ABSTRACT
Wilfred R. Bion and Donald W. Winnicott have exerted a profound influence on the theory and practice of clinical psychoanalysis. This chapter suggests that late Bion’s and Winnicott’s theoretical and clinical thinking—and particularly the profound significance and implications of their thinking for the foundations of clinical psychoanalysis and for the analytic process—introduces a revolutionary change in psychoanalysis, stirring up a felt sense of ongoing transition, struggle, and translation. Winnicott’s clinical theory of regression, with its invitation to go back and enter the most fundamental, elemental, and early states in order to enable new developmental processes, offers a living experiential possibility for broadening the reach of psychoanalytic practice. The chapter demonstrates the kind of Kleinian-based interpretations that Bion gave during the epistemological period. The influential concepts of alpha function, container-contained, and reverie constitute the major phase of Bion’s work.
