Second Thoughts is a collection of papers on Schizophrenia, Linking and Thinking, and is a commentary upon them in the light of later work. Originally composed between 1950 and 1962, it derives its title from the lengthy critical commentary which Bion attached to these case histories in the year of publication, 1967, and represents the evolutionary change of position marked in his three previous books and brought to further refinement in the present work.

Bion's central thesis in this volume is that for the study of people, whether individually or in groups, a cardinal requisite is accurate observation, accompanied by accurate appreciation and formulation of the observations so made. The study represents a further development of a theme introduced in the author's earlier works, particularly in Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963) and Transformations (1965). Bion's concern with the subject stems directly from his psycho-analytic experience and reflects his endeavor to overcome, in a scientific frame of reference, the immense difficulty of observing, assessing, and communicating non-sensuous experience. Here, he lays emphasis on he overriding importance of attending to the realities of mental phenomena as they manifest themselves in the individual or group under study. In influences that interpose themselves between the observer and the subject of his scrutiny giving rise to opacity, are examined, together with ways of controlling them.

Cogitations, the last of the posthumous publications, is a collection of occasional writings representing Bion's attempts to clarify and evaluate both his own ideas and those of others by casting them in written form and frequently addressing them to an imaginary audience. Covering a period between February 1958 and April 1979, Cogitations

Wilfred Bion's unpublished lectures at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in April in 1967 represent a unique opportunity for students either new to or continuing in the study of the author's unique psychoanalytic vertex. Here one can both read - and hear - the author's clear exposition of his clinical and theoretical thinking to an audience of primarily Freudian trained American analysts, most of whom were new to his ideas. The first lecture sets out the author's ideas on 'memory and desire' in a paper that set the benchmark in the origins of contemporary Kleinian clinical technique. The author discusses the various factors that facilitate optimal listening receptivity in the analyst, for example how one differentiates the 'K' link vis-a-vis 'transformations in O.' In the second lecture, the author defined projective identification, container/contained and 'beta elements'- and how these ideas serve as an orienting template for the analyst's understanding of 'proto-mental' states of mind, either in psychotic, borderline or neurotic patients. He clarifies these ideas while engaging with the queries of renowned American analysts, such as Ralph Greenson.

A Memoir of the Future, Bion's unorthodox attempt to cast psychoanalytic speculation in fictional form, is composed of three semi-autobiographical novels: The Dream (1975), The Past Presented (1977), and The Dawn of Oblivion (1979). Presented here for the first time in one volume, they appear together with the Key to A Memoir of the Future, a glossary of terms and concepts compiled by Wilfred and Francesca Bion.

Wilfred Bion s unpublished lectures at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in April in 1967 represent a unique opportunity for students either new to or continuing in the study of Bion s unique psychoanalytic vertex. Here one can both read and hear Bion s clear exposition of his clinical and theoretical thinking to an audience of primarily Freudian trained American analysts, most of whom were new to his ideas.The first lecture sets out Bion s ideas on memory and desire in a paper that set the benchmark in the origins of contemporary Kleinian clinical technique. Bion discusses the various factors that facilitate optimal listening receptivity in the analyst. In the second lecture, Bion defined projective identification, container/contained and beta elements and how these ideas serve as an orienting template for the analyst s understanding of "proto-mental" states of mind. In the third lecture, Bion gives extensive case illustrations of primarily borderline and psychotic patients primarily in terms of work that ushered in a new era of understanding of both borderline and narcissistic pathological organizations. In the final lecture, Bion takes up hallucinatory forms of experience and intersperses his more recent thoughts about the mystic and the Establishment."

Taming Wild Thoughts brings together previously unpublished works from two different periods of the author's life which are linked, as the author says in her introduction, by the concept of classifying and conceptualizing thought. The first paper, "The Grid", dates from 1963 and is a discussion of great clarity about one of the author's mo

Second Thoughts is a collection of papers on Schizophrenia, Linking and Thinking, and is a commentary upon them in the light of later work. Originally composed between 1950 and 1962, it derives its title from the lengthy critical commentary which Bion attached to these case histories in the year of publication, 1967, and repre

The Grid, an instrument devised to help the analyst record and elaborate observations arising from the analytic encounter, demonstrates how mathematics can be applied to locate the development, evolution and transformation of psychic elements and events. Caesura takes its title from Freud's observation: "There is much more continuity between intra-uterine life than the impressive caesura of the act of birth would have us believe". Here Bion speculates on the relationship between physiological and psychological birth, and the possibility that a pre-natal "primitive sensitiveness" may carry over and inform later psychological life.

Previously unpublished lectures from the author. 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.

Previously unpublished in English, this book comprises lectures the author gave in Rome, in 1977. The volume consists of questions from the floor andthe aurthor's fascinating and, at times, controversial answers. The lectures are divided in two: the first part was organized by the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the second by the Via Pollai

A Memoir of the Future, Bion's unorthodox attempt to cast psychoanalytic speculation in fictional form, is composed of three semi-autobiographical novels: The Dream (1975), The Past Presented (1977), and The Dawn of Oblivion (1979). Presented here for the first time in one volume, they appear together with the Key to A Memoir of the

These lectures, delivered in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro during 1973 and 1974, reveal Bion in his most vital and challenging mode both in respect of the material he presents, and in his responses to the questions from his audience.

