Introduction to ‘on the Value of “Late Bion” to Analytic Theory and Practice’

Over the course of the past decade the ever-growing interest in the writing of Wilfred Bion in the analytic community worldwide has reached new levels. There are now many conferences, study groups, lectures and books centred on Bion's work. Two new books on this topic are coming out in the psychoanalytic book series of Routledge just this year. Some of the familiar names who have contributed to this development are Elizabeth Tabak de Bianchedi, Michael Eigen, Antonino Ferro, James Grotstein, Thomas Ogden, and Joan and Neville Symington, all of whom have written extensively about Bion's unique contribution to psychoanalysis. Emphasizing the value of Bion's “later writings” from 1966 onwards, these writers and others associated with their approaches have pointed to how the work of this originally Kleinian author may be seen especially in these later years both to advance other theoretical and clinical approaches (interpersonal, intersubjective, bipersonal, relational, and that of Winnicott) and to offer a new line of thinking of its own. Some authors lay especial emphasis on late Bion's radical departure from his Kleinian origins. Others, who wish to remain within the Kleinian framework, consider Bion's later writings as important and even radical innovations within it. According to some of these writers, these innovations allow for bridges to other analytic streams.

While London Kleinians too hold Bion's work in high esteem and see it as innovative and clinically important, it would be wrong to take this shared appreciation as indicating an area of common ground in a world of psychoanalytic diversity. While rarely openly discussed in lectures or publications, it would seem that London Kleinians tend to take an unfavourable view of Bion's later writings (in contrast to his early ones), and tend to consider the interpretation and positive assessment of Bion in light of them, as well as clinical practice on the basis of them, to be very prob