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As explained in the Introduction to The Somato-Psychic Realm: Analytic Receptivity and Resonance, this volume seeks to “map our current understanding on the fascinating subject of psychic and somatic selves, reframing it as the ‘somato-psychic realm’” (iii). A collection of nine essays by well-known Bionian thinkers, including Howard Levine, Rudi Vermote, and Judy Eekhoff, with an excellent Foreword by Patrick Miller, this book interweaves scholarly discussions of Bionian theory with evocative clinical illustrations. Described by the editors as “influenced” by Bion (iii), I would say the book is firmly grounded in Bion's work, presenting the arc of Bion's thinking relevant to the proposed realm, with authors adding their own theoretical elaborations.
One might ask where to place the “somato-psychic realm” among the variety of psychoanalytic concepts addressing the body–mind relationship – psyche-soma, soma, libidinal body, das Körper, das Leib, bodymind, psychosomatic, and somato-psychic, to name a few. Somato-psychic is often contrasted with psychosomatic to privilege the soma as primary. The meaning here is different, however. As articulated most clearly by João Carlos Braga (Ch. 7, “A Personal Perspective on the Somato-Psychic Realm Based on Bion's Contributions”), the somato-psychic realm is presented not as a new concept but as an elaboration of several Bionian ideas that invite further development: his early notion of the “proto-mental system” (1961) in which physical and mental activity is undifferentiated, and his later discussions of the “primordial mind” (1987), and “pre-natal levels of mind” (1977). While this volume seeks to integrate related strands of Bion's thinking under the rubric of the somato-psychic, it also risks blurring important distinctions – most notably between the pre-psychic dimension of the proto-mental and the question of continuity between pre- and post-natal experience.
In their brief Introduction, David Power and Dolan Power pose a se