Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis

"This volume reflects the passion, creativity and commitment of Antonino Ferro and his colleagues from Pavia as they strive to forge a psychoanalysis built upon a creative, intersubjective dialogue that emphasizes process and transformation in the service of helping patients develop the tools for thinking, dreaming and living a fuller, more vital life. It enlarges our appreciation of the unconscious not as 'the region where thoughts that have no right of access to consciousness are sent into internal exile; … [but instead as] a function of the personality appointed to digest reality and to replenish the mind with food.' As such, it is a testament and clinical guide to understanding and applying Bion’s assertion that in order to grow, the mind needs truth the way the body needs alimentation."–Howard B. Levine, MD, Co-Editor, Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning and Bion in Brazil: Supervisions and Commentaries.

"For some time now a small group working in Pavia, Italy has generated some of the most provocative, original, and influential thinking in psychoanalysis. This volume collects contributions from several of the most creative members of that group. Taken together these papers convey a sense of psychoanalysis as a living thing, a theory and a practice that blossom in the always unique encounter between patient and therapist. Readers of this book are sure to be impressed both by the depth of the authors’ ideas and by the exuberance they convey about doing clinical work; I can’t imagine anybody who will not be both challenged and inspired by the encounter."-Jay Greenberg, Ph.D., Editor, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly; Recipient, 2015 Mary S. Sigourney Award.

"This is a book put together by a very creative group. They believe the way psychanalysts conceive of the unconscious has radically changed. For them, it is not the region where thoughts that have no right of access to consciousness are sent into internal exile. Rather, it becomes a vital function of the personality, appointed to digest reality and to replenish the mind with food - a component of psychic organization that helps the mind to categorize, to forget differences and to keep hold of similarities, to draw models of things, and to "dream" them. It is a view with which every psychoanalyst should engage."-David Tuckett, Fellow, The Institute of Psychoanalysis; Professor and Director, Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty, University College London.