ABSTRACT

This is a book of 365 quotes from the work of the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. Something of an enigma, Bion often doesn't write in the way one would expect of a psychoanalyst, but is being read ever-increasingly around the world, in and outside the psychoanalytic community. Certain of his comments are often quoted, whilst swathes of his work lie almost untouched. How to make some of the detail of this work available? What he writes is often dense in the way the structure of a poem can be, and the book has the format of a 'poem a day' collection – providing a way into his complete work one quote at a time. Alongside commentaries by Abel-Hirsch are thoughts on Bion's work drawn from papers by other analysts from the UK, the Americas, and Europe. The book is structured in a way that will inform and interest the general reader as well as giving something new to psychoanalysts and others who already know his work well.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

chapter |12 pages

A list of the 365 quotes

part I|51 pages

Autobiography

chapter Chapter 1|12 pages

The Long Weekend: 1897–1919 (Part of a Life)

chapter Chapter 2|24 pages

Bion’s war

chapter Chapter 3|13 pages

All My Sins Remembered: Another Part of a Life

part II|305 pages

Papers, books, notes, letters

chapter Chapter 4|30 pages

The 1930s and 1940s

chapter Chapter 5|9 pages

The Other Side of Genius: Family Letters

chapter Chapter 6|32 pages

Papers of the 1950s

chapter Chapter 7|32 pages

Cogitations

chapter Chapter 8|29 pages

“The Theory of Thinking”

chapter Chapter 9|31 pages

Learning from Experience

chapter Chapter 10|28 pages

The Grid

chapter Chapter 11|27 pages

Elements of Psycho-Analysis

chapter Chapter 12|36 pages

Transformations: Change from Learning to Growth

chapter Chapter 13|9 pages

On memory and desire

part III|116 pages

International lectures, seminars and supervisions

chapter Chapter 15|31 pages

Visiting Los Angeles: seminars and supervision

chapter Chapter 16|29 pages

Brazilian Lectures

chapter Chapter 17|6 pages

Clinical Seminars and Four Papers: “Brasilia 1975”

chapter Chapter 18|8 pages

Bion in New York and São Paulo: “New York, 1977”

chapter Chapter 20|12 pages

The Tavistock Seminars

chapter Chapter 22|10 pages

The Italian Seminars

chapter Chapter 23|5 pages

“A Paris Seminar”

part IV|70 pages

A Memoir of the Future

chapter Chapter 24|4 pages

Introduction

chapter Chapter 25|16 pages

“Book 1: The Dream”

chapter Chapter 26|23 pages

“Book 2: The Past Presented”

chapter Chapter 27|25 pages

“Book 3: The Dawn of Oblivion”

part V|14 pages

Epilogue

chapter Chapter 28|12 pages

Last quotes