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Like many other relationally-informed psychoanalysts, I have developed a recent interest in neo-Bionian theory and practice.
Bion's second generation practitioners—the bulk of whom remain in Europe and Latin America—have taken up and extended his work. Largely unexplored in any depth at most interpersonal, self psychological or relational institutes in the United States, beyond a deferential nod to the containing/contained concept, Bion's prolific writing and wealth of supervisory descriptions continue to find fresh interpretation, particularly surrounding his later work.
In the U.S., several authors (particularly accessible are Thomas Ogden, 2005; Lawrence J. Brown, 2011) have written passionately about their growing understanding and use of Bionian theory. While the Uruguayan émigrés Willie and Madeleine Baranger's influential 1961-1962 paper on the psychoanalytic situation as a “bi-personal field” (translated into English in 2008) reframed Bionian thinking as “intersubjective,” it is perhaps Antonino Ferro, who among the authors featured in Growth and Turbulence, is currently the most notable contemporary standard bearer, published internationally and across varied theoretical camps. For these reasons, this volume may find wide purchasing appeal; it also follows that Growth and Turbulence can be challenging for many readers unschooled in Bion.
Donnel B. Stern's (2013) comparative study of the interpersonal-relational and Bionian field theories, states that the container/contained is a constant for Bion and is the result of its co-construction within an experience-near setting. The primary intent is to transform the patient's projective identifications into more useable imagery, via the analyst's reverie. Alternatively, in interpersonal-relational treatments, he says, both theanalyst and patient contribute to and shape the analytic situation, while appreciating past influences on each person. Ferro (2013, p. 647) counters that Bionians see analytic partners as contin