On Oneiric States of Mind

What is it about?

Drawing on Bion’s thinking, along with Process Philosophy and the Jewish mystical tradition, the oneiric state of mind is depicted as the mind’s capacity for perpetual movement in its quest of a truthful apprehension of reality and its unending transformations. It is the to-and-fro movement in pursuit of the unknowable that is at the heart of Bion’s thinking. This is the radical notion Bion is introducing into psychoanalysis, whereby the analyst aims not so much at facilitating the transformation of unconscious into conscious, nor making the unthinkable thinkable. Rather, it is facilitating the personality to extricate itself from its tendency to adopt a “thus far and no further” attitude – a rigidified imprisonment in the past or in the strived-for future – that is the essence of psychoanalytic work.

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