In this fascinating volume, Meg Harris Williams explores Wilfred Bion’s autobiographical works, analysing their theoretical importance and continued relevance to the personal experience of others.

Williams shows how these works are less about Bion’s life and more about his way of thinking, in which episodes from his own experience are used to illustrate the mind in action. His model of the mind is vividly evoked through his own presentation of himself and his manner of noting and observing internal conflicts. His example constitutes a unique resource in the process of self-analysis, something which is illustrated here by the experiential responses of four contributing psychoanalysts: Vera R. F. Montagna, Vivienne Pasieka, Anne Lise di Moisè S. Scappaticci and Alison Vaspe.

This book is a fundamentally enriching tool for the practising psychoanalyst and an invaluable resource for students of psychoanalysis and psychology, as well as those interested in autobiographical literature.

Meg Harris Williams is a literary critic specialising in the relation between psychoanalysis, aesthetic experience, literature and poetry. She is also a practising artist. She is the author of Donald Meltzer: A Contemporary Introduction (2021), Dream Sequences in Shakespeare: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (2020), The Art of Personality in Literature and Psychoanalysis (2017), The Aesthetic Development: The Poetic Spirit of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Bion, Meltzer, Keats (2010) and Bion's Dream: A Reading of the Autobiographies (2010).