ABSTRACT
The mystic does not seek the mystical; he wraps his mind around it and becomes it. The mystic sees the mysterious—the thing-in-itself—in the obvious and the obvious within the mysterious. The twentieth-century science of Freud and Klein was antic, linear, more suitable for the study of inanimate objects. In the late 1970s a well-known and reputable psychoanalytic book publisher, who had happened to agree to publish a book of mine, commissioned me to write a book on Bion. The mental health public, particularly psychoanalysts, now seems more curious for the more recondite Bion, whose ideas still remain below the tip of the iceberg for many. The scope of this work is my faithful attempt to synopsize, synthesize, extend, and challenge Bion and his contributions and to present his ideas in a reader-friendly manner—as my digestion of them.
