Drawing on the influential contributions of Wilfred Bion and Donald Meltzer to psychoanalysis, Bion and Meltzer's Expeditions into Unmapped Mental Life explores and addresses the clinical implications of their work, both through revisiting several of their conceptions and illustrating them with detailed clinical material from the analyses of children, adolescents, and adults. Psychoanalysis strives towards truth; this is its essence. However, emotional truth is often unknowable and not amenable to verbal communication. This ineffable mental realm is at the heart of both Bion and Meltzer's psychoanalytic endeavours. Bion's writings reflect a developmental stage in the evolution of psychoanalysis, extending clinical work to mental realms that were seemingly unreachable. Donald Meltzer further infuses Bion's thinking with his own original notions of beauty and aesthetics, imbuing Bion's profound thinking with a poetic and lyrical tenor. Writing in a clear and lucid manner, Avner Bergstein integrates Bion's sometimes highly theoretical thinking with everyday clinical practice, facilitating his dense and condensed formulations and making them clinically accessible and useful. Bion and Meltzer's Expeditions into Unmapped Mental Life is written for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists who are attracted to Bion and Meltzer's radical thinking.

The questions of what psychoanalysis is, and does, and who can and should practice it, remains key within the modern profession. Has the invaluable material packed into Freud’s The Question of Lay Analysis (1926) been underestimated by contemporary psychoanalysis? This book explores how the issues raised in this paper can continue to impact contemporary Freudian theory and practice. The chapters examine why the arguably litigious nature of the paper might be contributing to its neglect and underestimation. The editors of this book put forth a hypothesis: is there an underlying, still unrecognized, but heartrending factor underlying the century-old quarrel between "lay analysts" and what might be described as medically or psychiatrically trained analysts? They then brought together a selection of major contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers from around the world to attempt to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between medical and non-medical analysis, using The Question of Lay Analysis as a central pivot. The work of the key figure, in social and historic terms, on this issue, Theodor Reik, is also duly honoured. On Freud’s "The Question of Lay Analysis" will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

This edited collection gathers together erudite and considered contributions from Salman Akhtar, Cobi Avshalom, Brett Clarke, Mali Mann, Gila Ofer, Thomas Ogden, Louis Rothschild, Batya Shoshani, Michael Shoshani, Naama Shoshani-Breda, Ann Smolen, Donald Spence, Richard Waugaman, Thomas Wolman, and Vamik D. Volkan. Fifteen distinguished authors bring together their vast experience as psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, and psychotherapists to present a nuanced and in-depth investigation into the concept of truth. Divided into five parts, the book begins with a thoughtful discussion from Brett Clarke on what truth means and its role in psychoanalysis. It then moves into the realm of development, looking at truth from the viewpoint of children, adolescents, and adults. Stepping from development to culture, the works of Shakespeare, Heidegger and Freud are brought into the debate alongside the relationship of truth with individual and large-group psychology. Next come four chapters taking 'truth' into the clinical realm, grounding theory in practice. The book is brought to completion by an epilogue from Louis Rothschild answering the vital question: 'Truly, what does all this mean?' A must-read book for practising clinicians and academics in the mental health and humanities fields that investigates the wide range of theories on truth, how they have changed over the years, and their practical applications.

The challenges and crises that kept resurfacing in Michael and Batya Shoshani's work with extremely difficult patients hunted by anxieties of being, and in particular with perverse psychic organization, motivated them to write this book. It is an attempt to propose a clinical conceptualisation to enhance their understanding of these lost and confused patients, whose narcissistic struggle against human fate defies reality and truth, challenging the analyst and the analytic situation. Analysts, caught between their own perception of reality and truth and the wish to be empathetic to their patients' experiences and views of reality, often feel torn and as if standing on quicksand. Here, the authors are joining a contemporary movement in the psychoanalytic tradition whilst turning to other disciplines in order to better understand and explain the suffering of their patients. The use of literature, in particular the fictional works of Jorge Luis Borges; film, with an in-depth look at Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992) and Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (2010); and philosophy, the ideas of Heidegger and how they link to those of Freud, coupled together with a solid grasp of psychoanalytic theory, such as reflections on Neville Symington's seminal theory of narcissism, interspersed with real-life case studies bring the chapters alive. Such interplay between the detailed clinical material and conceptual formulations to an interdisciplinary dialogue enables a different outlook that will enrich the ongoing professional discourse on these perplexing and illusive psychic phenomena.

This clinically focused book explores W. R. Bion’s thinking on primitive and unrepresented mental states and shows how therapists can work effectively with traumatized patients who are difficult to reach. The author illuminates how trauma survivors suffer from direct access to primal undifferentiated positions of the psyche that lie outside the symbolic order of the mind and are resistant to treatment. This access, unmediated by symbolic representation but represented in the body, disrupts the normal trajectory of development and of relationship. Integrating theory and clinical application, the book addresses processes of symbolization, somatic receptivity, and the use of countertransference when working therapeutically with undeveloped areas of the mind. It also demonstrates how primitive body relations and object relations include the body of the analyst as part of the analytic frame and are essential in establishing a therapeutic alliance. Illustrated with detailed clinical vignettes, Bion and Primitive Mental States is important reading for psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, and educators who wish to understand primitive states of mind and body in patients who have previously been considered untreatable.

The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaria Association offers readers insightful analyses and commentaries on Bion’s key papers and books, as well as providing a unique set of discussions and explorations of many of Bion’s central concepts and foundational texts. This diverse collection of essays brings together contributions from internationally renowned Bionian scholars and analysts, including Annie Reiner, Nicola Abel-Hirsch, Antònia Grimalt, Avner Bergstein, Afsaneh Kiany Alisobhani, João Carlos Braga, Tom Helscher, Tim Smith and Peter Goldberg. Readers will encounter expansions and extensions of contemporary and timeless themes and discover the originality with which psychoanalysts from different geographical regions take ownership of the ideas discussed. Chapters cover the early and late work of Bion, spanning topics such as arrogance, the theory of thinking, memory and desire, and the clinical importance of frustration. The authors reveal to us the elements of continuity and discontinuity in Bion's work, sharing open conjectures to allow new developments to evolve. This volume is essential reading for practicing psychoanalysts, analysts-in-training, analytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in exploring Bion's work.

Bion and Intuition in the Clinical Setting focuses on Bion’s investigation of the intuitive approach to clinical data and lays out how Bion’s method encouraged constant effort by the analysts to relinquish its reliance on sensory and conceptual-verbal faculties to make room for intuition. Based on the work of the biannual Bion conference, this book includes contributions from the most eminent voices on Bion’s work. Spanning topics such as the primordial mind, intuitive comprehension and desire, the contributors in this volume illustrate how they incorporate the concept of intuition in their own clinical developments. Each chapter examines different elements of how Bion’s research approaches the difficulties faced by analysts in the approach and discrimination of primitive emotional levels in the patient-analyst communication. This book will be of key interest to analysts and analytic therapists of all schools and is an essential resource for those that follow the work of Bion.