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This paper aims to emphasize the pertinence of psychoanalytic work in the context of communitary mental health. The theoretical orientations for this are based on the concept of Social Defence Systems, as introduced by Jaques and developed by Menzies, and the intervention method used is Work Discussion, an original and applicable approach designed and consolidated at the Tavistock Clinic. With this contributions, we are able to consider the ways in which Institution´s malfunctioning relates to ways in which it´s work implies a defensive activity with which its participants, workers and patients, can be unconsciously colluded. After describing this method and the mentality behind it, this work describes in detail its application in the context of a Communitary Mental Health Centre in Santiago, Chile. Some clinical examples are included, together with some thoughts about the value that this intervention has for the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author reflects on the analyst's attempt to approach the unknowable, ultimate reality of the psychoanalytic experience, and the unrepressed unconscious. Drawing on both Freud's conception of 'attention' and Bion's emphasis on the power of observation, the paper explores the clinical implications of the notion of intuition as a primary tool in this endeavour. Intuition is often associated with Bion's thinking about the apprehension of psychic reality. At the same time, Bion's emphasis on the need to suspend sensuous aspects of reality on the way to encountering non-sensuous experience has given rise to much confusion. With the aid of detailed clinical material, the paper portrays intuition as a paradoxical, receptive state of mind oriented towards invariant, ultimate reality, and yet perpetually flickering between both sensuous and psychic aspects of reality. Moreover, since emotional truth is always in flux, intuition is seen as a capacity to apprehend reality in transience. In following the path of Bion's evolving thinking about the analyst's intuition, the author illustrates the continuity between the so-called 'early Bion' and the one referred to as 'late Bion'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence that Bion's epistemological contributions drew on the work of R. B. Braithwaite, a British philosopher of science, more than has generally been acknowledged. Braithwaite introduced the "scientific deductive system", a term Bion adopted. It proposed that empirical scientific methods could be applied to immaterial subjects of study, including "unconscious mental processes" (Braithwaite 1953, ix). Bion's private work journal, collected in Cogitations, documents Braithwaite's direct influence throughout its entries, particularly in one dated 10 January 1959, entitled "Scientific method" (Bion 1959b). This paper reviews relevant elements of Braithwaite's work, and examines Bion's "Scientific method" and samples from his epistemological work to argue that one of Bion's goals was to bring an empirically based scientific model to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. More than a matter of academic interest, Braithwaite's work lends pragmatically useful context to understand Bion's theoretical and clinical intentions in greater depth. It also suggests the main reasons why his project did not come fully to fruition, which led Bion to turn from the scientific deductive system towards his later developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When re-read today, "On arrogance", a very brief paper Bion wrote in 1958, reveals its extraordinary topicality. We can think of it both as a commentary on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and as an essay on the "disease" of psychoanalysis. In both cases, lying at its centre is the triad of curiosity–stupidity–arrogance that drives us to know the truth "at any cost". In this paper Bion redefines the crime of Oedipus (and therefore of psychoanalysis) around epistemic instinct and no longer around sexuality; he unveils the objectifying attitude of the analyst he revolutionizes the understanding of negative therapeutic reactions. The analyst's "psychosis" (or that of psychoanalysis) finds expression in the phenomena of wanting to become a psychoanalyst, of aspiring to be "scientific" (as opposed to gaining a hermeneutical understanding), of wanting to tell the patient what he believes to be the truth, and finally of looking "down upon" his patients and colleagues. Anticipating the themes of Transformations and A Memory of the Future, "On arrogance" lays the groundwork for a cogent criticism of the ideology of psychoanalysis and an effective ethical re-foundation of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about an interpretation of Neruda’s “Poem no 15”, one of his most important works of poetry. The author reads this poem as about the painful loss of the loved object, and the struggle to accept this. This work emphasizes the complex relation between denial and mourning, specifically between psychotic anxieties and mechanisms, and psychic growth. Object relations, as described by Klein and Bion, are used for this reading of Neruda’s poem. The author makes an effort to link this interpretation of the poem to the effect it has on the reader. The paper suggests that the common interpretation of this poem as a passionate declaration of love for a silent muse could itself express a denial that can be understood by the impact that Neruda’s poem has, in which the emotional experience conveyed in the poem can be “lived” by the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations of summary This is a paper showing how a concept central to the work of Wilfred Bion, and one of Klein's important recommendations concerning the practice of analysis with adults and small children, can both be seen in the light of Freud's earliest formulation of the origin of anxiety and the mother's first responses to her infant in distress. In the paper I suggest that these clinically influential concepts of Klein and Bion show an underlying consistency and affinity with Freud's early ideas about the management of anxiety in the mother-infant relationship, described in two of his pre-psychoanalytic writings, How Anxiety Originates (1894b), and The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1950 [1895]). The specific mode of operation of psychoanalytic interpretation is clarified by the comparisons made, with no attempt to suggest that Klein or Bion based their concepts upon these particular early formulations of Freud's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations of summary This paper attempts to elaborate a fundamental brain mechanism involved in the creation and maintenance of symbolic fields of thought. It will integrate theories of psychic spaces as explored by Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion with the neuroscientific examinations of those with bilateral hippocampal injury to show how evidence from both disciplines sheds important light on this aspect of mind. Possibly originating as a way of maintaining an oriented, first person psychic map, this capacity allows individuals a dynamic narrative access to a realm of layered elements and their connections. