psych‘O’analysis: explorations in truth
Welcome to the website for the 8th International Bion Conference. The Organizing Committee invites you to join colleagues from around the world to experience the revolutionary and creative work of Wilfred R. Bion. The conference is designed for those who are new to Bion’s work as well as those more familiar with it who may have studied his ideas for decades.
Bion believed in learning from experience. We have designed this edition of the International Bion Conference to provide a rich and transformative experience reflecting Bion’s ideas. These ideas themselves have brought new life to psychoanalytic discourse. His concept of O provided a new psychoanalytic space in which to explore the mind. The aim of this conference is to provide an experience of that space through a combination of small group discussions, theoretical and clinical presentations, and artistic presentations which allow participants to learn through emotional experience.
The theme of this conference—psych‘O’analysis: explorations in truth—reflects Bion’s concept of ‘O’, which is central to his ideas. This symbol—O—reflects the ephemeral reality of the mind, unknowable in verbal language, and yet experienced in all aspects of internal and external reality. It is felt in all relationships, from that of the mother and infant, and the analyst and patient, to the individual’s emotional relationship to his or her self. The concept of O is concerned with the capacity to apprehend internal and external truth. Contact with these fundamental realities represented by O stimulates the turbulence and change which are the basis of learning and mental growth.
The seeds of the biennial International Conference were sown at a gathering of analysts interested in Bion during several IPA meetings. In 1997, Bion’s daughter, Parthenope Bion Talamo, an analyst living and working in Italy, organized the first conference in Turin, Italy. The richness of this conference led to a commitment to meet together every two years in different parts of the world including: Buenos Aires, Argentina (1999); Los Angeles, USA (2002); Sao Paulo, Brazil (2004); Rome, Italy (2007); Boston, USA (2009) and in Porto Allegre, Brazil (2011).
Los Angeles has a special place in Bion’s history. In 1968 he moved to Los Angeles, in part to escape the perils of fame in London, and he lived and worked here until a few months before his death in Oxford in 1979. In those 12 years he made a deep impact on the Los Angeles psychoanalytic community through those he analyzed, supervised, and taught. While in Los Angeles, he developed his ideas and solidified his place as a deep, original thinker. It was in Los Angeles that he wrote: Attention and Interpretation; Brazilian Lectures 1; Brazilian Lectures 2; A Memoir of the Future, Book One: The Dream; ‘Emotional turbulence’; ‘On a quotation from Freud’; ‘Evidence’; Seven Servants; A Memoir of the Future, Book Two; and Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura.
We hope to provide each participant varied experiences throughout the conference as food for reflection and thought. Please join us in Los Angeles for a rich, creative, and clinically relevant conference.
Site: ACÁ
Call for papers: ACÁ
Conferecnes by: ACÁ
Registration: ACÁ
