Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Thirdly, Winnicott and Bion contributed new theoretical concepts of transitional phenomena
and an original approach to the place of the unconscious, including the concept of O, that
stimulated new forms of psychoanalytic creativity. This offered an opening up of
psychoanalytic theory, still largely dominated by powerful psychoanalytic societies
imposing a theoretical stranglehold on psychoanalytic training (Kirsner 2000). Winnicott
was not perceived as a threat, balancing the egos of Anna Freud and Klein (Rodman 2003),
yet with a healthy independent streak telling trainees, ‘Learn the basics, then do what you
like’ (Winnicott quoted in Molino 1997: 177). While Bion was initially in a Kleinian camp,
until he developed his distinctive philosophically-based ideas and, later mystically-based
ideas, he was always ‘a law unto himself’ (Molino 1997: 175). Both Winnicott and Bion
valued other forms of knowing and not-knowing, and other ways of being human, that were
more inclusive than simply a psychoanalytic world-view where the goal of psychoanalysis
is to face ‘the final, ineffable, unspeakable experience of another human being’ (Bion
quoted in Molino 1997: 177).
Yet their role was more than simply theoretical, they were representative of a more inclusive
form of psychoanalytic being. Coltart added that Bion ‘unlike many psychoanalysts, [he]
understands about faith and mystical experience’ (Molino 1997: 175) and Bion’s very
presence helped Coltart and others to develop a distinctive faith or spirituality, without there
being a direct influence. Phillips added that Winnicott, whatever his theoretical
contribution, has the capacity to evoke an affinity between the psychoanalytic and the
spiritual, a view echoed by Ulanov and Hoffman (Ulanov 2001; Hoffman 2004). Eigen
recalls meeting Bion and Bollas. The meeting with Winnicott gave him immediate insight
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