Bion in New York and São Paulo

And Three Tavistock Seminars

By (author) Wilfred R. Bion Edited by Meg Harris Williams

Book cover: Bion in New York and São Paulo

Extent: 256 pages

Publisher: The Harris Meltzer Trust

Subjects: Psychology, Psychoanalysis, & Psychotherapy

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(January 2019)

ISBN: 9781912567638

5.94 x 9.09 inches

Price: $40.00

In stock

PDF (Published)

(January 2019)

ISBN: 9781912567652

Price: $40.00

These three series of talks given by Wilfred Bion are edited versions of spontaneous contributions and discussions with groups in New York, Sao Paulo and at the Tavistock Clinic, London. In these informal settings he expressed his most evolved thinking about thinking. A new 2019 edition, edited and introduced by Meg Harris Williams.


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.

About the author Editorial notes INTRODUCTION: Themes And Conversation by Meg Harris Williams SECTION ONE: New York Seminars, 1977 SECTION TWO: Sao Paulo Seminars, 1978 SECTION THREE: Three Tavistock Seminars, 1977 APPENDIX: Bion's Conception of a Psychoanalytical Attitude by Martha Harris Index,

CONTENTS

About the author
Editorial notes

INTRODUCTION: Themes And Conversation by  Meg Harris Williams

SECTION ONE: New York Seminars, 1977

SECTION TWO: São Paulo Seminars, 1978

SECTION THREE: Three Tavistock Seminars, 1977

APPENDIX: Bion’s Conception of a Psychoanalytical Attitude by Martha Harris

Index

Wilfred R. Bion (1897–1979) was born in India and first came to England at the age of eight to receive his schooling. During the First World War he served in France as a tank commander and was awarded the DSO and the Legion of Honour. After reading history at Queen’s College, Oxford, he studied medicine at University College London, before a growing interest in psychoanalysis led him to undergo training analysis with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes. Abandoning his work in this field in favor of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis (1956–62) and President of the British Psychoanalytical Society (1962–65). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979.

A pioneer in group dynamics, he was associated with the ‘Tavistock group’, the group of pioneering psychologists that founded the Tavistock Institute in 1946 on the basis of their shared wartime experiences. He later wrote the influential Experiences in Groups, an important guide for the group psychotherapy and encounter group movements beginning in the 1960s, and which quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields. Bion’s training included an analysis with Melanie Klein following World War II. He was a leading member in the Kleinian school while in London, but his theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, eventually revealed radical departures from both Kleinian and Freudian theory. While Bion is most well known outside of the psychoanalytic community for his work on group dynamics, the psychoanalytic conversation that explores his work is concerned with his theory of thinking and his model of the development of a capacity for thought.

Meg Harris Williams, a writer and artist, studied English at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and art at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and has had a lifelong psychoanalytic education, working closely with Donald Meltzer. She has written and lectured extensively in the UK and abroad on psychoanalysis and literature. She is a visiting lecturer for AGIP and at the Tavistock Centre in London, and an Honorary Member of the Psychoanalytic Center of California. She is married with four children and lives in Farnham, Surrey.

  • By (author) Wilfred R. Bion
  • Edited by Meg Harris Williams