The last sentence of this piece is mysterious though and I'd expect no less when discussing Bion but I do hope you'll explore it more in the third installment.
I’m not sure how well I accomplish that. I think of it as the epistemological versus the ontological. In making the unconscious conscious, Freud’s thought was that as we learned more about our unconscious and became more knowledgeable about ourselves, we can think about experience differently and more fully. As Freud said, “Where it was, there I shall be.” It is the id, the unconscious which is unknowable to us, which becomes more conscious, where I, the ego, is. For Bion, and Winnicott, psychoanalysis is much more about coming into being and become more fully a person who can think and dream, which is rooted in unconscious work. They might argue that the true growth occurs when our conscious experiences can more fully be integrated into our unconscious mind where unconscious work occurs, so that we know ourselves in a way that has flexibility, playfulness, expansiveness, openness, etc. Those traits in our conscious mind allow our unconscious mind to expand conscious experience.
This is so helpful ! I've started reading Ogden and very early on found myself drawn to Bion but also to a lesser extent (mostly due to less exposure) Winnicott. It totally makes sense that there is a kind of common thread that might pull someone like me to all these figures. I thought in the last article one of the quotes even included the phrase from Ogden "a memior of the future" which got my mind spinning if Ogden was very interested in Bion as well (since the last book Bion published went by that name). So exciting and fascinating to see these thinkers brought together. Thank you!
I’m so glad you caught the “memoir of the future” comment. Ogden’s article “What’s True and Whose Idea Was It” is a favorite. He addresses this idea of temporality, playing with time. In essence, he says, Klein was shaped by Freud but Freud was shaped by Klein! Freud wrote works that were rich in meaning but not static, and therefore could be expanded upon later. Our current readings of Freud are influenced by Klein’s work. Consider “Mourning and Melancholia.” Ogden reads it as the origins of object relations theory, but this is because of Klein’s work. She did what she did, which allows us to trace back into Freud’s work those underpinnings, and time becomes elastic. I think that my reading of Winnicott and Bion is so much more expansive now because I have read Ogden. This is Ogden’s thought about Susan Isaac’s paper. It is a memoir of the future in this way.
The last sentence of this piece is mysterious though and I'd expect no less when discussing Bion but I do hope you'll explore it more in the third installment.
I’m not sure how well I accomplish that. I think of it as the epistemological versus the ontological. In making the unconscious conscious, Freud’s thought was that as we learned more about our unconscious and became more knowledgeable about ourselves, we can think about experience differently and more fully. As Freud said, “Where it was, there I shall be.” It is the id, the unconscious which is unknowable to us, which becomes more conscious, where I, the ego, is. For Bion, and Winnicott, psychoanalysis is much more about coming into being and become more fully a person who can think and dream, which is rooted in unconscious work. They might argue that the true growth occurs when our conscious experiences can more fully be integrated into our unconscious mind where unconscious work occurs, so that we know ourselves in a way that has flexibility, playfulness, expansiveness, openness, etc. Those traits in our conscious mind allow our unconscious mind to expand conscious experience.
This is so helpful ! I've started reading Ogden and very early on found myself drawn to Bion but also to a lesser extent (mostly due to less exposure) Winnicott. It totally makes sense that there is a kind of common thread that might pull someone like me to all these figures. I thought in the last article one of the quotes even included the phrase from Ogden "a memior of the future" which got my mind spinning if Ogden was very interested in Bion as well (since the last book Bion published went by that name). So exciting and fascinating to see these thinkers brought together. Thank you!
I’m so glad you caught the “memoir of the future” comment. Ogden’s article “What’s True and Whose Idea Was It” is a favorite. He addresses this idea of temporality, playing with time. In essence, he says, Klein was shaped by Freud but Freud was shaped by Klein! Freud wrote works that were rich in meaning but not static, and therefore could be expanded upon later. Our current readings of Freud are influenced by Klein’s work. Consider “Mourning and Melancholia.” Ogden reads it as the origins of object relations theory, but this is because of Klein’s work. She did what she did, which allows us to trace back into Freud’s work those underpinnings, and time becomes elastic. I think that my reading of Winnicott and Bion is so much more expansive now because I have read Ogden. This is Ogden’s thought about Susan Isaac’s paper. It is a memoir of the future in this way.