Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Bion's Caesura

Alice Bar Nes Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist. She is a faculty member at the Tel-Aviv University, and Haifa University schools of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and at Temurot school. She has authored the book, Psychoanalysis, Mysticism and the Problem of Epistemology: Defining the Indefinable (Routledge), as well as various papers in professional journals.

"An exploration and expressive, thoughtful sharing of various facets of Bion's concept of caesura. This book at once opens and enriches creative use of profoundly evocative areas that add dimensionality to psychic life."Michael Eigen PhD., Author of Contact With the Depths, The Sensitive Self, The Mystical Psychoanalyst and The Challenge of Being Human. He currently teaches for the NYU Postdoctoral Program and the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He gives am online private seminar ongoing over fifty years."This book makes Bion’s concept of caesura vibrate with new life — not as a break, but as a generative pause, a dream-space where narration takes over from interpretation. The authors, each in their own key, listen to the silences between thoughts, allowing characters, ideas, and truths to emerge and dissolve. As in all good psychoanalysis, there is no single voice — only reverberations across a field. The result is not a map, but a fabric: dense, porous, and alive. A book to dream with, not merely to read."Antonino Ferro, Training and Supervising Analyst, Italian Psychoanalytic Society"This wonderful collection of essays inspired by Wilfred Bion's extraordinary, highly evocative (1977) paper, Caesura, collected and edited by Alice Bar Nes, will be of great interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalytically informed scholars at all levels of experience, across diverse theoretical perspectives. Each author situates Bion's thought seamlessly into the wider field of psychoanalytic studies. Aficianados of Winnicott's influential ideas on transitionality, contemporary field theory, trauma theory, and contemporary relational theory in its emphasis on intersubjectivity, dissociation, and self- state multiplicity will enjoy tracing the links and dissonances among all these cutting edge currents of psychoanalytically informed contemporary thought. The writing is rich and smart throughout, deeply engaging, even riveting in the way it applies deeply informed theorizing to help us to stay grounded and perhaps more useful to our most challenging patients."Anthony Bass Ph.D., Psychoanalyst and Author of It takes Two to Know One: The Therapy Relationship and Unconscious Dialogues

• Part 1: The Caesura of Birth 1. Breaks in Unity and Fear of Breakdown 2. The Spiritual Caesura of Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis Part 2: Across the Synapse Gap: The Caesura of Thinking 3. Moments of Shifts and Transformation in Analysis: The Allegory of the Cave Revisited 4. Caesuras and Aporias: Clinical Dialogues and the Impasses of Thinking Part 3: The Fabric of Our Body and the Fabric of a Dream: The Weaving of Caesural Connection 5. The Shahrazad Function: Telling a Story that is True as the Therapeutic Caesura between Ancient Catastrophe and Transformation 6. Fascia-Ego Part 4: Truth, Lie, Question and Answer 7. Refraction as the Life Force of Truth 8. Being Written in the Book of Life: Attention to Questions in Therapy 9. The Truth? The Whole Truth? Nothing But the Truth?: The Impressive Caesura of Lies Part 5: One Mind / Two Minds: Dreaming the Analytic Field 10. Binocular Vision as a Function of the Analytic Field 11. Dreaming the Analytic Session: A Clinical Essay Part 6: The Caesura of Trauma 12. The Contribution of Bion's Concept of Caesura to the Understanding and Treatment of Traumatic Experiences: Dissociation, Mourning and Hope 13. “Why can’t I cough, Sir?”: Traumas Past and Present, with Bion’s Caesura as a Linking Cut Part 7: The Political and the Analytic Encounter 14. Bridging Caesuras: A Rhizomatic Approach to Politically-Sensitive Psychotherapy