Bion in the Consulting Room: An Implicit Method of Clinical Inquiry

Bion in the Consulting Room addresses the long-unanswered question of Bion’s clinical and supervisorial technique and examines the way Bion’s conceptual model and clinical practices informed his theoretical work.

As Bion wrote about technique so rarely, the authors set about looking at many of his clinical and supervisorial examples to infer what might be learned from them. This book factors in the four distinctive periods of Bion’s clinical and supervisorial work in chronological order: the group period of the 1940s; the period of the psychosis papers in the 1950s; the epistemological period of the early 1960s; and, finally, the period of his international group seminars in the late 1960s and 1970s. In all four periods, the authors examine and analyze his method of clinical inquiry, or how he went about knowing and experiencing his analysands and supervisees. The authors offer a uniquely overarching view of his method of clinical inquiry, uncovering an amazing consistency in how Bion went about his work both as a psychoanalyst and supervisor.

This illuminating book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and psychologists interested in the work of Wilfred Bion and the importance of his legacy in contemporary practice.

Joseph Aguayo, PhD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California, and a Guest Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He holds PhDs in both Clinical Psychology and European History from UCLA. He contributes to leading psychoanalytic journals and has co-edited Wilfred Bion: Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision (2013) and authored Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion (2023).

Robert Hinshelwood is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; he has previously served as the Clinical Director at The Cassel Hospital, UK. Hinshelwood is the author of numerous publications, including Melanie Klein: The Basics (2017) and recently W.R. Bion as Clinician (2022).

Sira Dermen is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is Honorary Senior Consultant at the Portman Clinic and is in full-time private practice. She has written on violence and perversion.

Nicola Abel-Hirsch is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and works in private practice in London. She is the author of numerous publications, including Bion: 365 Quotes (2019), and she is the editor of Hanna Segal’s last book, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (2007).