W. R. Bion’s Case of the Imaginary Twin: An Implicit Method of Clinical Inquiry

W. R. Bion’s (1950) case of the Imaginary Twin is revisited from different vertices. This paper has remained underappreciated because of two sets of factors: one related to how Bion structured his text in a baffling manner; and the other related to some of the uses to which the paper has been put. In subsequent commentaries on the Twin case (e.g., Bion’s own epistemological commentary alongside the questionable thesis of playwright Samuel Beckett as the patient in question), these aspects have distracted from the Twin as a genuine contribution to contemporary psychoanalytic technique. It is a close clinical reading of how Bion went about analyzing a patient who was quite deft in unwittingly hiding in plain sight and illuminates his unique contributions to analytic technique. While accounting for the analytic mentors who inspired his psychoanalytic work, a thesis is maintained that in this first psychoanalytic case study Bion began to craft what would become his defining signature, namely an interactional/emotional focus in his technique of the here and now. The author terms it Bion’s implicit method of clinical inquiry. While he adroitly articulated some of Melanie Klein’s ideas, he simultaneously and quietly distanced his technical approach from hers.