Full Description
Through a richly detailed close reading of Wilfred R. Bion's work on dreaming, as scattered across multifarious and largely unworked texts, this book argues that Bion's thinking can form a unified theory of dreams which extends and has further implications as a visionary model of the mind.
The central quality of Bion's visionary model of the mind is the belief that all that is interesting in the human mind pulsates with an unreadably complex dynamic beyond the unknown, the unknowable and the unthinkable. However, rather than interpreting this negatively, the author understands the inevitable unknowability of the human mind as a call to perplexity and wonder which actively encourages the intuition of fundamental insights into who and what determines our internal lives. A major implication of this belief is that psychoanalysis is itself essentially about the unknown, and Monteiro generates informed observations about how this may influence psychoanalytic work.
Providing renewed insight into psychoanalytical understandings of dreams, this book is essential reading for any psychoanalyst wishing to broaden their knowledge of the importance of Wilfred R. Bion's dream work.
Contents
Part 1: On the Unknown, the Unknowable and the Unthinkable 1. Freud's Dream-Thoughts: An Uninvited Step into the Unknown, the Unknowable and the Unthinkable 2. Bion's Theory of Contact-Barrier: A Winding Road Into the Mysteries of the Human Mind 3. New Remarks on the Structure: And the Workings of the Contact-Barrier 4. The Conscious Mind and the Unconscious Mind: New Remarks on the Structure and the Workings of the Contact-Barrier 5. A Brief Historical Survey 6. Alpha-Function as a Cluster of Dreaming Functions 7. Mother's Reverie and the Mystery of Introjection 8. What is a Dream? 9. Bion's Theory of Dream-Work-Alpha: Part I 10. Bion's Theory of Dream-Work-Alpha: Part III 11. The Enigmatic Fabric of Mental Life 12. The Dreaming Ego 13. How Conscious is Conscious, and Unconscious Unconscious? 14. Freud's Wrestling with "The Fact of Consciousness" 15. What, Then, Is a Dream? 16. The Soul and the Stone 17. Still Unregistered Disorders 18. I Don't Know 19. What is Hearing? Part 2: 20. The Fundamental Basic Assumption of Psychoanalysis 21. The Myth of Interpretation and the Role of the Ineffable 22. The Slippery Word Understanding 23. Knowledge as a Privileged Path to Intimacy 24. Passion and the Wonder of Unmeasure 25. The Misfortune of Explanation 26. "Thinking with Passion is the Unconscious Thing" 27. The Inspiring Light of Perplexity and the Emerging Experience of Mystery: A Note Conclusion
