Elements of Analytic Style: Bion's Clinical Seminars

The author finds that the idea of analytic style better describes significant aspects of the way he practices psychoanalysis than does the notion of analytic technique. The latter is comprised to a large extent of principles of practice developed by previous generations of analysts. By contrast, the concept of analytic style, though it presupposes the analyst's thorough knowledge of analytic theory and technique, emphasizes (1) the analyst's use of his unique personality as reflected in his individual ways of thinking, listening, and speaking, his own particular use of metaphor, humor, irony, and so on; (2) the analyst's drawing on his personal experience, for example, as an analyst, an analysand, a parent, a child, a spouse, a teacher, and a student; (3) the analyst's capacity to think in a way that draws on, but is independent of, the ideas of his colleagues, his teachers, his analyst, and his analytic ancestors; and (4) the responsibility of the analyst to invent psychoanalysis freshly for each patient. Close readings of three of Bion's ‘Clinical seminars’ are presented in order to articulate some of the elements of Bion's analytic style. Bion's style is not presented as a model for others to emulate or, worse yet, imitate; rather, it is described in an effort to help the reader consider from a different vantage point (provided by the concept of analytic style) the way in which he, the reader, practices psychoanalysis.