Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight: Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein

Dr James Grotstein’s erudition and depth of understanding made him one of the most revered psychoanalysts throughout the psychoanalytic world. He was well known and appreciated for his prolific writings, as well as his generosity and support of other writers in the field. It was only fitting to honor him through writing, and the fifteen articles in Of Things Invisible To Mortal Sight: A Celebration of the Work of James S. Grotstein are written by esteemed analysts from Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, and throughout the United States. They vary from examinations of Grotstein’s theories and his historical place in psychoanalysis, to detailed clinical accounts and creative theoretical works.

To honor James Grotstein is also to honor Wilfred Bion, for we might say that Bion was his muse for a half century, as well as his teacher, analyst, and the inspiration for Grotstein’s encyclopedic writings about Bion’s work in countless articles and books. Grotstein’s insatiable curiosity and passion for learning, however, led to his studying and contributing to the literature of many other psychoanalytic orientations as well, ranging from Klein to Kohut to Intersubjectivity, but until the end of his life Grotstein continued to find inspiration in Bion’s work, and in Bion himself – the genius, mystic, and “extraordinary individual.” Grotstein spent decades examining Bion’s concept of O, and many other mysteries and states of mind “invisible to mortal sight,” which must nonetheless be intuited and which Grotstein, and these authors, help psychoanalysts to do.