Book Description

A new 2019 edition, edited and introduced by Meg Harris Williams. These two talks given in 1977 and 1978 in New York and Sao Paulo respectively are an edited version of discussions and spontaneous contributions made by Bion, in the main without notes. ‘Leaving room for growth, promoting development, becoming a mental midwife: these are functions which Bion attributes to the analyst, the parent, the educator, who is concerned with enabling the patient, the child, the pupil, to develop through having a genuine experience of himself: an experience of feeling, of thinking based upon that feeling, and of attempting to formulate or take action upon these thoughts.’ ‘Thinking he regarded as a human activity still in its absolute infancy. The development of a capacity to think creatively, which might harness human passions in the service of development and wisdom, appeared to him as something of a race against time.’ ‘By ”Yourself”he means the total person, body and mind, with its whole history, pre- and post-natal. His perception of the modes of expression of the Self became increasingly sharpened by observations which led him to his imaginative conjectures about the relationship between these two selves pre- and post-natal, within the same body.’ ‘If we stay, do not run away, go on observing the patient, after a time “a pattern will emerge”. Discernment of that pattern, the wresting of some order from chaos, may result in mutually beneficial growth for both analyst and patient.’ ‘This is the Bion who sees analysis in the consulting room not as a refuge, but as a preparation for the real thing: for a richer and wiser mode of living in the world.’ Martha Harris