In “The Psycho-Analytic Study of Thinking” (1962a), Bion offers an avowedly provisional summing up: in our view, he recapitulates what he feels he has understood from the study of psychotic thought and combines it with the results of his work with groups. Everything contained in this essay can be found in various forms, addressed in greater or lesser depth, in almost all his writings. He states that his system has a practical purpose and hence implications on the level of knowledge and technique. Like a good interpretation, this perspicuous summing up was to drive analysis forward, paving the way for the full flowering of Bion's ideas in the ensuing years.

The issue considered in our paper can be summarized in a simple question: how is it that, half a century after its publication, this contribution, just a few pages long, is still one of the ten most frequently accessed articles in the psychoanalytic literature?1