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I would like first of all to thank Paul Williams and Glen Gabbard for inviting me to offer a contribution about an author who has always fascinated me. A similar thank you goes to Edna O'Shaughnessy for her generosity in opening the way to this ‘Psychoanalytic Controversy’ with her very rich presentation that describes with extraordinary accuracy the multiple perspectives from which Bion's work has been studied.
Edna O'Shaughnessy's text allows me to concentrate without any further hesitation on my own approach to Bion: a one-sided viewpoint, undoubtedly, but still one—if considered in the wider context made available here and if placed side-by-side to Elizabeth De Bianchedi's contribution—that I hope could clarify some aspects of this complex author.
It is significant that the period of Bion's activity which I love the most is the one extending from the 1960s to his last writings, and in particular his Seminars and his Discussions (1974, 1975a, 1975b, 1978, 1980, 1987). The Bion whom Edna O'Shaughnessy describes as ‘less disciplined’ is to me the most fascinating precisely because of the ‘insaturity’ of his texts and the openings of meaning which it continuously allows. For many years, I have been running group readings of Bion's works and I still always come out of them enriched by new discoveries or new ideas.
As to the problem of continuity/discontinuity, there is no doubt in my opinion that Bion derives from a definitely Kleinian matrix. I believe, however, that from a certain point onwards such a matrix produces a new model that is no longer a linear expansion of the previous one, but one which brings about a quantitative leap, a caesura (not unlike Klein's model in relation to Freud's). What has taken place among these three models is something that Bion would describe as a ‘catastrophic change’ (1966). This, of course, means that certain variables remain the same, but also that a new gestalt gets organized.
Bion, while not wishing to create new conceptual models