The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion's O

The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion’s ‘O’ pays homage to Wilfred Bion’s lifelong love of poetry and his desire to integrate it with his psychoanalytic work as a means of communicating profound levels of emotional experience.

Annie Reiner was a student of Bion in in the 1970s in Los Angeles. She illustrates here the fundamental similarities in the states of mind of creative people across diverse disciplines in the Arts and Sciences to exemplify Bion’s concept of ‘O’. Reiner, herself a poet and artist, shows how psychoanalysis and poetry rely on the same tools – symbols, metaphors, images and narrative – to communicate and express otherwise inexpressible metaphysical matters of mental life. Focusing on key psychoanalytic ideas, such as dream interpretation and trauma, she weaves in the poetry of Rumi, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa and William Blake, and ideas of artists like Matisse, Rothko and Jackson Pollock, as well as ideas of Christian and Hindu mystics to show analysts how creative arts can help them better understand primitive mental life. She shows how examining ideas from other disciplines in the arts, philosophy and religious thought can reveal an underlying unity of our ancient efforts to understand ourselves as human beings.

Written in an accessible style and drawing on Reiner’s decades of experience within the creative and psychoanalytic fields, this book is a valuable resource to all analysts in training and practice, as well as those interested in understanding the deeper levels of the mind and emotional life.