Introducing Bion and Jung

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The comparison between Bion’s and Jung’s thought has become, in recent years, a field of growing interest, for a part at least of psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists, the one more open to dialogue and a ‘pluralist’ attitude towards knowledge. This issue of Funzione Gamma stems from Stefania Marinelli’s invitation to explore this field. As a result, authors from various backgrounds (including psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and group psychoanalysis) have come together here. Therefore, it seems necessary to make a premise regarding the ‘small group’ constituted by the authors present here with their work.
There is a highly complex interweaving of historical and phantasmatic issues whenever a comparison (or confrontation) between authors can be traced back to the vicissitudes of the history of psychoanalysis.
The event that first united and then separated Freud and Jung is considered a sort of mythical antecedent with traumatic aspects, still needs to be thoroughly elaborated. So, it has indeed left traces through transgenerational transmission in the various generations of analysts of both schools, even more than a century later.
Therefore, I think that all the stratifications of the dynamics that have Read more

Jung, Bion and social phenomena: Intra-psychic dynamics, inter-psychic dynamics, or something else?

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Abstract

This paper traces the evolution of Jung’s ideas on the collective and Bion’s ideas on groups stemming from their personal experiences during WWI and their respective observational studies. A comparison of their psychoid and proto-mental concepts on the basis of Read more

When the analyst says ‘I ‘- Examining MAP (1) with Jung and Bion

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Abstract

Based on a young boy’s therapy, the author retrospectively constructs the analyst’s symbolic thought process when coping with the reifying discourse of biotechnological procedures. With respect to its Jungian origin, the transference is called upon to highlight Read more

From Jung to Bion: an infinite bridge

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Abstract

Jung’s thought has underground and profoundly influenced Bion’s work. Ostracized by the mainstream of the more traditional psychoanalytic discourse, the creativity of Jungian research has forcefully re-emerged in Bion’s thought in his revolution of psychoanalytic theory and technique. The Jungian transcendent function, the synergy of conscious and unconscious, has become in Bion’s “binocularity” of the mind: the search for synchronicity between conscious and unconscious processes. Jung’s collective unconscious has merged into the conception of a substantially groupal and intersubjective “protomental”. Jung’s emphasis on waking visions allowed Bion to consider how our mind dreams night and day, both in sleep Read more

On Jung and Bion (with mutual benefit and without harm to either)

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Abstract

This article examines the theories of C.G. Jung and W.R. Bion. Their comparison is based on the identification of a paradigm common to the two authors, emerging especially after Bion’s formulation of O. From this common paradigm emerges the possibility of usefully comparing, both in an epistemological and clinical sense, several specific aspects of the two theories that, although they do not exhaust the similarities, seem particularly relevant. Among these aspects they are: the role of the numinous/religious, O, the collective Read more

Oblivion. The value of the negative in psychotherapy between C.G. Jung and W. R. Bion

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Abstract

The article attempts to trace a possible path through the writings of two great psychotherapists: C. G. Jung and W. R. Bion, starting from the value given by both to the term “oblivion” in therapeutic practice. The initial assumption refers to the thought of L. Wittgenstein and states that one cannot ignore an ethical consideration in examining their ideas. Starting from this starting point, some themes of current psychotherapy are taken into consideration in order to connect them to the Bionian Read more

The symmetrical synchronic fractal transformations, T(F(SxS)), in the oscillation work between the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious

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Abstract

In this article, the author tries to present to the scientific community a fourth type of transformation to be added to those already proposed by Bion in Transformations (Bion 1965); this proposal is based on the integration suggested by the individual and group clinics of the points of view of four authors: Jung and Neumann, Bion and Matte Blanco, according to the model of a four-party foundation. The result of this integration is guaranteed by the simultaneous operation of several specific organizers: the principle of symmetry, synchronicity as a principle of acausal connections, the infinite sets represented by fractal objects, the super dimensional and transcendent vector spaces, the coincidence at a certain level Read more

Rêverie and amplification, gateways to the unconscious

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Abstract

Many similarities can be observed between Jung’s theory and that of Bion, as their ideas converge on several central themes of their theoretical-clinical thinking: archetype and pre-conception, psychoid and protomental, anima and alpha function, alchemical recipiens and container, synchronicity and constant conjunction, amplification and rêverie (Manica, 2014). In this paper, we wanted to deepen our understanding of the last pair of concepts and demonstrate that there is a substantial affinity between the two. Amplification and rêverie can be considered gateways to the unconscious, rather than mere techniques: these are modes of immersion and creation of that space of analysis that Ogden defines as the <>. The analytic third stands in dialectical tension with analyst and analysand, and both are deeply involved in a relationship in which the affinities tend to become more evident, moving forward to realise the Self, according to Jung, or the transformation in O, according to Bion.
In Bion’s transformation in O, the rêverie plays a central role, as it allows the beta elements originating from O to be converted into Read more