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Introducing Bion and Jung

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?

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

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

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

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