Attacks on Linking Revisited: A New Look at Bion’s Classic Work

This book aims at providing further contributions inspired by Bion's paper Attacks on Linking (1959) by a distinguinshed group of scholars who have focused on different aspects of his propositions.Contributors: Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, Rachel B. Blass, Ronald Britton, Catalina Bronstein, Elias Mallet da Rocha Barros, Elizabeth Lima da Rocha Barros, Antonino Ferro, Jay Greenberg, Monica Horovitz, Clara Nemas, Edna O'Shaughnessy, Rudi Vermote

Review

"The idea of revisiting one of W. R. Bion’s most quoted articles after sixty years is as timely as it is necessary, since the world has been shaken by the effects of violence in its diverse forms. This collection of articles, written by established psychoanalysts from around the world, attests to the fact that Bion’s ideas have not ceased to encourage psychoanalysts to delve deeper into clinical practice and to go beyond it – to consider destructiveness and its effects on individual subjects and on our society." (Virginia Ungar, MD, President of the International Psychoanalytical Association)

"Attacks on Linking is a crucial way station in Bion’s oeuvre that can be read as the culmination of his Kleinian contributions to the understanding and treatment of psychosis and primitive mental life or as a key turning point towards his later, original theories regarding projective identification and the intersubjective functioning and development of the primitive mind. This volume brings together an outstanding group of international contributors who explore, contrast and expand upon both perspectives and their clinical implications. In so doing, they offer readers a profound and vital excursion into current Bion scholarship at the frontiers of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and technique." (Howard B. Levine, MD, co-editor of Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning, The W.R. Bion Tradition, Bion in Brazil, and Growth and Turbulence in the Container- Contained)

"The ideas developed in Attacks on Linking have broadened the understanding of the processes of symbolisation and the analytic treatment of difficult patients. These aspects are taken up in this book in a clear and profound way. The reader is struck by the passionate interest with which the authors dissect Bion’s text. Another merit of the book is to show us the originality with which psychoanalysts of different theoretical orientations take ownership of the ideas discussed. These different visions reflect, in a creative way, facets of contemporary psychoanalysis. I am sure the reader, regardless of his or her theoretical preference, will feel enriched both in relation to psychoanalytic theory and in relation to the clinical application of the ideas presented and discussed." (Roosevelt Cassorla, psychoanalyst and training analyst, member of the Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo and Campinas Study Group, and full professor of Medical Psychology at the State University of)

"The editors are to be congratulated on having brought together in this volume some of the leading psychoanalytic scholars and clinicians who each explore this development from their own particular perspectives. These differences are important and lend a real richness to the text. This book thus has a broad significance, not only in terms of the understanding of Bion’s work, but also because it provides an opportunity to re-examine the current “psychoanalytic field” through these various perspectives. This work will prove of great value not only to all who are interested in Bion’s work but to anyone who wishes to be acquainted with this wide canvas of current psychoanalytic theorising and the ways it has been affected by him. It will become, I believe, a standard text." (Dr. David Bell, former president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic)