Learning From Experience (Routledge Classics)

✍ Scribed by Wilfred Bion

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 161
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Wilfred R. Bion was one of the foremost psychoanalysts of his generation, whose work has shaped and enriched psychoanalysis and psychotherapy indelibly. Renowned for some highly original and sometimes cryptic ideas, such as the alpha function and theory of the grid, Learning from Experience is arguably his most important and enduring work.

Bion brings knowledge into the psychoanalytic spotlight. What forces, he asks, interfere with knowledge? Crucially, Bion doesn't mean knowing only facts, but the lifelong process of understanding and coming to know things that is a consequence of the development of knowledge. However, Learning From Experience is perhaps best-known for its emphasis on the way emotion and knowledge are interwoven. Bion links the emotional capacity to develop and know to the capacity to tolerate frustration: if we can hold ourselves in check whilst we endure frustration, then we can come to know things.

A remarkable and brilliant work by a fascinating psychoanalyst and thinker, Learning From Experience continues to inspire psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Robert Hinshelwood.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Embodies a Preliminary Explanation of Two Terms
Chapter 2 is a Demarcation of Area in which I Wish to Use the Terms as Part of My Equipment of Inquiry
Chapter 3 Commences a Stylized Description of Emotional Experiences, Realizations, in which I have Participated, that Form the Stimulus for the Whole of this Book. By “Stylized” I Mean that it is Consciously Sophisticated Because the Falsification that is Introduced by Such a Method of Presentation is Immeasurably Less than the Falsification Produced by any Others, Including So Called Mechanical Recordings. These Last have the Truth that Pertains to a Photograph, but the Making of Such a Record, Despite a Superficial Accuracy of Result, has Forced the Falsification Further Back—that is Into the Session Itself. The Photograph of the Fountain of Truth May be Well Enough, But it is of the Fountain After it has Been Muddied by the Photographer and his Apparatus; In Any Case the Problem of Interpreting the Photograph Remains. The Falsification by the Recording is the Greater Because it Gives Verisimilitude to what has Already Been Falsified
Chapter 4 is a Brief Statement of Some of the Ideas that are Discussed Throughout this Book
Chapters 5–11 are a Summary Description of Clinical Phenomena Related to the Subject Matter of the Book; These are Familiar to Analysts But Couched in Terms that are Probably More Meaningful to Analysts Trained in Kleinian Theories. The Description Indicates the Use to which I Put the Term Alpha-Function and Contact-Barrier and at the end of Chapter 11 I Draw Attention to the Importance of the Choice Between Modifying Frustration and Evading it
Chapter 12 Commences with a Discussion of Projective Identification and its Bearing on the Genesis of Thought. The Subject Leads on to the Part Played by Oral and Alimentary Experience in Providing a Model for Thinking. I Draw Attention to the Serious Consequences for Development of a Mother Incapable of Reverie
Chapter 13 Deals with Problems of Recording Sessions and the Theories Used by the Analyst, and Discusses Possibilities that Offer an Approach to a Method of Scientific Notation in Chapter 14.
Chapters 14–16 Introduce the Signs L, H, and K, for Use in the Discussion of the Matter of this Book
Chapters 17–18 Return to the Use of the Abstraction “Alpha-Function” for Discussing the Genesis of Thoughts. The Problems of Abstraction or Generalization and Concretization or Particularization are then Discussed
Chapter 19 Starts the Discussion of the Use of Psychoanalytical Models
Chapter 20 is an Investigation of Abstraction in which an Attempt is Made at Using Abstract Signs to Elucidate Some of the Problems of Abstraction as they Present Themselves in Analysis
Chapter 21 Introduces the Kleinian Theory of Interchange Between Depressive and Paranoid-Schizoid Positions: its Relationship to Learning and the Emotional Experience Associated with the Terms Employed in Theories of Causation is Explored
Chapters 22–23 Discuss Model Making and Abstraction in the Context of Analytical Practice
Chapters 24–27 Continue the Explanation with Particular Reference to Learning (K Link)
Chapter 28 is an Elaboration of the Same Theme in Minus K (–K)
Index