Bion's Concepts Research Articles

Psychosomatic symptoms and the group mind

In this work, we propose a model, designed to understand mental symptoms and adapted for the analysis of psychosomatic symptoms, to be used as a tool to represent group phenomena, named the 'group mind'. A revision of the relevant literature on the concept of 'group mind' and psychosomatics, and the presentation of the Cambridge model. We describe how unformatted experiences can appear as somatization, and how this process can be corrected via mental representations. Group dynamics can function creating these representations and thus contribute to solving psychosomatic symptoms. We refer to W. R. Bion's concepts, mainly the ones on proto-thoughts and the proto-mental system, comparing them to the proposed model and giving a foundation to this conceptual representation. We illustrate with four cases of clinical interaction. Psychotherapeutic groups are privileged places to comprehend and transform psychosomatic symptoms. The Cambridge model allows a representation of these processes. Further studies are necessary to assess its validity, test its adequacy, and expand its possibilities.

Experiencing the shadow of the future

This text was written for a panel with the ambitious title “With Bion to the future.” Can we tell something about the future? Can we apply this to the future of psychoanalysis? And are some of Bion's concepts of any help to such questions? Bion, following Freud, tells us that the caesura between present and future is not so great. The shadow of the future is present. So how can we read this shadow with Bion as a companion? We may see the future as consisting of many probable evolutions – like an infinite number of virtual lines, growth curves or probability lines only one of which is becoming real. Which lines will develop; which seeds will grow? And is our mind equipped to have an idea of this?

Death and the Dynamics of Group Life

This article reports qualitative analysis of data collected during psychoanalytically orientated group sessions after the death of members. This group, based in group analytic and existentialist theoretical perspectives, is for women with advanced breast cancer. We ask: how and why does the group keep going, even as its members leave it through death? Our interest in understanding the therapeutic factors generated by the co-therapists, group members, and the group as a whole is assisted by Winnicott (1956, 1960) and Bion's (1959) concepts of holding and containment. These concepts are used to examine the therapists' role—containers for creating a thinking space where unknowable and unthinkable thoughts can be transformed into something bearable and creative.

Bion's Model of the Mind

The author sets out to locate Bion's model of the mind within the developmental history of psychoanalysis, from Freud to Klein to Bion, using biographical material and clinical case examples, to illustrate Bion's concepts of container/contained, his understanding and use of projective identification, his extension of the use of the countertransference, and his differentiation between the psychotic and non-psychotic aspects of the mind. Links, and attacks against linking are discussed, as well as Bion's thoughts about learning versus knowing, being versus becoming and his emphasis on the essential importance of the development of the capacity to think.

The present and absent object—on thinking and the capacity to symbolize

In this paper, Bion's different theories on the development of thinking will be introduced: on the one hand, his theory of thoughts as resulting from tolerance for the absence of the object, and on the other hand, dream thoughts and thoughts as resulting from the presence of the object, originally through the mother's containing function. The effects of failures in this development will be discussed; among other things, a hypertrophy of the apparatus of projective identification at the expense of thinking capacities. Briefly, a comparison will be made between a facilitating relation between container and contained and the oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, which Bion describes as a prerequisite for open symbolizing processes. Bion's theories and concepts will be supplemented by Winnicott's theories on the “creative illusion” and the breast/the mother as a “subjective object” as a precondition for the symbolizing capacity that later develops in the “potential space”. Very briefly, a comparison is made between Winnicott's term “the subjective object” and Segal's term “symbolic equation”. Clinical vignettes are interpolated.

Experiences in K and -K

In this paper the author explores and expands Bion's concepts of K and ‐K and delineates the nature of the relationship between the two. While Bion views envy as a principal motivating force for –K, his conception of –K goes considerably beyond this. The author explores manifestations of –K not driven by envy and, consequently, not necessarily pathological or pathogenic. –K is viewed by the author as a psychological process, which may serve many functions, including the communication of the patient's fear that knowing will bring on psychological catastrophe. –K, under circumstances that he describes, may serve to protect the individual's sense of continuity of being. The need to know the truth (K) may be at odds with the need to survive psychically, for example, when a person fears that the truth will kill him, or those he loves and depends upon. This idea is explored in two ways: first, by means of a discussion of the Oedipus myth in which Oedipus attempts to evade knowing for fear of recognizing that a prophesied catastrophe has already occurred; and, second, by means of a clinical exploration of the confiict between the need to know and the need to survive. The author discusses his analytic work with a severely disturbed patient for whom not knowing was felt to be essential to her psychic survival. Her need not to know reached a point where she psychically obliterated the analyst through the use of negative hallucination.

