Editorial

Wilfred Bion has proved to be one of the most original psychoanalytic thinkers after Freud, furthering our understanding of psychotic processes and providing a framework for conceptualizing the development of thought, truth and mental growth. Bion's influence on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy has steadily grown; for example, who does not debate with himself how much ‘memory and desire’ to bring to bear in a session? Bion's notions of alpha function and beta elements and the metabolizing of toxic mental contents, under the rubric ‘nameless dread’, have enhanced the idea of working through, and his emphasis on the container/contained, attacks on linking and facing psychic pain has reshaped our thinking. Furthermore, all analytic schools have taken up Bion's elaborations on the importance of thinking and the various interferences with it. His scheme, outlined in the Grid, is an open system that allows us to envision how mental transformation is possible, and it is surprising that research models founded on his classification scheme to measure changes in thought patterns after psychoanalytic treatment have not been designed.

The 100th anniversary of Bion's birth in 1897 gives us an opportunity to celebrate his work with a Centenary Conference, held jointly with the Freud Museum in May 1997, and the publication of papers herein. Our distinguished speakers included Parthenope Bion Talamo who practises psychoanalysis in Italy. Her erudite analysis of her father's work and her spontaneous, witty remarks gave us clarity and insight into Bion's thinking and showed her to be her father's daughter. In the talk by Donald Meltzer, given without text and transcribed here, we were treated to a Bionic experience of the unfolding, gathering and deepening momentum of ideas, illustrating the place of ‘pre-conception’ and ‘the cloud of unknowing’ in giving birth to thought and object relations. This is the aesthetic experience which Meltzer considers to be the basis of creativity, the