora en breves excursiones, obligada por su trabajo como crítica de arte o impulsada por el placer de caminar: visitas y paseos de los que trae fragmentos de discursos estéticos, míticos o políticos que suman incertidumbre a su revisión autobiográfica. Pero cada vez que todo se desbarranque hacia la tragedia, vendrá la voz escrita o narrada del animal (como un freno de mano) a interferir el soliloquio. La pregunta por los efectos de la violencia insiste, royendo una barrera ideológica invisible entre la novela familiar y la Historia, enunciando otra pregunta: ¿cuál es la diferencia entre sobrevivir y vivir? Reverie es una novela-collage, una escritura-performance en tiempo real, una deriva que retoza con el significante, un texto cuyas instancias más experimentales obran como interrupción del yo y también como indicio de un compañero imprevisto, pero muy presente.

#novela #vignoli #ivanrosado2023

[ebouks]

Learning from Experience (Maresfield Library)

Learning from Experience (Maresfield Library)

Learning from Experience (Maresfield Library) Wilfred R. Bion Categories: Psychology – Psychology – Theory, History & Research Year: 1984 Publisher: Karnac Books Language: english Pages: 128 / 115 ISBN 10: 0946439052 ISBN 13: 9780946439058 File: 34 MB

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[unacosatuttamia]

Io ti sogno capace e tu lo diventerai pian piano.

#wilfred bion #vita #sogno

[benjaminbuzali]

El psicoanálisis apunta a que lo no dicho por el sujeto, es aún lo mas importante por decir.

-Benjamin Buzali

#quote #life quote #quoteoftheday #love quote #poetry #web series #comics #writers #psychology #psicoanalisis #sigmund freud #jacques lacan #melanie klein #carl jung #otto kernberg #frank yeomans #donald winnicott #wilfred bion #slavoj zizek #filosofia #frases filosóficas #beautiful quote #escritura #literature #literatura

[opiraticentranced]

The first point is for the analyst to impose on himself a positive discipline of eschewing memory and desire. I do not mean that ‘forgetting’ is enough: what is required is a positive act of refraining from memory and desire.

Wilfred Bion

#holding space #psychoanlysis #wilfred bion