1st Edition
The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaría Association Clinical and Theoretical Explorations
The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaria Association offers readers insightful analyses and commentaries on Bion’s key papers and books, as well as providing a unique set of discussions and explorations of many of Bion’s central concepts and foundational texts.
This diverse collection of essays brings together contributions from internationally renowned Bionian scholars and analysts, including Annie Reiner, Nicola Abel-Hirsch, Antònia Grimalt, Avner Bergstein, Afsaneh Kiany Alisobhani, João Carlos Braga, Tom Helscher, Tim Smith and Peter Goldberg. Readers will encounter expansions and extensions of contemporary and timeless themes and discover the originality with which psychoanalysts from different geographical regions take ownership of the ideas discussed. Chapters cover the early and late work of Bion, spanning topics such as arrogance, the theory of thinking, memory and desire, and the clinical importance of frustration. The authors reveal to us the elements of continuity and discontinuity in Bion's work, sharing open conjectures to allow new developments to evolve.
This volume is essential reading for practicing psychoanalysts, analysts-in-training, analytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in exploring Bion's work.
Introduction
Jani Santamaría Linares
1. Reading the Child and Adolescent Bion
Tim Smith
2. On Arrogance
Peter Goldberg
3. A Theory of Thinking
Tom Helscher
4. Differentiation of the Psychotic from the Non-Psychotic Personality: A Link between Early and Late Bion
Afsaneh Alisobhani
5. The Limitations of Language in the Psychic Realm
Annie Reiner
6. The Clinical Importance of Frustration
Nicola Abel-Hirsch
7. Attention and Interpretation
Howard Levine
8. Memory and Desire
Antonia Grimalt
9. Caesura
Avner Bergstein
10. Transformations
Joao Carlos Braga
11. Negative Capability: Navigating the Paradox in the Language of Achievement and the Language of Substitution
Afsaneh Alisobhani
Biography
Howard B. Levine is a member of APSA, PINE, the Contemporary Freudian Society and Pulsion; he is on the faculty of NYU Post-Doc’s Contemporary Freudian Track, on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred Bion Studies Book Series and in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA.
Jani Santamaria Linares is a member of APSA, APM, FEPAL, IPA and the International Advisory Committee of the Routledge Bion Studies Book Series, director of A-Santamaría Psychoanalysis Mexico A.C., a training and supervising analyst for children and adolescents, a member of the International Committee of Spanish Language Psychoanalysts and in private practice in Mexico City.
'This book is a wonderful addition to the numerous volumes dealing with the work of Wilfred Bion. It offers a wide array of contributions and clinical illustrations written by an impressive international group of authors and will deepen the reader’s understanding and breadth of Bion’s writings. I highly recommend it to clinicians on all levels of training who are interested in the study of Bion’s works and their application to psychoanalytic practice and theory.'
Lawrence J. Brown, Ph.D, editor of On Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (2023) and author of Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis (2019)
'The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaria Association: Clinical and Theoretical Explorations is an enlightening and stimulating collection of chapters that delve deeply into the complexities of the human psyche as reflected in some of Wilfred Bion's most beautiful writings. Each chapter offers unique insights and perspectives that contribute to a comprehensive exploration of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. From the concept of the imaginary twin to negative capability and the concept of "transformation," this book navigates the intricacies of Bion's psychoanalysis with expertise and finesse. The contributors, Peter Goldberg, Tom Helscher, Afsaneh Alisobhani, Annie Reiner, Nicola Abel-Hirsch, Howard Levine, Antonia Grimalt, Avner Bergstein, and Joao Carlos Braga, offer perspectives and intuitions that challenge conventional wisdom and expand our understanding of the human experience. Whether exploring Bion's issues about the limits of language or the meaning of frustration, these chapters invite readers on a journey that will leave them with a passionate picture of one of the most original and thought-provoking writers in the history of psychoanalysis. This book is a valuable resource for clinicians, researchers, and anyone in the field of humanities interested in what psychoanalysis can tell us about the essence of our humanity.'
Giuseppe Civitarese, author of Psychoanalytic Field Theory: A Contemporary Introduction (2022)
