Psychoanalytic theory has developed very rapidly in recent years across many schools of thought. One of the most popular builds on the work of Wilfred Bion. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis provides a concise and comprehensive introductory overview of the latest thinking in this area, with additional contemporary theoretical influences from Freud, Klein, and Winnicottian thought. Through explorations of the history, theory, and clinical practice of psychoanalysis, Ferro and contributors reveal the changes and developments it has undergone in the research laboratory of the consulting room. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis brings together the theories, clinical practice, and techniques that have gradually been developed in a variety of cultural contexts, exploring how they are understood, clarified and enriched by various analysts in daily practice. The book is circular, opening many paths of access to the reader. It aims to revive an experience of creative dialogue exactly as occurs in analysis when two minds think and dream together to transform each other reciprocally. The book sets forth, for instance, a new model of the mind called the oneiric model, taking inspiration from Bion’s conceptualizations and field theory. Covering central psychoanalytic concepts such as transference, dreams and child analysis, this book provides an excellent introduction to the most important contemporary features of Bionian theory and practice. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis will appeal to ppsychoanalysts and psychotherapists in training and practice, as well as students of psychiatry and psychology.

This book touches upon many of the key areas of contemporary psychoanalysis: setting, technique, theory, as well as post-Bionian models and the 'Bionian Field Theory'. It is meant to be a self-defence handbook for new, usually young, analysts.

This exciting and original collection explores Antonino Ferro’s post-Bionian Field Theory, expanding upon the analytic work of Wilfred Bion to focus on the intersubjective development of psychic regulatory processes. Written by members of the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies who have maintained a close and fruitful collaboration with Ferro and his colleagues, the book centers on understanding, engaging and treating primitive mental states. Ferro's Field Theory operationalizes Bion’s concept of an analyst who is not the repository of ‘the truth’, but is instead one who has the capacity to listen, to dwell in doubt, to utilize reverie, humor and play, and facilitate the transformation of previously unthinkable aspects of the patient’s experience into articulatable mental elements such as pictorial images, thoughts and dreams. Ferro’s contributions and their analysis are especially relevant to working with primitive character disorders, the difficulties of which lie beyond neurosis and the comfortable reach of the precepts of classical analytic technique. Each chapter features detailed clinical examples that explicate and apply post-Bionian Field Theory, making this book an interesting and useful read for analysts and analytic therapists of all orientations, who work with patients in all diagnostic categories.

This book examines the importance and continued relevance of A Memoir of the Future in understanding and applying Bion’s work to contemporary psychoanalysis. Bion continued to innovate throughout his life, but the Memoir has been largely overlooked. Focusing on A Memoir of the Future is not only of deep interest in terms of the author’s biography, or even only in function of a better understanding of his theoretical concepts, but can also be considered, for all intents and purposes, the final chapter of an ingenious creative enterprise While by some it was thought as the evidence of Bion’s presumed senility, this book challenges that perspective, arguing that it represents the last challenge he issued to the psychoanalytic Establishment. In each chapter, the authors explore this notion that A Memoir forms an essential part of Bion’s theory, and that in it he establishes a new ‘aesthetic’ psychoanalytic paradigm. With an international list of distinguished authors, this is a key book for any analysts interested in a comprehensive understanding of Bion’s work.

In The Violence of Emotions the author marries an ability to introduce the reader to the intimate climate of an analytic session with a passionate rereading of Bion. To emphasize both the empirical nature of psychoanalysis and its extraordinary capacity to engender illuminating hypotheses concerning the functioning of the mind, clinical examples alternate with theoretical argument. The psychoanalytic model espoused by Giuseppe Civitarese in his approach to both is analytic field theory. Developed by various authors, including Ferro, commencing with Bion and continued with contributions from the Barangers, Grotstein and Ogden, the theory of the analytic field reveals the social nature of subjectivity and, in clinical work, the intersubjective and dreamlike climate in which a psychoanalytic session unfolds. This leads to a new way of interpreting the facts of analysis. As such, topics of discussion include: transcending the caesura as Bion’s theoretical method hypochondria as de-subjectivation and narrative genre in analysis the aesthetic conflict and alfa function Bion’s search for ambiguity the casting of characters in the analytic dialogue metaphor of text and translation in Freud and Bion. Yet the book has an even more specific objective, focusing attention as it does on the central importance of emotions in mental life and of aesthetic experience as the model of what truly happens in analysis. This is an aspect which the author rediscovers and explores in the thought of Bion and his successors, and which he regards as a way of investigating the deepest and most primitive levels of mental life. This book will be of great interest to psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists.

