On Mental Growth

Psychoanalysis owes Bion some of its most original moments. He took it to its limits, establishing a dialogue with other disciplines, arts and science. This dialogue generated innovating questions that transformed the psychoanalitical technique. Bion conceives the mind as a universe expanding, and psychoanalysis as a powerful, disruptive idea. His hypotheses transform psychoanalytical clinic through a revolutionary change, a transformation towards a model of mental growth. He extends our understanding of the mind towards protomental, pre-natal phenomena and the mysterious transformations in hallucinosis. He contributes to understand psychoanalytical intuition and mental growth. Psychoanalysis needs to include other phenomena through a development similar to that of the quantum physic, creating instruments as the radiotelescopes to access ultra and infrasensorial phenomena: emotional experiences cannot be apprehended by the senses The Copernican revolution Bion introduces is implied in his ideas of catastrophic change, transformations and at-one-ment. These three ideas imply a new conception of analysis, not only as a process towards knowing oneself, but also to be in at-one-ment with what one is becoming. The chapters with abstract notions are followed by comments of movies used as a clinical illustration. The last chapter about the primitve mind in Bion has an original approach with the concept of tropisms.