W.R. Bion: Between Past and Future

A collection of papers on and about the work of Wilfred Bion and its continuing development. Most were presented at the International Centennial Conference on the work of Bion in Turin in 1997. Contributors include Francesca Bion, Andre Green, James Grotstein, and many others. “How are we to become wise when so much emphasis is placed on cleverness, on building increasingly complex substitutes for thought? Where does wisdom come on a scale measuring success?” So writes Francesca Bion, when considering her husband’s work. A fitting tribute to Bion would be a collection of papers containing passionate attempts at thinking, not substitutes for thought. In this book, concern with psychic life, far from being dead, reaches new places, takes deeper, more nuanced turns. Authors penetrate subtly into our lying ways and soundly appreciate the complexities of our hunger for truth and experience.

Franco Borgogno is full professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Turin and training and supervising psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. He is author of several papers and books, including 'Psychoanalysis as a Journey', and lectures and supervises throughout Europe and Israel, as well as in North and South America. He is part of the Editorial Board of Italian and International psychoanalytic journals and IPA Chair of the 'Psychoanalysis and University' Committee. In 2010 Borgogno has received the Mary Sigourney Award. Parthenope Bion Talamo was the oldest child of W. R. Bion and a highly regarded analyst in her own right. After schooling in England she went to Italy to study, and later set up in private practice in Turin. She was a member of the Societa Psicoanalitica Italiana (SPI) and of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She translated many of her father's books and papers into Italian, and wrote extensively on her own theories and observations. She died in Italy in 1998