This comprehensive volume presents Richard M. Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychotherapy, along with summaries and explications by the volume’s editor, Tzachi Slonim. Through their behavior, therapists define the clinical culture: how relationships are to be regarded and the depth to which narratives and exchanges may be considered. Known for his integration of Bion’s metapsychology with contemporary psychoanalysis, Billow extends our understanding of "relational" to include the emotional relationships people have with individual and collective ideas, and the behaviors attached to these ideas. "Doing our work" (the title of the last section) involves the therapist’s whole being, including cognitions, dreams, words, deeds, and very presence—mental and somatic. Drawing on Lacan, Billow suggests that therapeutic work ought to include a willingness to penetrate other minds with provocative, controversial ideas. His clinical vignettes portray a masterly clinician-in-action, describing his evolving feelings, thoughts, and assessments. Billow’s intimate knowledge of Bionian theory, coupled with his down-to-earth demeanour and clear writing, allows him to explicate and expand upon Bion’s important contributions in a manner accessible to the novice and expert therapist alike. With one eye on therapeutic process, and the other on each participant including the therapist himself, Billow invites each of us to change our minds.

This book provides a clear introduction to the main contemporary psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives. Psychoanalysis is often thought of as an obscure and outdated method, and yet those familiar with it recognize the profound value of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Part of the obscurity may come from psychoanalytic language itself, which is often impenetrable. The complexity of the subject matter has lent itself to a confusion of tongues and yet, at base, psychoanalysis remains an earnest attempt to make sense of and ease human distress. Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis seeks to make this rich wealth of information more accessible to clinicians and trainees. Psychoanalytic clinicians from various schools here describe the key ideas that underlie their particular perspective, helping the reader to see how they apply those ideas in their clinical work. Inviting the contributors to speak about their actual practice, rather than merely providing an overview, this book helps the reader to see common threads that run across perspectives, but also to recognize ways in which the different lenses from each of the perspectives inform interventions Through brief vignettes, the reader is offered an experience-near sense of what it might be like to apply those ideas in their own work. The contributors also note the limits or weaknesses of their particular theory, inviting the reader to consider the broader spectrum of these diverse offerings so that the benefits of each might be more visible. Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis offers readers the richness and diversity of psychoanalytic theory and technique, so that the advantages of each particular lens might be visible and accessible as a further tool in their clinical work. This novel, comparative work will be an essential text for any psychoanalyst or psychoanalytically inclined therapist in training, as well as clinicians and those who teach psychoanalytic theory and technique.

This collection illuminates the legacy of Wilfred R. Bion in Brazil, illustrating Bion's continued influence on the work of the São Paulo Psychoanalytic Society (SBPSP), how Bionian ideas are applied in contemporary psychoanalysis, and how current practice has evolved over time. Evelise de Souza Marra and Cecil José Rezze bring together theoretical and clinical approaches to provide a thorough perspective on Bionian work in Brazil. The book includes chapters by senior analysts, well-respected teachers and analytic clinicians in contemporary Brazilian psychoanalysis, each of which explores a topic central to Bion's formulations. With discussion of key themes including turbulence, emotional experience, transference, caesura and mental pain, this book demonstrates how Wilfred R. Bion's thought has been developed, transformed and applied in Brazil since his visits there in the 1970s. Bion's Legacy in São Paulo will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, particularly those looking to understand Bion's influence in more depth, and for anyone interested in the practice of psychoanalysis in Latin America.

A Memoir of the Future, Bion's unorthodox attempt to cast psychoanalytic speculation in fictional form, is composed of three semi-autobiographical novels: The Dream (1975), The Past Presented (1977), and The Dawn of Oblivion (1979). Presented here for the first time in one volume, they appear together with the Key to A Memoir of the Future, a glossary of terms and concepts compiled by Wilfred and Francesca Bion.

Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field addresses the interpersonal field in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, especially the emergent qualities of the field. The book builds on the foundation of unformulated experience, dissociation, and enactment defined and explored in Stern’s previous, widely read books. Stern never considers the analyst or the patient alone; all clinical events take place between them and involve them both. Their conscious and unconscious conduct and experience are the field’s substance. We can say that the changing nature of the field determines the experience that patient and analyst can create in one another’s presence; but we can also say that the therapeutic dyad, simply by doing their work together, ceaselessly configures and reconfigures the field. "Relational freedom" is Stern’s own interpersonal and relational conception of the field, which he compares, along with other varieties of interpersonal/relational field theory, to the work of Bionian field theorists such as Madeleine and Willy Baranger, and Antonino Ferro. Other chapters concern the role of the field in accessing the frozen experience of trauma, in creating theories of therapeutic technique, evaluating quantitative psychotherapy research, evaluating the utility of the concept of unconscious phantasy, treating the hard-to-engage patient, and in devising the ideal psychoanalytic institute. Relational Freedom is a clear, authoritative, and impassioned statement of the current state of interpersonal and relational psychoanalytic theory and clinical thinking. It will interest anyone who wants to stay up to date with current developments in American psychoanalysis, and for those newer to the field it will serve as an introduction to many of the important questions in contemporary psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists of all kinds will profit from the book’s thoughtful discussions of clinical problems and quandaries. Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D.., a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in private practice in New York City, serves as Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, and Adjunct Clinical Professor and Consultant at the NYU Postodoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is the founder and editor of "Psychoanalysis in a New Key," a book series published by Routledge.