Bion and Being

<p>With his concept of O Wilfred Bion provided a new psychoanalytic space in which to explore the mind. Dr Annie Reiner's new book <em>Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind</em> examines the similarities between this psychoanalytic space and the artist's creative sensibility as well as mystical and religious states. This most mysterious and revolutionary of Bion's analytic ideas reflects what is essentially a state of being an experience of mental integrity and union between emotional and rational functions of the mind which is the basis of thinking and creativity. In an effort to provide emotional understanding to Bion's theoretical ideas Dr Reiner uses examples of artists poets writers theologians and philosophers including Rilke Cummings Shakespeare Beckett and Nietzsche to illustrate these psychoanalytic concepts. She also presents detailed clinical examples of patient's dreams to explore the obstacles to these states of being as well as how to work clinically to develop access to these creative states.</p>