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It is hard to overestimate Bion's contributions to contemporary psychoanalysis. At first seen as obscure and difficult to penetrate, his thinking has nevertheless had extensive influence throughout the psychoanalytic world and has penetrated into its many constituent communities. Bion's writings have over time gradually earned him a place in the pantheon of great analytic thinkers, along with Freud, Klein, Winnicott, and a few others whose works always stimulate new ideas for the reader, regardless of how often one returns to their texts.
In addition, Bion's recommendation that one ought to view his books as a stimulus to the reader, rather than as dogma to be consumed, has had a powerful heuristic effect on psychoanalytic theory and practice. Furthermore, different geographical regions have tended to emphasize certain themes inherent in Bion's writings. Thus, British colleagues tend to greatly value his earlier work on psychotic mechanisms and the container-contained relationship, and are inclined to be more skeptical of the “late” Bion contributions after Learning from Experience.1 Many North and South American authors, while valuing his earlier texts, have expanded Bion's views of reverie and dreaming and the connection of these concepts to psychic representation, as adumbrated in some of his later works.2
A group of Italian analysts (among them Roberto Basile, Michele Bezoari, Giuseppe Civitarese, Antonino Ferro, and Giovanni Foresti) has