A Clinical Application of Bion's Concepts

Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSc, MhFAB, is a Training Analyst at the Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanalise de Sao Paulo, Psychiatrist at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (IMREA) at the Hospital das Clinicas, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Sao Paulo, and author of several books in Portuguese. He has written many papers and book chapters, some of which have been published in English and French. He has translated most of Bion's books and papers into Portuguese and has organized several international meetings on the work of Bion. Dr Sandler currently teaches in a post-graduate course at the University of Sao Paulo, and at the Institute of Psycho-Analysis of the SBPSP, giving courses about the work of Freud, Klein and Bion. He has worked in private psychoanalytic practice since 1974, having previously worked with psychotics in a traditional in-patient clinic, as well as in group-oriented community psychiatry, including epidemiology of mental disorders, in the local Public Health School.

Introduction -- Real Life is the Stuff Dreams are Made of -- A space-time context for Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” -- “The Interpretation of Dreams”: a scientific tradition and resistance to it -- Old wine in new bottles: authors reviving Freud’s psychoanalytic ethos -- Bion’s exploration of the “royal road” -- Functions of dreams -- Clinical illustrations -- Transformations and Invariants -- Observation and communication -- Clinical illustrations -- Container and Contained -- Bion’s theory of container and contained -- Empirical sources: container and contained in the clinic -- Catastrophic Change -- Catastrophic change or fear of change felt as catastrophe? -- When addiction means diminution: clinical illustrations