ABSTRACT
This chapter explains some of the conceptual problems in some post-Bionians’ views of reverie, and their consequences. It focuses on the tendency amongst psychoanalysts, and post-Bionians in particular, to use a vague classification when greater specificity is called for. The chapter suggests that various ways reveries are thought about that simplify a complex phenomenon. After Wilfred Bion introduced his views on the analyst’s reveries, trying to capture something that was more like an impressionist painting than a photograph, attempts to develop their clinical usefulness in the post-Bionian years have led to multiple, sometimes contradictory, views while their use by psychoanalytic clinicians has mushroomed. While psychoanalysis, in general, has one “un” problem, post-Bionians have a number of “un” problems. When the Bionians describe unconscious communications from patient to analyst, or an idea that is unconsciously co-constructed, there is little attempt to define where in the unconscious the unconscious communication is coming from and where in the unconscious it is received.
