The Tavistock Seminars
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : 2005
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 128
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 21925
- ISBN 13 : 9781855753440
- ISBN 10 : 1855753448
Free UK Delivery over £25
There are currently no reviews
Be the first to review
Previously unpublished lectures from Wilfred Ruprecht Bion. The book consists of eight talks Bion gave at the Tavistock Clinic between 1976 and 1979. Topics explored include the importance of observation; dreams; art and psychoanalysis; and the significance of time in psychoanalysis. In addition, this volume includes an illuminating interview of Bion by Anthony G. Banet in 1976.
'In your practice you will find yourself under pressure. You say whatever you have to say, and then there is an entirely new situation. You don't really know what is going on because it is an entirely new situation, things will not be the same. It is likely enough that the patient will say, "Why don't you say something?" Or if not the patient, the relatives - "Why don't you do something?" So you are always under pressure prematurely and precociously to produce your idea. Poor little thing! Pull it up by the roots and have a look at it - it hasn't got a chance. So you have to act as a sort of parent to the idea - protect it and give it a chance to grow in spite of these pressures; you have to be able to tolerate this state of ignorance.'
- W.R. Bion
About the Author(s)
Wilfred R. Bion (1897 -1979) was born in India and first came to England at the age of eight to receive his schooling. During the First World War he served in France as a tank commander and was awarded the DSO and the Legion of Honour. After reading history at Queen's College, Oxford, he studied medicine at University College London, before a growing interest in psychoanalysis led him to undergo training analysis with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes. Abandoning his work in this field in favor of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis (1956-62) and President of the British Psychoanalytical Society (1962-65). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979.
A pioneer in group dynamics, he was associated with the 'Tavistock group', the group of pioneering psychologists that founded the Tavistock Institute in 1946 on the basis of their shared wartime experiences. He later wrote the influential Experiences in Groups, an important guide for the group psychotherapy and encounter group movements beginning in the 1960s, and which quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields. Bion's training included an analysis with Melanie Klein following World War II. He was a leading member in the Kleinian school while in London, but his theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, eventually revealed radical departures from both Kleinian and Freudian theory. While Bion is most well known outside of the psychoanalytic community for his work on group dynamics, the psychoanalytic conversation that explores his work is concerned with his theory of thinking and his model of the development of a capacity for thought.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have not yet reviewed this title. Be the first add your own review for this title.
You may also like
The Work of Psychoanalysis: Sexuality, Time and the Psychoanalytic Mind
Dana Birksted-Breen
Price £46.99
W. R. Bion as Clinician: Steering Between Concept and Practice
R.D. Hinshelwood
Price £26.99
save £3.00
