ABSTRACT
W. R. Bion’s keen interest in the symbiosis between clinical research and literary practice dates back to the period that preceded the Second World War. Having reached the end of the task, and desirous of compressing the characteristics of the Bionian razor into a sprinkling of syllables, the author shall avails of a concise formulation devised by Umberto Eco and quoted by the cultural page of a daily newspaper in the 1970s. He proposes that Bion contributed to psychoanalytical theory by alloying it with Ockham’s Razor and its epistemological principles. Like the English Franciscan Friar, Bion sought to defend the theoretical categories of psychoanalysis from vain, speculative and contradictory proliferation. The curious coincidence—one instance of thoughts looking for a thinker—probably depends on the fact that Eco, who was known to have little time for psychoanalysis, had thoroughly read the work of William of Ockham and was well versed in medieval philosophy and English nominalism.
