Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

atheistic vision that dispenses with religion, whilst acting like a religion and whose implicit
doctrines find theological parallels.
The ontology of Bion
Bion’s work is viewed in two distinct ways. His clinical work in GB alongside Klein is
seen as of enduring value but his ‘great mind’ (AN 451) needed containment by the analytic
community to avoid the danger of becoming a guru-like figure. Bion’s philosophically
focused work marked a radical departure from Klein and this later ‘mystical’ Bion, with his
concept of O, divides opinions. 407 Some are sceptical, dismissing his ideas as eccentric,
others think Bion was a genius working at the edge of madness, 408 and Grotstein argues he
was much more important, especially his later work, than has generally been acknowledged
(Grotstein 2009c). 409 Building on Klein, 410 Bion offers a common language that engages
complex psychic experiences described as psychosis or early trauma that existing
psychoanalytic knowledge did not adequately address. 411 ‘What Bion did without anyone
realizing it was create a phenomenological and ontological epistemology for
psychoanalysis’ (JG 743-744). Plato replaces Enlightenment philosophers and linear
science in defining the contours of the unconscious as a place of encounter, interpretation
407
This concept has been popularized and developed by Eigen (Eigen 1981a, 1992, 1998) and Grotstein
(Grotstein 2007).
408
Much of this critique stems from Bion’s fictional trilogy written in a Joycean literary style, later published
in one volume (Bion 1991). ‘This is an attempt to express my rebellion … “Abandon Hope all ye who expect
to find any facts-scientific, aesthetic or religious-in this book” … All these will, I fear, be seen to have left
their traces, vestiges, ghosts hidden within these words; even sanity’ (Bion 1991: 578).
409
This was a theme that ran throughout the entire interview.
410
‘Some of our ideas are generally accepted across all divides, projective identification, splitting, paranoid
schizoid depressive positions’ (JG 234-237).
411
‘Bion I think has made the most impact in terms of the normalization as communication of projection
identification, sending signals under the radar of language and the two-person model, intuition and I think
most schools are using this’ (JG 237-240).
249