Wilfred Bion - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Biography

Wilfred Bion is born with the Pendjab in 1897. Its childhood proceeds initially in India then, as from its eight years, in a boarding school in England.

In 1916, Bion engages in the war. It will be Capitaine in 1918. He then learns the Philosophie with the Université from Oxford. He undertakes then a medical career ; will follow an analytical first Psychothérapie.
It is engaged in 1932 as doctor attending Tavistock Clinic London, where it will treat Samuel Beckett.

In 1937, Bion starts a psychoanalytical Cure with John Rickman, member of the British Psychoanalytical Society (bps). Bion will work with Rickman on the concept of group and leadership, being made pioneer of the Group dynamic. He marries the actress Betty Jardine.
It is only in 1945 that Bion undertakes an analysis with Melanie Klein, which will last until in 1953. In 1961 appears the first book of Bion, Experiences in Group, London: Tavistock , which will be quickly a great success.

After the death of Klein, Bion lives in California. It turns over finally to England, where it dies, in 1979, of a Leucémie.

The Tavistock Institute developed and applied the theory and the practices developed by Bion to the Group dynamic after its death.

Concepts

Elements alpha and béta

He reformulates what one can bring closer to what one named until there Primary process (Inconscient) and of Secondary process (Préconscient and Conscient). He does not distinguish conscious and unconscious, but not finished and infinite, idea already advanced by Sigmund Freud in Analyze with end and analyzes without end '
Within this framework it indicates levels of thought, these thoughts being divided into elements alpha and béta:

the elements alpha are sensory impressions put in image, that one can say comparable by psyché, it are organized and reusable.

The Fonction alpha treats the Phénomène S, of the sensory impressions, beyond what one can think. This function is related on the dreams, the memories, or to the oneiric thoughts. The elements alpha are absent from thought psychotic.

the Elements béta are noncomparable sensory impressions, lived like " things in soi" , which corresponds to the Kantian Noumène S .

The Fonction beta corresponds to the management of the rough emotions, which are " encaissées" and which " seek to be assimilées". A too great accumulation of elements béta causes a " indigestion mentale" , a repression of the training because of of information being treated too much.
This is why according to him the dream preserves the individual of the state Psychotique, while making it possible to represent sensory impressions (béta) into assimilable images (alpha)

Psychosis

Wilfried Bion approaches the concept of personality psychotic by postulating that any individual personality has a psychotic fraction, corresponding to the elements elaborate beta not . According to him, this fraction is more or less important according to the individuals. It coexists with a share not psychotic who is preserved whatever the stage of invasion of the psychosis, maintaining the bond with external reality.

For Bion, the psychosis is defined by capacity of racking and attack of the bonds within the activity to think in particular, expelling in the act or external reality the psychic material not integrated

Bion identifies certain dominant features of the psychotic fraction of which intolerance with frustration, the fear of the destruction, the violence of the destroying impulses and the fight carried out by these impulses against reality, perceptions sensory and the conscience.

Projective identification

The subject, dependant on the violence of its impulses devastators, would try according to him, by the means of the Projective identification, to reject felt displeasure like frustration or the pain. In addition, the mechanism of projection towards outside would aim expelling the contents of the psychic apparatus and at preventing the establishment of bonds there, which could have a direct influence on the capacities to think of the subject.

Odd objects

To protect itself from realities which it cannot accept, the subject thus project them to be protected some, through a Object-relationship. This statuquo in the assimilation is done at the price of a deformation of the perception of these invested objects of characteristic projected. Bion speaks about odd Objets.

The Me could then go until breaking up, expelling parts of the Me cleaved are in external surrounding objects. What would cause at the subject an impression to be surrounded by “odd” objects threatening to invade it in return.

Function alpha and role of the mother

Bion also postulates the existence of a function alpha like function of connection symbolic system of the sensory impressions and felt emotional very primitive . This function would be provided by the mother in the idea that this one plays a central role in the establishment of the capacity to be thought of the infant. Felt the violent ones of the infant, recognized and collected by the mother, would forward by her psychism in order to be there transformed into elements alpha, affects minus restorable violent ones by the infant. To be done, the mother uses of her “capacity of daydream”. Little by little is formed a “barrier of contact”, consisted of elements alpha, separating the phantasms and emotions of internal origin of perceptions of reality and allowing about passing from the one to the other without losing the contact with one of them.

Elements and screen béta

If the mother is not ready to be the receptacle of felt the violent ones of the child, the affects violent one and nonelaborate sensory impressions cannot be transformed into elements alpha and become elements béta, elements not integrated whose subject will try to be demolished by the means of the projective identification.

The accumulation of elements beta constitutes thereafter “the screen beta”, structural feature psychotic. Always according to Bion, it is him which generates an indistinctness between conscious and unconscious and the incapacity to create bonds Symbolique S, origin of the disorders of the thought.

Works

Research on the small groups, ED. PUF, 2002 ISBN 2130527310
made Reflection , ED. PUF, 2001 ISBN 2130520618
With the sources of the experiment , ED. PUF, 2003 ISBN 2130534864
Elements of the psychoanalysis , 1963, ED. PUF 1979 ISBN 2130535011
Transformations: Passage of the training to the growth , ED. PUF, 1982 ISBN 2130369839
Attention and interpretation , ED. Payot, 1990 ISBN 2228883050
psychoanalytical Talks ED. Gallimard, 1980
a memory of the future , ED. Césura Lyon, 1989 ISBN 2905709332
Thought wild tamed thought = Taming wild thoughts , ED. port-hole, 1998 ISBN 2912186056
Memories of war June 1917 January 1919 , ED. port-hole, 1999 ISBN 2912186102
Italian Seminars , ED. In Close, 2005 ISBN 2848350784
Reflections , ED. In Close, 2005 ISBN 2848350792
Four discussions with Bion , ED. of Ithaque, 2006, ISBN 2916120009
Bion in New York and São Paulo , ED. of Ithaque, 2006, ISBN 2916120017
the proof & other texts , Article joined together by Francesca Bion, Postface Pierre-Henri Manor house, ED. of Ithaque, 2007, ISBN 291612005X, (extracted:

See too

Conceptes de Wilfred Bion

odd objects
Projective identification

Prone bound or close

Ideogram
Grid
Theory of the object-relationship
Pictogram (psychoanalysis) (concept of Piera Aulagnier)

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