Publications
On the Destruction and Death Drives
Author: André Green
Editor: Howard B. Levine
What drives men to kill and self-destruct? André Green traces the introduction and development of the controversial concept of the “death drive”, from the work of Freud (1920–1938) to the main contributions of classical and post-Freudian authors, including Ferenczi, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan.
The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro
Theoretical Analysis and Clinical Application
Editor: Howard B. Levine
Written by members of the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies who have maintained a close and fruitful collaboration with Ferro and his colleagues, the book centers on understanding, engaging and treating primitive mental states. Ferro's Field Theory operationalizes Bion’s concept of an analyst who is not the repository of ‘the truth’, but is instead one who has the capacity to listen, to dwell in doubt, to utilize reverie, humor and play, and facilitate the transformation of previously unthinkable aspects of the patient’s experience into articulatable mental elements such as pictorial images, thoughts and dreams. Ferro’s contributions and their analysis are especially relevant to working with primitive character disorders, the difficulties of which lie beyond neurosis and the comfortable reach of the precepts of classical analytic technique.
The Routledge
Wilfred R. Bion Studies Book Series
Howard B. Levine, MD
Editor-in-Chief
The contributions of Wilfred R. Bion are among the most cited in the analytic literature. Their appeal lies not only in their content and explanatory value, but in their generative potential. Although Bion’s training and many of his clinical instincts were deeply rooted in the classical tradition of Melanie Klein, his ideas have a potentially universal appeal. Rather than emphasizing a particular psychic content (e.g., Oedipal conflicts in need of resolution; splits that needed to be healed; preconceived transferences that must be allowed to form and flourish, etc.), he tried to help open and prepare the mind of the analyst (without memory, desire or theoretical preconception) for the encounter with the patient.
Bion’s formulations of group mentality and the psychotic and non-psychotic portions of the mind, his theory of thinking and emphasis on facing and articulating the truth of one’s existence so that one might truly learn first hand from one’s own experience, his description of psychic development (alpha function and container/contained) and his exploration of O are "non-denominational" concepts that defy relegation to a particular school or orientation of psychoanalysis. Consequently, his ideas have taken root in many places…. and those ideas continue to inform many different branches of psychoanalytic inquiry and interest.
It is with this heritage and its promise for the future developments of psychoanalysis in mind that we present The Routledge Wilfred R. Bion Studies Book Series. This series gathers together under newly emerging and continually evolving contributions to psychoanalytic thinking that rest upon Bion’s foundational texts and explore and extend the implications of his thought.