'This book offers a definitive reading of Bion's remarkable autobiographical writings from a perspective embedded in the poetry of the ages, that of the Romantics in particular. It is at once learned and, utterly freshly, able to explore the inside story of Bion's life and mind. The volume is a distillation and elaboration of the work of many years. Whilst ostensibly an extended commentary on the autobiographical works themselves, it is also, in its own right, a tour de force, engaging, as it does, with the heart of the matter: with the development of a psychoanalyst, of a life, a self, a mind, thoroughly inward with the "dark and sombre world of thought".'- Margot Waddell, psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

Through a richly detailed close reading of Wilfred R. Bion’s work on dreaming, as scattered across multifarious and largely unworked texts, this book argues that Bion’s thinking can form a unified theory of dreams which extends and has further implications as a visionary model of the mind. The central quality of Bion's visionary model of the mind is the belief that all that is interesting in the human mind pulsates with an unreadably complex dynamic beyond the unknown, the unknowable and the unthinkable. However, rather than interpreting this negatively, the author understands the inevitable unknowability of the human mind as a call to perplexity and wonder which actively encourages the intuition of fundamental insights into who and what determines our internal lives. A major implication of this belief is that psychoanalysis is itself essentially about the unknown, and Monteiro generates informed observations about how this may influence psychoanalytic work. Providing renewed insight into psychoanalytical understandings of dreams, this book is essential reading for any psychoanalyst wishing to broaden their knowledge of the importance of Wilfred R. Bion’s dream work.

Psychoanalysis and Dreams explores some of the cornerstones of Antonino Ferro’s theoretical model but also attempts to extend the dreamlike boundaries of the model. Based on Bion’s theory of alpha function and the analytic field, Ferro has developed his own original theorization of transformations in dreams and of work in the analytic session as a waking dream. Clearly highlighted in the book is Ferro’s theory that transformation in dreams is the activity which is constantly carried out in the mind of the analyst, who nullifies the reality-status of the patient’s communication and considers the patient’s narrative as a dream which must be constructed in real time in the encounter between the two minds at work. At the centre of Ferro's theoretical proposal stands the transition from a psychoanalysis of contents to a psychoanalysis which develops the apparatus for thinking, based on the conception of an unconscious in a perennial state of construction and transformation, which must be dreamed, and which continuously expands as it is dreamed. Psychoanalysis and Dreams is written for practicing and training psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists and will be helpful in everyday psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic work.

This is a book of 365 quotes from the work of the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. Something of an enigma, Bion often doesn't write in the way one would expect of a psychoanalyst, but is being read ever-increasingly around the world, in and outside the psychoanalytic community. Certain of his comments are often quoted, whilst swathes of his work lie almost untouched. How to make some of the detail of this work available? What he writes is often dense in the way the structure of a poem can be, and the book has the format of a 'poem a day' collection – providing a way into his complete work one quote at a time. Alongside commentaries by Abel-Hirsch are thoughts on Bion's work drawn from papers by other analysts from the UK, the Americas, and Europe. The book is structured in a way that will inform and interest the general reader as well as giving something new to psychoanalysts and others who already know his work well.

Wilfred Bion remains the most cited author in psychoanalytic literature after Sigmund Freud. His formulation of alpha function, waking dream thoughts, his theory of thinking and of the container/contained have proven seminal for the elaboration of psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the exploration of psychic functioning and the primordial mind. Growth Turbulence in the Container/Contained is based on papers presented at the 2009 International Bion Conference held in Boston, Massachusetts. It represents the state of the art thinking of an outstanding international group of Bion scholars and experts. This book includes the most current trends in Bion scholarship, covering topics that range from the historical/biographical, to the clinical, the theoretical, the developmental, to the cultural and aesthetic. Proving a vital stimulus to further creative explorations in the field, Growth Turbulence in the Container/Contained will be of particular interest to psychoanalytic practitioners, graduate psychoanalysts, analytic candidates, psychoanalytic therapists, advanced therapy trainees,and scholars of all schools.

This work depicts clinical applications stemming from Dr Wilfred Ruprecht Bion's contributions to psychoanalysis. It may be used as a practical companion to The Language of Bion: A Dictionary of Concepts also by P.C. Sandler. Both constitute a natural arrangement of Bion's concepts; "natural" being the help the selected concepts may provide to any analyst who understands and uses the observations underlying the concepts effectively in his or her everyday clinical work. It also contains expansions of Bion's concepts arising out of clinical observations, made possible by those very contributions - a common-sense invariant in science. Universes of hitherto unknown - but existing - facts are observed, and through observation and application expanding universes are unlocked to consciousness (and therefore awareness). Some chapters will help the reader understand Bion's original concepts and apply them in clinical practice. Other chapters are more explicit and go beyond what was adumbrated or indicated by Bion, in the light of phenomena observed against the background of Bion's contributions. These chapters also indicate the intertwined nature of his contributions.

Considering that introductory books cannot replace an author's original words,and that Bion’ s concepts are often found to be difficult to grasp, Dr Sandler has compiled an unusual style of dictionary. He assembles. He assembles relevant quotations from Bion's texts together with the meaning of concepts and their place in the history of their development.