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This is a remarkable and important book by a prominent Kleinian analyst. On the face of it the book consists of eight chapters, each being a paper written by the author and published between 1950 and 1962. A commentary of barely fifty pages contains the second thoughts, which express Bion's changed views. Numbered paragraphs in the
papers which are otherwise reprinted in their original form ‘for those who find it easier to regard them as factual reports’ are for easy reference to the commentary.
Having read and compared the first paper, ‘The imaginary twin’, together with the appropriate sixteen pages of commentary, I took the plunge and read the remainder of the commentary straight through, looking at the original papers when I felt I needed to—which was rarely. Afterwards I re-read the papers which had given rise to Bion's second thoughts. But it was through the painstaking reading of the commentary that I may have experienced what he calls an ‘evolution’, i.e. an ‘ineffable experience’ through the coming together of hitherto unrelated incoherent phenomena by a ‘selected fact’. (Bion states that the best psychoanalytic papers can have this effect, comparable to an actual psycho-analytical experience.) I say ‘may have experienced’ because according to Bion's thesis the reader of this notice will not be able to judge from my verbal ‘transformation’ (or transcription) of an ineffable experience whether or not it happened, and I cannot be certain because the evolution should come from non-defensive reading.
I read most of the book twice and more critically on subsequent occasions. Was this defensive? Did I destroy the evolution? My feeling is that I gained from critical reading.
In order to make some allowance for the extraordinary effect the commentary had on me, an observation needs to be made about the language and style. There is quite a lot of repetition, yet the effect is never tedious; one feels challenged. Always learned, rather measured, even donnish at times,