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, the hippocampus facilitates the integration of this symbolic field of mind, where narrative forms of thinking, creativity, memory, and dreaming are intertwined. Without the hippocampus, there is an inability to engage many typical forms of thought itself. Also, noting the ways these individuals are not impaired supports theories about other faculties of mind, providing insight into their possible roles within human thought. The evidence of different systems working in conjunction with the symbolic field provides tantalizing clues about these fundamental mechanisms of brain and mind that are normally seamlessly integrated, and hints at future areas of clinical and laboratory research, both within neuroscience and psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the violence of emotions and the violent retaliation against the mind as a way of protecting oneself against overwhelming pain. Leaning on Bion's thinking, it is suggested that violence may be an outcome of a quantity of excitation that the individual is unable to elaborate mentally. This violence is often dormant, covered by a veneer of civilization. Thus, in analysis we may repeatedly be deluded by the patient's seemingly non-psychotic functioning. Prenatal experiences that were never mentally registered serve as a model for overwhelming, undreamt and undreamable experience, which may be encapsulated in an unrepressed unconscious. Such unmentalized emotional experience may be forcibly discharged, either outward through physical violence, perversions, addictions, etc., or inward into the body. However, it is not only the overwhelming experience that one tries to expel, but also the perceiving mind itself, which is attacked and fragmented in order to evade awareness of an intolerable emotional reality. Detailed clinical material will illustrate the temptation to remain blind to the violent emotions lurking behind, and the massive forces, in both analyst and patient, working against getting in touch with painful psychic reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer Gynt, the main character in Ibsen's dramatic poem from 1867, has fascinated scholars since its publication. After a lifetime of escapades, Peer finds himself lonely, detached and with feelings of deadness. Gradually, the underlying structure of his personality confronts him. With the help of Wilfred Bion's ideas, it is possible to trace a distinct pattern, where unprocessed thoughts seem to play a decisive role in hindering Peer's self-realization. The main female character, Solveig, spends her life waiting for Peer. Eventually she develops into a container, ready to welcome Peer's stray thoughts. This paper demonstrates how she evolves Bionian capacities like reverie, and eschewing of memory and desire. The interpretation that follows thus challenges a tradition where Solveig is seen as a romantic figure who, like Goethe's Gretchen, is designed to save the male protagonist by unconditional love. This paper argues that Solveig plays a more active role towards Peer in offering significant tools for personal development. The paper concludes that Ibsen and Bion have uncovered elements of basic human conditions that in some significant ways seem to coincide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a novel interpretation of family secrets. Leaning on Bion's concept of -K, the constitution of secrecy is interpreted in terms of family dynamics that actively prevent knowledge formation and mental growth. Family secrets are interpreted as a destructive process that attacks the family's truth-generating-space - the shared semiotic space within which meanings are constituted through family relationships. The paper explores the microstructure interpersonal process of -K through the analysis of Mike Leigh's movie, Secrets and Lies. Two scenes in the movie are used to demonstrate how -K is worked out in the form of a specific intersubjective semiotic endeavor that unconsciously blocks the process of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations of summary This interdisciplinary article takes a philosophical approach to The Interpretation of Dreams, connecting Freud to one of the few philosophers with whom he sometimes identified - Immanuel Kant. It aims to show that Freud's theory of dreams has more in common with Bion's later thoughts on dreaming than is usually recognized. Distinguishing, via a discussion of Kant, between the conflicting 'epistemological' and 'anthropological' aspects of The Interpretation of Dreams, it shows that one specific contradiction in the book - concerning the relation between dream-work and waking thought - can be understood in terms of the tension between these conflicting aspects. Freud reaches the explicit conclusion that the dream-work and waking thought differ from each other absolutely; but the implicit conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams is quite the opposite. This article argues that the explicit conclusion is the result of the epistemological aspects of the book; the implicit conclusion, which brings Freud much closer to Bion, the result of the anthropological approach. Bringing philosophy and psychoanalysis together this paper thus argues for an interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams that is in some ways at odds with the standard view of the book, while also suggesting that aspects of Kant's 'anthropological' works might legitimately be seen as a precursor of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author shows that human beings have two quasi-instinctual primitive tendencies - namely, the compulsion to confess and the compulsion to judge (to condemn or to absolve). These compulsions are originally unconscious and become conscious during the course of the analytic process. The compulsion to judge is a natural consequence of the compulsion to confess. These two tendencies are intensified by the analytic situation. The patient has a compulsion to confess to the analyst and to himself, and likewise the analyst has a compulsion to confess to himself and to the patient. The patient therefore has a compulsion to judge himself as good or bad and to judge the analyst as good or bad while, on the other hand, the analyst has a compulsion to judge himself as good or bad and to judge the patient as good or bad. The task of analysis is to make both patient and analyst conscious of their compulsions to confess and to judge (to condemn or to absolve). The compulsion to judge in the analyst, particularly if unconscious, may give rise to mistakes in diagnosis, technique, treatment, and the assessment of analysability. The requirement of analytic neutrality in the analyst constantly conflicts with his compulsion to judge. If we are profoundly involved in our patient's dramatic conflict, we are bound to pass a judgement (condemnation or absolution); however, when we judge, we are not neutral and therefore become incapable of intellectual consciousness of the patient's conflict. Conversely, if we do not judge, we are neutral, but are then relatively uninvolved in the patient's conflict and are hence virtually unable to achieve emotional consciousness. The author attempts to show that neutrality cannot and must not be a preconstituted attitude in the analyst, but can and must be a point of arrival following a profound, intensely felt existential experience based on an attitude of non-condemnation and non-absolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]