New Center for Psychoanalysis

This event addresses: James Grotstein’s work in comparative psychoanalytic theory

Bion’s Analytic Technique

Joseph Aguayo, PhD — Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of California; Faculty, New Center for Psychoanalysis; Honorary Member, British Psychoanalytical Society

For this presentation, Joseph Aguayo takes up how Bion came to his Kleinian training as a seasoned psychiatrist who had worked intensively with groups. Maintaining that his group work informed the kind of Kleinian analyst he subsequently became, specific attention will be paid to how he instigated variations on Kleinian technique by emphasizing that all analysis occurs in the ‘here and now,’ and need not rely on making past-to-present Freudian or Kleinian transference links. Bion’s taking up of the wider notion of countertransference work, which allowed the analyst to be equally informed by the patient’s subjective reactions—as well as his own—will also be addressed. While Bion fundamentally remained Kleinian in his clinical practices, he did so in his own distinctive way.