The Social Unconscious Reflected in Politics, Organizations and Groups: A Case of Overseas Group Analysis Training

The aim of this article is to study the impact of parallel processes operating in the overlapping dimensions of history, politics, society, organization, staff and group participants. The focus of the article is the effort to try and make personal sense of and reach a professional understanding of an annihilating, painful process that took place due to combined forces, which will also be examined. These forces, which are of an unconscious, preconscious and conscious character, are very powerful and still exist. Bion's concepts of alpha and beta elements, as applied to organizations, and Nitsun's concept of the anti-group will be discussed as theoretical background that can explain some of the destructive forces. Some moderating factors essential to processes of survival and re-creation and other conclusions will also be discussed.

A preoccupation with object-representation: the Beckett-Bion case revisited.

Taking issue with the notion of a profound reciprocal influence of Samuel Beckett and his analyst, Wilfred Bion, based on supposition all too often passed as fact, the author refutes the idea that Bion's 'Attacks on linking' was based on his later-to-be famous patient. Choosing, rather, to apply Bion's concepts of transformation and assaults on verbal thought to Beckett's remarkably visual and highly dissociative writing, she finds in the analyst's work a means of exploring a startling preoccupation with object representation and an anxiety of remembrance constant throughout the writer's texts. Is this fixation attributable only to aesthetic strategy or does it say something about the writer's own inner representational world? Relating the writer's obsession to Bion's concepts and, moreover, its dissociative expression to the decathexis and blank mourning explored by Green, she uncovers within it a reflection of the kind of evocative memory disturbance identified with primary dyadic dysfunction. This application of Bion and Green to Beckett veers distinctly less towards psychohistory, however, than to how sublimation has rendered this object-relational failure an aesthetic success.

A preoccupation with object‐representation: The Beckett‐Bion case revisited

Taking issue with the notion of a profound reciprocal influence of Samuel Beckett and his analyst, Wilfred Bion, based on supposition all too often passed as fact, the author refutes the idea that Bion's ‘Attacks on linking’ was based on his later‐to‐be famous patient. Choosing, rather, to apply Bion's concepts of transformation and assaults on verbal thought to Beckett's remarkably visual and highly dissociative writing, she finds in the analyst's work a means of exploring a startling preoccupation with object representation and an anxiety of remembrance constant throughout the writer's texts. Is this fixation attributable only to aesthetic strategy or does it say something about the writer's own inner representational world? Relating the writer's obsession to Bion's concepts and, moreover, its dissociative expression to the decathexis and blank mourning explored by Green, she uncovers within it a reflection of the kind of evocative memory disturbance identified with primary dyadic dysfunction. This application of Bion and Green to Beckett veers distinctly less towards psychohistory, however, than to how sublimation has rendered this object‐relational failure an aesthetic success.

Shifting Dialogues

The article focuses on landscape impressions as a catalyst to start inner progress and creative innovation. The author uses the presumption that a work of art can act as an intermediary and testimony of specific states of mind. Two painters are presented, one contemporary and one from the turn of the last century. The difficulties in describing the origin of a painting and its coming into existence is considered and discussed. The object in view of the article is to point to the practicability of some aspects of psychoanalytical theories in the descriptions of the artistic creative process, of the relation viewer and work of art, of the studio dialogues between artist and viewer in front of the works. Objects relations theory, WR Bion's concepts of reverie, binocular viewing and negative capability, A Ehrenzweig's description of the different stages of the creative process, his positive accentuation of the role of the unconscious, the alternation between dedifferentiation and differentiation and need for the artist to go beyond the known, to be able to loose control of the work and let the painting 'live its life' is central. Art gives its own poetic imprints, not always accessible in words.

