Online Pre-Conference Seminars
Leading up to the conference we will be offering ongoing groups online exploring how the developments in Bion may be seen in conjunction with the work of Freud, Klein, and Lacan. Other groups will focus on a particular vertex, such as Mathematics, Philosophy and Mysticism, studying how Bion enlisted them in his communications about Psychoanalysis. We will also provide a “Bion 101” seminar for those participants who are just starting their Bionian journey. Although distinct from the conferences, these on-line pre-conference groups will become experience-near working groups which will inform the structure of the conference itself.
CE credits are offered for online pre-conference seminars and full conference events.
All pre-conference sessions will be recorded.
*Only one discount code can be applied, so this supersedes the early bird rate
Participants who register for three online pre-conferences will receive a 25% discount on the conference as a whole*
Group #1
Facilitated by:
David Lichtenstein Ph.D.
James Ogilvie Ph.D.
Thomas Helscher Ph.D.
Jason Royal Ph.D.
Olga Pugachevsky Ph.D.
You are invited to join an ongoing conversation of Bionian and Lacanian analysts as they are facilitating a dialogue between Bion and Lacan. There will be three seminars, each with a guiding theme, conducted in two parts. The first part will be based on a discussion of excerpts from Bion’s and Lacan’s writings tracing the ways they echo each other, especially in the context of the everyday practice of psychoanalysis. The second part of each seminar will consist in a ‘Second Look’, in which participants will be encouraged to ask any questions evoked by the previous discourse.
Seminar 1. Caesura and the cut
Seminar 2. Acts of speech and acts of faith
Seminar 3. The possibility of experience and the experience of possibility.
Dates: 03/16; 04/27; 05/18
11am - 1 pm EDT
Caesura, the Act of Saying, and the Possibility of Experience: between Bion and Lacan
Group #2
The Threat of the Unknown,
the Comfort of Deadness.
Oedipus myth through Bion’s lens.
Facilitated by Masha Yaglom MS,LCSW
We will follow the development of Bion’s thought:
from his understanding of Psychosis and what is needed for the Psychic Apparatus to be able to deal with Internal and External reality to his understanding of the substrate of the Mind and development of a radically different approach to the very process of Psychoanalysis.
Reading Bion’s texts defies constrictions of our thinking and deconstructs our acquired ideas about our practice. They teach us to be in the realm of the Unknown, to see and learn from our experience.
We will experiment with reading Bion’s texts together and will discuss the effect they have on our psyche.
April 27, May 11 & 18 @ 1:30pm – 3:00pm EDT
Group #3
Everything you always wanted to know about Bion and math, but were afraid to ask
Facilitated by:
Afsaneh Alisobhani, Psy.D.
Olga Pugachevsky, Ph.D.
You are invited to open discussions of mathematical concepts enlisted by Bion as both tools and means in his search to express and convey his ideas on psychoanalytic work. While seemingly counterintuitive the language of mathematics serves a very practical purpose and is fully grounded in everyday psychoanalytic practice. Descriptions of psychoanalytic work from Bion’s writing will be used to illustrate the practical use of mathematical concepts. During the follow-up discussion all questions, and requests for clarification will be strenuously encouraged.
Seminar 1: “Point, Line, Circle”.
Seminar 2: “Saturated vs unsaturated elements and aspects of the notion of function”.
March 23 @ 2:30pm - 4:00pm EDT
April 06 @ 2:30pm - 4:00pm EDT
Group #4
When the Problem is Experience Itself: Bion on Faith, Catastrophe and the Science of At-One-Ment
Facilitated by James Ogilvie, PhD
This pre-conference group seeks to introduce participants to Bion’s conception of psychoanalysis as a “science of at-one-ment.” Roots of this notion in the Western philosophical and mystical traditions will be explored through a close reading of select passages from Bion and some of the writers by whom he was inspired. Bion’s psychoanalytic method is widely known to have encouraged the analyst’s “eschewing memory and desire.” Less well understood are the source points for his developing views in the apophatic mystical writers such as Meister Eckhart and “transcendental” philosophers such as Kant and Wittgenstein. Faith, says Bion, is a “scientific state of mind.” It relates to thought as a priori knowledge relates to knowing. What might he mean by these obscure statements? Here, as Wittgenstein would say, “the straight road is blocked.” How are we to find our way?
March 30, April 20 @ 1:30pm – 3:00pm EDT
June 1 @ 2:30pm – 4:00pm EDT
Group #5
Bion on Projective Identification, and Container/Contained
“… nothing more than a bunch of holes knitted or netted together…”:
Facilitated by Deborah Sherman, BC-DMT, LMHC
In this seminar we will explore WR Bion’s view of Projective Identification as a communication process that develops the Container/Contained relationship. We will begin with excerpts from Freud’s “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911) and Melanie Klein’s “Notes on Schizoid Mechanisms” (1946) for their inspiration and grounding of Bion’s work in this area. We will then take up a section of chapter 2 of Bion’s “Attention and Interpretation” (1970) and the different clinical encounters he has in his work with patients “B” and “A”.
Following on Freud and Klein, we might say that Bion combined the human psychic impulse toward the Reality principle and truth with our early draw toward objects/relating. He conceived the origins of thinking and of emotional experience as developing within, and creating, a container/ contained relationship. Here Bion brought together the way we locate ourselves in “infinite space” by having a “mental realization of space” with Freud and Klein’s subject/object, inner and outer reality. Bion’s conception of “the ordinary man’s mental realization of space” offers the largest container of all, locating the smallest seeds of us inside astronomical, infinite space.
With an interest in where Bion came from and where he was going, we will follow the steps, leaps and turns he takes, to see what his formulations offer for our clinical thinking and work.
April 20, May 11 @ 11:30am – 1:00pm EDT
May 4 @ 2:30pm – 4:00pm EDT
Group #6
Encountering the Unthinkable
Facilitated by Avner Bergstein, MA, FIPA
Bion contemplates "how to let anybody know that he's terrified, especially in a situation where there may be nobody". "The analyst", he says, "in the midst of the noises of distress… needs to be able to hear the sound of this terror which indicates the position of a person beginning to hope that he might be rescued".
Through a close reading of one of Bion's Italian seminars, we will explore the communication of primitive, unmentalized, unthinkable emotional experience between patient and analyst.
April 6, May 4, June 1 @ 10:00am - 11:30am EDT
