ABSTRACT

Wilfred R. Bion's clinical psychoanalytic papers on psychosis were written in the 1950s. In the texts of the 1950s Bion develops his well-known views about splitting, the psychotic and the non-psychotic part of the personality, verbal thought, psychotic functioning and hallucination, bizarre objects, attacks on linking, and the obstructive object. This chapter provides an overview of all the texts included in Second Thoughts. It suggests that readers who are already familiar with Bion's ideas on psychosis turn to the section concerning On Arrogance, which is a highly original paper, and of course the section on Bion's classic text: A Theory of Thinking. According to Anzieu, the imaginary twin may refer to the therapy that Samuel Beckett had with Bion. In Notes on the Theory of Schizophrenia Bion observed that language does not always correspond to verbal thought. It can be a mode of action, as in projective identification and in splitting the object.