ABSTRACT

Bion’s description of the Devil as “special, individual, a victim of disapproval” may contribute to an understanding of why that might be. Bion would have been fascinated by Piontelli’s findings, which demonstrate connections between psychoanalytic evidence and observational data on behavioural and psychological continuities between prenatal and post-natal life. In The Long Weekend Bion speaks of himself and two other adolescent boys chasing Tibs the cat. In his discussions of eschewing memory and desire, Bion has included the desire for cure as an impediment to the analyst’s availability for the work to be done. A noticeable number of analysts in England have thought that Bion lost his analytic position in the mid 1960s and do not give weight to his later work. In the quote Bion also refers to “the continued observation of unexplained facts until a pattern began to emerge”.