All My Sins Remembered is the continuation of Wilfred Bion's autobiography, The Long Week-end. Although it is by no means a full account of his thirty years following the First World War - and he wrote no more - his memories of that period contrast vividly with the impression we gain of the following thirty years of his life through his letters. The Other Side of Genius gives us a glimpse of this remarkable man as his family knew him: those who met him only through his professional work will find here the same characteristic threads of humour, concern for truth, and flashes of insight that were the hallmark of his work in psycho-analysis. OXFORD: 'Thus opened for me a period of unparalleled opportunities to which I remained obstinately blind. I was overwhelmed before I started by the aura of intellectual brilliance with which Oxford was surrounded'.

In this book Bion describes his use of the term "alpha-function" to conceptualize how the data of emotional experience is processed and digested. This includes his thinking on "contact barriers" and the bearing of "projective identification" on the genesis of thought. A Jason Aronson Book

This selection of clinical seminars held by Wilfred Bion in Brasilia (1975) and Sao Paulo (1978) is the nearest we shall ever get to experiencing his application of his theories and views to consulting-room practice. It is also likely to be the only printed record of this area of his work. As those who underwent analysis with Bion will testify, nothing can approach the experience of the thing itself, but, failing that, these seminars may help to fill the gap now that his voice can only be heard through his published writings and lectures.

All My Sins Remembered is the continuation of Wilfred Bion's autobiography, The Long Week-end. Although it is by no means a full account of his thirty years following the First World War - and he wrote no more - his memories of that period contrast vividly with the impression we gain of the following thirty years of his life through his letters. The Other Side of Genius gives us a glimpse of this remarkable man as his family knew him: those who met him only through his professional work will find here the same characteristic threads of humour, concern for truth, and flashes of insight that were the hallmark of his work in psycho-analysis. OXFORD: 'Thus opened for me a period of unparalleled opportunities to which I remained obstinately blind. I was overwhelmed before I started by the aura of intellectual brilliance with which Oxford was surrounded'.

These lectures, delivered in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro during 1973 and 1974, reveal Bion in his most vital and challenging mode both in respect of the material he presents, and in his responses to the questions from his audience.

Elements is a discussion of categorising the ideational context and emotional experience that may occur in a psychoanalytic interview. The text aims to expand the reader's understanding of cognition and its clinical ramifications.

These newly discovered clinical seminars of Wilfred Bion, which include supervisions, personal case presentations, and lectures on psychoanalytic theory, represent his initial foray into many years of work that have inspired South American analysts for nearly a half a century.The clinical and theoretical work of Bion arguably ranks rather high in the current psychoanalytic firmament-as national and international conferences convene regularly to continue discussing the contemporary relevance of his work. His work has served as a source of inspiration to contemporary psychoanalysts in all three regions of the International Psychoanalytical Assocation-Ronald Britton, Antonino Ferro, Giuseppe Civitarese, Thomas Ogden, James Grotstein, and Paolo Sandler, just to name a few. These newly discovered clinical seminars from work Bion conducted in Buenos Aires in 1968 help us to further fill out the picture of his versatile gifts. In these seminars, we find lectures on Bion's elaborations on his epistemological research-still on-going in the 1960s when he went to Buenos Aires; a lecture on the Grid and its clinical relevance.

Transformations continues the investigation of various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and practice which the author commenced with Learning from Experience (1962) and pursued in Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963). In this third work published in 1965, the author examines the ways in which the analyst's description of the original analytic experience, mediated by theory, necessarily transforms it in the course of effecting an interpretation.

Taming Wild Thoughts brings together previously unpublished works from two different periods of the author's life which are linked, as Parthenope Bion Talamo says in her introduction, by the concept of classifying and conceptualizing thought. The first paper, "The Grid", dates from 1963 and is a discussion of great clarity about one of the author's most widely-used conceptual tools; it predates his more discursive paper of the same title (published in Two Papers) by several years. As a teaching paper on this topic, this version of "The Grid" is without parallel, and will doubtless be of great value to all students of his work. The second part of the book consists of transcripts of two tape-recordings made in 1977. They underline his interest in "wild" or "stray" thoughts; and they provide an insight into his extraordinary sensibility at the time of A Memoir of the Future.

Cogitations, the last of the posthumous publications, is a collection of occasional writings representing Bion's attempts to clarify and evaluate both his own ideas and those of others by casting them in written form and frequently addressing them to an imaginary audience. Covering a period between February 1958 and April 1979, Cogitations delves into a wide range of material - psychoanalysis and science, mathematics and logic, literature and semantics. Some form a background to Bion's theoretical development, showing the doubts and arguments leading to the ideas expressed in his books, others highlighting and detailing some of the more abstract points in them, and some exploring topics destined for books that were to remain unwritten.

A reminiscence of the first twenty-one years of Wilfred Bion's life: eight years of childhood in India, ten years at public school in England, and three years of life in the army.