Reflections on the term bliss in Grotstein and Bion

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA
Author/s Gaetana Filippi
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2024/2
Language Italian Pages 16 P. 48-63 File size 200 KB
DOI 10.3280/PSP2024-002004
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The experience of bliss is the clue that a mind is being born, both in child and in a patient. For this experience to occur, the mother’s capac-ity for rêverie and the child’s capacity to tolerate the frustration of growth and transformation need to meet. Although bliss, like all emotions, is ephemeral, it produces structural consequences in the process of subjectivation such as the capacity for simbolization, creativity and the ability to enjoy Art. If the mother-container is able to welcome the child’s nameless terrors, beta ele-ments, and through rêverie re-propose them as alpha elements, then, in the reiteration of the process, the child, no longer frightened, will intro-ject their mother’s alpha function that will lead them to think on their own and for themselves. If this encounter between the maternal con-tainer and the content that the child entrusts to the mother’s rêverie does not occur, the child, without a container will be forced to face a situation of “withoutness”, alone in the abyss of a nameless void that they must defensively fill. In greed, the defensive desire which has re-placed the construction of an apparatus for thinking, they will be forced to feed themselves in a never-ending race to hoard things. The mother-analyst can offer the child-patient a chance for their mind to be born if, by her own rêverie and by dreaming the patient’s dream, she can lead them to experience emotions for the first time in their life.

Keywords: bliss, rêverie, container-content, -K bond.

  1. Bion W.R. (1962). Apprendere dall’esperienza, Roma: Armando, 1972.
  2. Bion W.R. (1965a). Traformazioni, Roma: Armando, 1973.
  3. Bion W.R. (1965b). Gli elementi della psicoanalisi, Roma: Armando, 1973.
  4. Di Benedetto A. (2002). Prima della parola. L’ascolto psicoanalitico del non detto attraverso le forme dell’arte, Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  5. Freud S. (1920). Al di là del principio di piacere. OSF, 9, 1979.
  6. Grotstein J.S. (2007). Un raggio di intensa oscurità, L’eredità di Wilfred Bion. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2010.
  7. Hoeg P. (1992). Il senso di Smilla per la neve, Milano: Mondadori, 1998.
  8. Oneroso A., Garrese F. (2004). Mente e pensiero, Incontri con l’opera di W.R. Bion, Napoli: Liguori.

Gaetana Filippi, Riflessioni sul termine beatitudine in Grotstein e in Bion in "PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA" 2/2024, pp 48-63, DOI: 10.3280/PSP2024-002004