Nuno Torres (editor) - Bions Sources: The shaping of his paradigms

Bions Sources

There are an increasing number of publications concerned with the work of Wilfred Bion (18971979). Many have sought new ideas from his writing; however, little attention has been paid to the intellectual context in which Bion wrote.

Bions Sources traces where Bions new ideas came from, what job he required of them, how successfully he used his context and how that has fertilised psychoanalysis. Expert contributors provide chapters on areas of the intellectual context separate from or adjacent to clinical psychoanalysis in Britain which have clearly influenced the texts Bion left (those published in his lifetime, or subsequently). Chapters explore the influences deriving from Wilfred Trotter, Henri Bergson and process philosophy, Kurt Lewin and group dynamics, Immanuel Kant, R.B. Braithwaite and the philosophy of science, the mathematics of notation and transformation, as well as the work of psychoanalysts who have applied their theories to social science, psychosomatics, and literature and the humanities.

By contextualising Bion in the wider culture of ideas, and removing him from the exclusive world of psychoanalysis, Bions Sources aims to moderate his genius by showing how it was shaped by very wide influences. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, clinicians and those interested in the history of psychoanalytic ideas.

Nuno Torres is a clinical psychologist, researcher and lecturer at ISPA-IU in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a fellow of the Research Training Program of the International Psychoanalytic Association, a member of the Society for Psychotherapy Research and a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex.

R.D. Hinshelwood is Professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has authored numerous books and articles. Observing Organisations (2000) was edited with Wilhelm Skogstad and is among a number of texts he has written on psychoanalytic applications to social science.

Bions Sources

The shaping of his paradigms

Edited by Nuno Torres and R.D. Hinshelwood

First published 2013

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Nuno Torres and Robert Hinshelwood

The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Bions sources : the shaping of his paradigms / edited by Nuno Torres and Robert Hinshelwood.

pages cm

Includes index.

1. Bion, Wilfred R. |q (Wilfred Ruprecht), 18971979Criticism and interpretation. 2. Psychoanalysis. I. Torres, Nuno, editor of compilation. II. Hinshelwood, R. D., editor of compilation.

RC438.6.B54B56 2013

ISBN: 978-0-415-53208-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-53209-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-55606-1 (ebk)

Contributors

Matt ffytche is a Lecturer in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. He has written on the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, with a particular attention to modernism, and to poetry, including (2010) Objects and How to Survive Them: Several Views of John Wilkinsons Saccades , Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2 (1), 734, and (2010) The Modernist Road to the Unconscious, in Peter Brooker, Andrzej Gasiorek, Deborah Longworth and Andrew Thacker (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 410428. His most recent publication, Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche (Cambridge University Press, 2011) is a work of intellectual history examining the emergence of a concept of the unconscious in German philosophy and psychology in the early nineteenth century.

Bob Harris is an Independent Consultant Psychotherapist and group analyst. He supervises clinical staff in a variety of contexts and teaches psychotherapy in the UK and abroad. He is a musician, and has special interest in the arts. He is formerly Director of Programmes at the Institute of Group Analysis, a regular conference speaker, the author of many journal articles and Working with Distressed Young People, Learning Matters/SAGE 2011.

R.D. Hinshelwood is Professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and previously Clinical Director, The Cassel Hospital, London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has authored A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (1989) and other books and articles on Kleinian psychoanalysis. Observing Organisations (2000) was edited with Wilhelm Skogstad and is among a number of texts on psychoanalytic applications to social science. He founded the British Journal of Psychotherapy, and Psychoanalysis and History. He has recently completed Research on the Couch: Single Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge (Routledge 2013).

William J. Massicotte is a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and is engaged in full-time private practice in Montreal. His McGill PhD was done on psychoanalysis with a special emphasis on Bion. He is a philosopher who developed an interest in aspects of mathematics while doing his MA on Husserl (a mathematician turned philosopher). He has held many administrative positions and is currently the Co-Chair for North America of the IPAs Public Information Committee. He also teaches at the Montreal and Ottawa psychoanalytic institutes.

Kelly Noel-Smith combines a career in law with an academic interest in psychoanalysis. A partner in a London law firm, she is currently completing her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London, on Freuds theory of time and the ancient Greek influence. Her publications include: Harry Potters Oedipal Issues (Psychoanalytic Studies 3: 199207, 2001); and Time and Space as Necessary Forms of Thought (Free Associations Vol. 9 Part 3 (no. 51): 394442).

Malcolm Pines FRCP, FRCPsych, DPM[dist]. Past positions: consultant at The Cassel Hospital, St Georges Hospital, The Maudsley Hospital, The Tavistock Clinic. Past president, The International Association of Group Psychotherapy; founder member, The Institute of Group Analysis London; former member British Psychoanalytical Society, and chair of its Publications Committee. Until recently, editor, Group Analysis. Collected papers: Circular Reflections