ABSTRACT
Every works published during his lifetime, above all in clinical and non-clinical seminars, W. R. Bion refers to the idea that a person’s somatic confines do not correspond to the confines of their personality. Bion’s discussion of what constitutes an individual is articulated around certain nodal concepts that should be examined one by one before it attempts to clarify the links between them. The concepts are: Common sense; Narcissism; Socialism; Myth as group dream. Bion links the common sense of the individual with that of the group, in the sense that there is a formal resemblance, that is, the senses of the individual are seen as analogous to the contributions of individual members of the group. And The individual refers to the group to discover “what may legitimately be thought”. Bion has introduced the term “narcissism”: in the next passage we will also see the introduction of the term “socialism”, which for Bion has nothing to do with politics.
