You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The first of its kind at an IPA Congress, this clinical workshop centred on the contributions of Wilfred Bion. Organised by Drs Cairo-Chiarandini and Sosnik, it attracted more than fifty analysts, most of whom seemed to be actively using Bion's ideas in their clinical work. Dr Chuster, the moderator, emphasised Bion's contribution to the study within the analytic process of thinking in itself, and he added, ‘To observe and to work with the process of thinking means to work with creativeness in psychoanalysis.’
Dr Sosnik then referred to Bion's dictum that the analyst strives in the hour to be without memory or desire, that is, the analyst should not try to advance predetermined understandings. He formulated the analytic process as a meeting of two persons, the psychic apparatus of each available to influencing the other. The understanding of the mutuality of influence in the analytic hour makes it possible to arrive at a more accurate picture of clinical interaction and clinical influence.
The clinical material was presented by Dr Laura Etchegoyen (London), and was derived from the first year and a half of the analysis of a thirty-five-year-old professional woman. She presented material from a number of different times in the treatment—the initial interview, two later sessions, a week apart, which included several dreams; and material arising toward the end of the period of the analysis under study. In an addendum towards the close of the meeting, she provided additional amplifying clinical data along with a third and fourth dream. Central to the clinical situation was the patient's fear of breakdown and ambivalence about making a commitment to the analyst and the treatment. A major theme was finding a way to contain a patient so resistant to treatment. Efforts at understanding that phenomenology and its effects both on the patient and the analyst made the workshop a compelling professional experience.
The patient was described at the initial interview as seeming very