Wilfred R. Bion > Quotes

“Wisdom or oblivion - take your choice. From that warfare there is no release.”
― W. R. Bion

“In psychoanalysis, when approaching the unconscious—that is, what we do not know—we, patient and analyst alike, are certain to be disturbed. In every consulting-room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.”
― Wilfred R. Bion, The Tavistock Seminars

“The first of these uses is in the service of projective identification. In this the patient uses words as things or as split-off parts of himself which he pushes forcibly into the analyst. Typical of the consequences of this behaviour is the experience of a patient who felt he got inside me at the beginning of each session and had to be extricated at the end of it. Language”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis

“The technique depends on the combination of two incompatible elements thus: the patient speaks in a drowsy manner calculated to put the analyst to sleep. At the same time he stimulates the analyst's curiosity. The intention is again to split the analyst, who is not allowed to go to sleep and is not allowed to keep awake. You”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis

“that aspect of the patient’s behaviour that betrays his awareness of the presence of an object that is not himself. No”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Elements of Psychoanalysis

“breakdown in the patient’s equipment”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Learning from Experience

“Memory is born of, and only suited to, sensuous experience.”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis

“I suggested that it meant that he could not rely on the use to which he would put his capacity if he permitted himself to develop by reuniting the various splits in his personality—particularly in allowing hatred to return as a part of himself in his relationship with me. Nor did he feel sure of my response to this. He feared that if he were to have a relationship with me, both of us being experienced, it would be bound to issue in mutual hatred. 22. The session ended: and”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis

“transference. The”
― Wilfred R. Bion, Elements of Psychoanalysis