The primordial mind and the work of the negative.

This paper was given at the celebration of Bion's centennial in 1997. At the request of the organisers of this conference, the work of Bion has been brought into perspective with the author's. The author has chosen to illumine Bion's concept of the primordial mind and considers the transformation of the beta-elements into the alpha ones. He also refers to Bion's distinction of thoughts without thinker and thinking as needing thoughts to be thought by a thinker (thinking apparatus). The main point of the paper is Bion's opposition of 'nothing' and 'no thing'. The author refers to Freud's paper on 'Negation'. He recalls his own model of the double limit. He tries to show how Freud's conception of representation has a much wider field than is usually stated. He emphasises differences between Freud's and Bion's 'basic assumptions'. After having tried to clarify Bion's ideas on 'O', 'K and -K', he recalls Bion's reference to Keats's negative capability. The author then gives a short account of his own concept of the 'work of the negative', finding correspondences with Bion's own concepts. As a conclusion two Indian myths are recalled for their great symbolic value.

Sense and Non-sense: Phenomenology, Buddhist and Psychoanalytic

The author uses and extends Wilfred Bion's concepts of “invariance” and “transformation” to discuss the integration of Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Observable descriptive similarities between Buddhism and psychoanalysis, according to the author, function as artifacts that can overlay and obscure the primary subjective and experiential nature that the two disciplines have in common. The author discusses the nonpathological nature of unitive experiences and argues that over-emphasis on technical similarities can function as a resistance to deepening unitive experiences with patients. The terms “sense,” “non-sense,” and “no-sense” function as neutral words with which to discuss basic ineffable and unknowable experiences that both systems can access. The author comments on the concepts of faith and spirit in relation to both disciplines. The integration of Buddhism and psychoanalysis, for individuals who practice both disciplines, according to the author, is primarily an internal process. An unrelenting search for lived truths forms the basis of this process.

Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread

This paper describes some features of the behaviour of a severely disturbed adopted latency boy. Peter was born premature, suffered several early hospitalizations and surgical operations, and at 2 months of age was removed from his mother's care by Social Services for neglect and abandonment.Although his subsequent development has been clouded by a series of losses and sudden changes of caregivers, Peter has maintained an unexpected desire to relate, showing considerable innate resilience. When feeling endangered, Peter had developed a defensive olfactive container using his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together.In the paper Fordham's views of development and Anzieu's concept of psychic envelopes constitute the theoretical underpinning. Bion's concepts of beta‐ and alpha‐elements are discussed in relation to Jung's views on symbolic development and psychological containment.

Narcoleptic States in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

ABSTRACTIn this paper narcoleptic states refer to states of drowsiness or sleep that occur both within the patient and the psychotherapist during a psychoanalytic psychotherapy session. The meaning is explored of recurring narcolepsy in a female patient for a period of four and a half years during her psychotherapy. The concept of internal cohabitation, which is a development of Bion's concepts of psychotic and non‐psychotic personalities, is used to understand the narcoleptic phenomena in both patient and therapist and to explain the changes that took place in the patient.

Cohabitation and the negative therapeutic reaction

SUMMARY Borderline and psychotic patients especially, but not exclusively, show genuine motivation towards achieving insight and change and then suddenly behave as if these have never been desired. When this shift occurs after a helpful interpretation it can be thought of as a negative therapeutic reaction. Patients can feel taken over by perceptions which drive them to think and behave in ways they later disagree with. These observations have led the author, along with colleagues at the Willesden Centre for Psychological Treatment, to recognise a situation of internal cohabitation of two autonomous minds in the one body which is a development of but not identical to Bion's concepts of psychotic and non-psychotic personalities. Some of the psychoanalytic literature on the different modes of mental functioning are reviewed and problems of appropriate conceptualisations are discussed. Clinical examples are presented to illustrate that differentiating the genuine negative therapeutic reaction from reactions to poor interpretations is facilitated and leads to further understanding of the patient's psychotic personality if the psychotherapist can hold in mind both the patient's and the therapist's psychotic and non-psychotic personalities.

Bion's Concepts of Psychosis

Bion's Concepts of Psychosis