BronzinoBionFoulkes

Introduction, Bion and Foulkes

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Introducing the present issue of  Funzione Gamma devoted to”Bion and Foulkes” I would like to thank all the contributors as well as those who took part in preparing it. Going through the several papers I need first of all to emphasize how .meaningful and enriching (in the sense of future developments)the sources of psychoanalytic thinking about the group are, how fascinating it is to inquire about their similarities and differences, how necessary to reread them looking for new integrations and proximities. The topic looks more and more stimulating as we feel the pressures implied by the changes in the rapid development of the social group’s organization and the urgency to compare different epistemological models that permit to work through different approaches to our object.the group. Particularly important the connection to the classical psychoanalytic theory and its development (institutional as well): connection which implies autonomy and distance at the same time, to keep the dialogue with other disciplines alive. If the group’s life and the valuing of the social potentialities of the individual mind are the focus of our attention and research, then the meeting of different minds, on this telematic occasion, represents itself a comunicative space, where group elements come together in a new meaningful and transformative dimension. So the meeting between Bion and Foulkes, historically unsatisfacory, achieves a sort of “mythological Read more

BronzinoBionFoulkes

Bion, Foulkes and empathy

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Abstract

I am trying to show how we can make use of the insights of both Bion and Foulkes to create two vectors which have points of convergence and which help us to uncover the deeper truths which groups so often try to hide from themselves. The place of empathy, sympathy, compassion and pity continue to call for our attention. Human beings are capable of experiencing and acting upon those feelings; we also are capable of anihilating those feelings with the result that we become inhumane, arrogant, capable of horrific actions towards others whom we cease to regard as in any way being of the same common stuff as ourselves. Bion’s experiences in WW1 immersed him in the horrors of front-line warfare and he never ceased to draw on this experience in his exploration of primitive psychic processes. Foulkes did not undergo such trauma as he was behind the lines in Read more

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How Foulkesian was Bion?

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Abstract

If we want to enrich our ideas, we must study the problems of holding together caring and hating, the individual and the social. We each need to face the difficult emotional significance of the issues of group therapy, and group life. We need to remember it is an easy option to go for one position or the other. We do that for comfort rather than for truth. We need to establish the tension as a creative one. If influences that drove Bion and Foulkes, and their followers, towards polarised positions are valid, it is important for us now to understand how we each position ourselves. If we are to follow Malcolm’s initial plan of ‘ongoing dialogues between Foulkesian and other group-as-a-whole approaches’, we Read more

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Bion and Foulkes, a mythological encounter, only, but it is already enogh

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Abstract

We can affirm that Bion’s summit and his impact on dialectics between alfa and beta elements constitute the most authentic and complete theory of Foulkes’ summit: the group-analytical theory that a number of people have blamed him for not being able to or not knowing how to elaborate. Which certainly doesn’t mean that psychoanalysis and group-analysis should coincide; rather, it means that the “group dynamics” described by Bion are part of the latter, to belong to its basic matrix, and that Bionian analysis, in the depth of the psychoanalytic Read more

BronzinoBionFoulkes

Reflection on Foulkes and basic assunts, “Italianiter”

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Abstract

The group becomes a place where bygone lacerations are exhibited, and where in the meantime hopefully a remedy will be found. The scars are the concrete evidence of our tormented stories, that show us our limits and those of others, we are aware of the objective difficulties, but we are closer to finding an area where we can express our life project. To remember, and to be remembered by the group ascribes value to the memory, contributing to our being responsible for our present and future. A profound sense of continuity of the Self, makes it possible to face solitude with contentment, time and space become a potential area of creativity. The group constitutes the ideal family, where it is possible to learn to modulate time and the individual-group dialectic. Nucara, Menarini and Pontalti explain: “the family matrix should be a transitional space (or unsaturated family matrix), from which the child (or person) gives meaning to the precedent generations and culture and contemporaneously gives signification to the new, evolutive project that is unknown”. This quotation for me assumes a fundamental model in my conclusion on Foulkes, Bion, the story and the time. Today we can say a group culture is firmly established in the world thanks to the Read more