Negative Hallucinosis in Wilfred Bion's Theory of Transformation: On Finding One's Ghost. By Rodrigo Barahona. New York/London:  Routledge, 2025.  152 pp.

In this theoretically rich six-chapter volume, Rodrigo Barahona (2025) proposes a means of advancing Bion’s work of transformations to include the bidirectional nature of transformations–-both positive and

negative. With exceptional precision and tact, he synthesizes Green’s work with that of Bion’s in reverse fashion, reimbuing Bionian concepts with afterwards theory and providing new vertices from which to conceptually understand the foundations of psychic formation and the processes undergirding representation. Barahona connects Green’s work on negative hallucination to Bion’s concept of hallucinosis—coining the term negative hallucinosis.

Throughout this volume, he endeavors to show how negative hallucinosis is a critical function of mind, laying the groundwork for negative capability and tolerating absence but also showing how, in excess, negative hallucinosis tears the fabric of the psyche, destroys mental functions, and annihilates links to objects. As a correlative function of mind, he asserts that hallucinosis—positive and negative—is an essential capacity within the analyst as a means of accessing primitive mental states, those predating dreaming. To be able to receive projections and the earliest attempts at communication by patients, analysts must be able to tolerate hallucinatory experience while hanging onto reverie in the non-psychotic part of the mind. At times, they need to be able to tolerate patients’ excessive attempts to attack all means of communication, links, and connections to the analyst as object in order to inhabit the patient’s mental state. Barahona provides extensive clinical examples throughout the text to help elucidate his thinking. He also analyzes Bion’s wartime experiences as a tank commander in a creative and imaginative exploration of his theoretical ideas. For those looking for a contemporary approach to accessing and understanding hard-to-reach patients, Barahona will not disappoint.

In Chapter One, Barahona introduces his t