A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bion's Legacy to Psychoanalysis
It presents his ideas faithfully and also uses his ideas as "launching pads" for the author's conjectures about where his ideas point. This includes such ideas as "the Language of Achievement", "reverie," "truth," "O," and "transformations"- in, of, and from it, but also " L," "H," and "K" linkages (to show how Bion rerouted Freud's instinctual drives to emotions), "container/contained, Bion's ideas on "dreaming," "becoming," "thoughts without a thinker," "the Grid," his erasure of the distinction between Freud's, "primary and secondary processes " and the "pleasure" and "reality principles," "reversible perspective," "shifting vertices," "binocular vision," "contact-barrier," the replacement of "consciousness" and "unconsciousness" with infinity and finiteness, Bion's use of models, his distinction between "mentalization" and "thinking," as well as many other items. '...this is a book that I had been waiting to have for a long time - a book that was in my 'memoirs of the future'. This book is a hologram of Bion's thought that can be deconstructed in its constituent partsand then reconstructed again and again. It is Grotstein's dream about Bion, but a dream that enriches his thought, transforms it and makes it more readily available.It is a book that I will certainly use with my students in seminars on Bion's thought, and I will encourage others to do the same. It is a book, in my opinion, that all analysts, including those of a different orientation, should take most seriously. It is abook that dares to disturb that universe of knowledge that any reader had before reading it. It is a book which is 'thought for thinking', but also reverie, as well as representing the closest we can get, for the time being at least, to the global 'O' of Bion's thought.' - Antonino Ferro, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89:867-884 (2008)ContentsCHAPTER 1. The Scope Of This BookCHAPTER 2. What Kind Of Analyst Was Bion?CHAPTER 3. What Kind Of Person Was Bion?CHAPTER 4. Bion's visionCHAPTER 5 Bion's LegacyCHAPTER 6. A Brief Summary Of Bion's MetatheoryCHAPTER 7. Bion On TechniqueCHAPTER 8. Clinical Case Encompassing Bion's Technical IdeasCHAPTER 9. Bion, The Mathematician, Bion, The MysticCHAPTER 10. The Language Of AchievementCHAPTER 11. Bion's Discovery Of O CHAPTER 12. The Concept Of The "Transcendent Position"CHAPTER 13. The "Quest For The Truth": Part A: The "Truth Drive" As The Hidden Order Of Bion's Metatheory For PsychoanalysisCHAPTER 14. Part B: "The Truth Drive" Curiosity About The Truth As The "Seventh Servant"CHAPTER 15. Lies, "Lies," And FalsehoodsCHAPTER 16. The Container And The ContainedCHAPTER 17. "Projective Transidentification": An Extension Of The Concept Of Projective IdentificationCHAPTER 18. Bion's Work With Groups CHAPTER 19. Bion's Studies In PsychosisCHAPTER 20. TransformationsCHAPTER 21. Learning From ExperienceCHAPTER 22. The Breast, The "No-breast," And The PointCHAPTER 23. The GridCHAPTER 24. The Question Of Fetal Mental Life And Its Caesura With Post-natal Mental LifeCHAPTER 25. What Does It Mean To Dream?" A Preliminary Note On Bion's Theory Of DreamingCHAPTER 26. "...perchance To Dream...": The Profounder Mission Of DreamingCHAPTER 27. "Become" CHAPTER 28. P-s To DCHAPTER 29. L, H, And PassionCHAPTER 30. Faith CHAPTER 31. The Importance Of Bion's Discovery Of Zero ('No-thing") CHAPTER 32. A Pot Pourri Of Selected Contributions By Bion CHAPTER 33. A Reading Of Bion's A Memoir Of The FutureCHAPTER 34. Epilogue For The Book