A Clinical Application of Bion's Concepts

The final book in the three-volume series, A Clinical Application of Bion's Concepts - a practical companion to the dictionary of concepts The Language of Bion - is divided in four main parts. Part I, through the aid of a transdisciplinary study between psycho-analysis, mathematics, and physics, proposes four expanded variations of Bion's epistemological tool, The Grid. This was construed around an Euclidean space represented graphically by two dimensions constantly conjoined: the dimension of Functions of the Ego with the dimension of Psycho-genetics of thought processes. Bion's tool, by its own design, allows possibilities of development with regards to its ability to scrutinize the 'truth-value' of statements issued both by patients and analysts in the space-time, or the 'here and now' of psycho-analytic sessions or groups of sessions. The proposal is made though three steps; each one adds a subsequent dimension to the earlier one considered.

Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSc, MhFAB, is a Training Analyst at the Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanalise de Sao Paulo, Psychiatrist at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (IMREA) at the Hospital das Clinicas, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Sao Paulo, and author of several books in Portuguese. He has written many papers and book chapters, some of which have been published in English and French. He has translated most of Bion's books and papers into Portuguese and has organized several international meetings on the work of Bion. Dr Sandler currently teaches in a post-graduate course at the University of Sao Paulo, and at the Institute of Psycho-Analysis of the SBPSP, giving courses about the work of Freud, Klein and Bion. He has worked in private psychoanalytic practice since 1974, having previously worked with psychotics in a traditional in-patient clinic, as well as in group-oriented community psychiatry, including epidemiology of mental disorders, in the local Public Health School.