Transformations continues the investigation of various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and practice which the author commenced with Learning from Experience (1962) and pursued in Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963). In this third work published in 1965, the author examines the ways in which the analyst's description of the original analytic experience, mediated by theory, necessarily transforms it in the course of effecting an interpretation.

Wilfred R. Bion is considered a ground-breaking psychoanalyst. His thinking is rooted in Freud and Klein from where it takes an original flight. Reading Bion shows the evolution of his seminal insights in psychic functioning and puts them in a wider context. Rudi Vermote integrates a chronological close reading and discussion of Bion’s texts, with a comprehensive approach of his major concepts. The book is divided in two main parts: Transformation in Knowledge: Bion’s odyssey to understand psychic processing or the mind Transformation in O: in which Bion reinterprets his former concepts from the dimension of the unknown and unknowable The running text is put against a background of biographical data and scientific, artistic and philosophical influences on his work, which are highlighted in boxes and separate chapters. Bion’s concepts are important for anyone dealing with the mind. His ideas have an ongoing deep impact on psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychopathology. His concepts help to understand psychic change, creativity, individual psychodynamics and small and large-group phenomena. The discovery of their value for studies on art, literature, sociology, religion, economics has just begun. Reading Bion starts from the very beginning so that it is instructive for people who are new to his work, but the close reading and background information make it a meaningful companion for experienced psychoanalysts and psychotherapists studying his work.

Reading Bion's Transformations is an in-depth reading of Bion’s 1965 work, Transformations, and investigates the epistemological concept of "O" introduced by Bion. Throughout the book, Bion’s conceptual and unconventional text is discussed step-by-step, with a focus on the first three and last three chapters. The epistemological references are highlighted and analysed, allowing the reader insight into how to do a deconstructive psychoanalytic reading, acknowledging that Bion raised psychoanalytical thought and practice to new levels. The authors’ reading both de-focuses and re-focuses several theoretical statutes of O discussed by Bion in 1965. Reading Bion’s Transformations is an essential read for those approaching Bion’s work for the first time, as well as those seeking to better understand his theories and the metapsychological and epistemological impact of the concept of transformation within psychoanalysis.

Considers the concept of the container and the contained.

This book focuses on Samuel Beckett's psychoanalytic psychotherapy with W. R. Bion as a central aspect both of Beckett's and Bion's radical transformations of literature and psychoanalysis. The recent publication of Beckett's correspondence during the period of his psychotherapy with Bion provides a starting place for an imaginative reconstruction of this psychotherapy, culminating with Bion's famous invitation to his patient to dinner and a lecture by C.G. Jung. Following from the course of this psychotherapy, Miller and Souter trace the development of Beckett's radical use of clinical psychoanalytic method in his writing, suggesting the development within his characters of a literary-analytic working through of transference to an idealized auditor known by various names, apparently based on Bion. Miller and Souter link this pursuit to Beckett's breakthrough from prose to drama, as the psychology of projective identification is transformed to physical enactment.

Wilfred R. Bion was one of the foremost psychoanalysts of his generation, whose work has shaped and enriched psychoanalysis and psychotherapy indelibly. Renowned for some highly original and sometimes cryptic ideas, such as the alpha function and theory of the grid, Learning from Experience is arguably his most important and enduring work. Bion brings knowledge into the psychoanalytic spotlight. What forces, he asks, interfere with knowledge? Crucially, Bion doesn't mean knowing only facts, but the lifelong process of understanding and coming to know things that is a consequence of the development of knowledge. However, Learning From Experience is perhaps best-known for its emphasis on the way emotion and knowledge are interwoven. Bion links the emotional capacity to develop and know to the capacity to tolerate frustration: if we can hold ourselves in check whilst we endure frustration, then we can come to know things. A remarkable and brilliant work by a fascinating psychoanalyst and thinker, Learning From Experience continues to inspire psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Robert Hinshelwood.

The final book in the three-volume series, A Clinical Application of Bion's Concepts - a practical companion to the dictionary of concepts The Language of Bion - is divided in four main parts. Part I, through the aid of a transdisciplinary study between psycho-analysis, mathematics, and physics, proposes four expanded variations of Bion's epistemological tool, The Grid. This was construed around an Euclidean space represented graphically by two dimensions constantly conjoined: the dimension of Functions of the Ego with the dimension of Psycho-genetics of thought processes. Bion's tool, by its own design, allows possibilities of development with regards to its ability to scrutinize the 'truth-value' of statements issued both by patients and analysts in the space-time, or the 'here and now' of psycho-analytic sessions or groups of sessions. The proposal is made though three steps; each one adds a subsequent dimension to the earlier one considered. The first step constitutes a Tri-dimension Grid; the added dimension is the Intensity of phenomena observed though the aid of the two dimension, original Grid. From this is proposed a Four-dimension Grid, which examines the evolution of the session with another dimension, added to the three already mentioned: the dimension of Time. Developing out from this, is proposed the a Six-dimension Grid, with the aid of more recent developments which allow a more precise examination of the space-time unit as observed by mathematicians and physicians. Finally, in order to better illuminate the complexity of mental functioning, there is proposed a Multi-dimension Grid. There is a detailed clinical illustration to furnish an example of the use of the Grid.Part II is a study of the most elemental bearings of the psycho-analytic clinic - free associations and free floating attention - which evolves from the study of Dreams, under the contributions of Bion (presented in volume I), as well as from the study of the analytic function and the function of the analyst (presented in volume II). In Part III Sandler shows how the pursuit of truth can be seen as one of the purposes of the psycho-analytic investigation in the clinic; a transdisciplinary study is presented, to assist the practicing analyst, around epistemological issues. Freud and Bion's contributions to it are scrutinized under some lights hitherto unused in the psycho-analytic literature. Part IV presents Sandler's proposals for expanding the observational power of existing Bion's theories; in this part another basic assumption, based on the original three proposed by Bion, is described, in connection with his contributions to the study of hallucinosis.