The mind-boggling experience of my encounter with Bion. Bion’s thought cannot be put into any kind of order, above all his mystic thought. What he has shown us is how tenuous thought can be, how uncertain, how much it changes over time. Already in his triology, Bion gives evidence of post-modern thinking (indeterminism, breaking down of rules, irony, etc.).When I first read Bion’s work in 1978 I was thunderstruck: I experienced time-space disorientation and anger. Then I found myself reflecting openly on Nothing. It was Ignacio Matte Blanco who first introduced me to him by showing me a letter he had received from Bion praising him for something he had writter about him. Blanco’s esteem for this psychiatrist I didn’t know made a big impression on me. I attended Francesco Corrao’s seminars on Bion and found I was wavering. One of my colleagues suggested I read his clinical seminars ( Clinical Seminars and Four Papers , 1987 The Estate of W. R. Bion by arrangement with Mark Paterson) to get a better idea of what he was saying. I did, and a whole new world opened up to me, a world in which time takes on a completely different dimension and is almost suspended, a world in which through some area of Bion’s thought we are able to see into the inner life of the Other! I decided that I was going to learn how to go into a session capable of thought. but with very little memory or desire. In the 1980’s I began to systematically study Bion’s work Read more
