ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to question how “learning”, conceived not as mechanical reproduction, but as a process of creative engagement with material, comes about, using Arendt’s philosophical account of thinking with Bion’s psychoanalytic account. Like the bird-mother who feeds the baby bird with food she has digested, Bion’s mother nurtures her infant with digested experience, leading to the growth of an ability to think. Experience and thinking are undermined when human beings are prevented from engaging in meaningful contact with others. The reason for recounting the stories of the Sandman and of Oedipus was to show how their depiction of thinking and enquiry as potentially dangerous activities strike a theme that has intrigued psychoanalysts. Where Arendt’s philosophical account emphasises the necessity of a space between people for meaning and thinking, Bion’s psychoanalytic theory conveys the essential importance of an inner space and the presence of a receptive other.
