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Reading Bion is a welcome addition to the NLP Teaching Series and provides a useful reference work for informed readers as well as those new to his ideas.
Vermote's overview ranges from a section situating the work in the extensive Bion literature, through the main chapters which provide a chronological introduction to Bion's work and the development of his clinical work and theory of thinking. He provides accessible explanations and quotes from Bion's texts and commentary by some of his devoted patients and adherents.
The organisation of the book seeks to help readers navigate the complexity and difficulty of reading Bion's texts. A brief and clear biographical section precedes the chronological presentation of his books. Major papers and innovations in theory are described, with the addition of boxes inserted into the text that offer differing perspectives and interpretations. As well as further delineating a style for the series, following Quindoz's Reading Freud (2003), this openness to differing interpretation stays true to Bion's emphasis on approaching ontological and clinical exploration from varied vertices.
The book joins a long bibliography of texts attempting to illuminate and elucidate Bion's work, or to use them as creative inspiration for personal imaginative encounters in the spirit of later Bion and the Memoir of the Future.
The boxes accompanying the texts introduce us to clinicians and writers who have followed or been influenced by Bion, giving a perspective on the depth and range of his influence, starting from his early work (and continuing interest) on group mentality. Following a brief biographical section, the chapter on “Experience in Groups and Other Papers” describes his work including commentaries from contemporaries and points to his continued influence, which inspires elaboration of his understanding of the group field and the individual's responsiveness to “basic assumptions” at work in the group according to the individual's valences.
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