Table Of ContentWILFRED BION, THINKING, AND
EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE
WITH MOVING IMAGES
Wilfred Bion’s theories of dreaming, of the analytic situation, of reality and
everyday life, and even of the contact between the body and the mind offer very
different, and highly fruitful, perspectives on lived experience. Yet very little of
his work has entered the field of visual culture, especially film and media studies.
Kelli Fuery offers an engaging overview of Bion’s most significant contribution to
psychoanalysis – his theory of thinking – and demonstrates its relevance for why
we watch moving images.
Bion’s theory of thinking is presented as an alternative model for the examination
of how we experience moving images and how they work as tools which we
use to help us ‘think’ emotional experience. ‘Being Embedded’ is a term used to
identify and acknowledge the link between thinking and emotional experience
within the lived reception of cinema. It is a concept that everyone can speak to as
already knowing, already having felt it – ‘being embedded’ is at the core of lived
and thinking experience. This book offers a return to psychoanalytic theory within
moving-image studies, contributing to the recent works that have explored object
relations psychoanalysis within visual culture (specifically the writings of Klein and
Winnicott), but differs in its reference and examination of previously overlooked,
but highly pivotal, thinkers such as Bion, Bollas and Ogden. A theorization of
thinking as an affective structure within moving image experience provides a fresh
avenue for psychoanalytic theory within visual culture.
Wilfred Bion, Thinking, and Emotional Experience with Moving Images will appeal to
psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as scholars and students
of film and media studies, cultural studies and cultural sociology and anthropology,
visual culture, media theory, philosophy and psychosocial studies.
Kelli Fuery is Assistant Professor at Dodge College for Film and Media Arts,
Chapman University, USA. She is the author of New Media: Culture and Image (2009)
and co-author of Visual Cultures and Critical Theory (2003). She has also published
widely on the themes of visual culture, psychoanalysis and critical theory.
WILFRED BION,
THINKING, AND
EMOTIONAL
EXPERIENCE WITH
MOVING IMAGES
Being Embedded
Kelli Fuery
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Kelli Fuery
The right of Kelli Fuery to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fuery, Kelli, author.
Title: Wilfred Bion, thinking, and emotional experience with moving
images : being embedded / Kelli Fuery.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004494 (print) | LCCN 2018005989 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429490811 (Master) | ISBN 9780429956034 (Web PDF) |
ISBN 9780429956027 (ePub) | ISBN 9780429956010 (Mobipocket/
Kindle) | ISBN 9781138590809 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781138590816 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis and motion pictures. | Motion pictures—
Psychological aspects. | Bion, Wilfred R. (Wilfred Ruprecht),
1897–1979.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.P783 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.P783 F837
2019 (print) | DDC 791.43019—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004494
ISBN: 978-1-138-59080-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-59081-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-49081-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my partner in everything, Patrick;
And my very special sons, Morgan, Noah and Joshua.
With all my love
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction 1
2 A theory of thinking for moving image experience 24
3 Wandering reverie and the aesthetic experience of being adrift 48
4 Metaphor, the analytic field and the embedded spectator 69
5 Group experience, collective memory and dreaming 90
6 Linking, intentionality and the container-contained 112
7 Transformation: the idiomatic encounter and use of
moving image as object 136
8 Being embedded: rhizome, decalcomania and containment 159
Index 178
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Throughout the writing of this book, there were many moments where other
minds helped me think through the complexities of Bion’s work and facilitated
the playful spaces that made the book possible. For helpful feedback on chapters,
thanks to Carla Ambrósio Garcia, Ian Barnard and William Brown who have been
gracious with their time, and critical friends in their comments. I would also like to
thank the three reviewers whose support for this project was very motivating and,
in particular, helped to identify the more diverse potential connections between
Bion and Tomkins. In particular, I would like to thank all the authors whose writ-
ings on Bion I have had the joy to follow and read, as each has written with such
enthusiasm and love for his work. Thanks to Charles Bath and Kate Hawes for their
support and congeniality throughout this project.
In the early stages of this project, emerging ideas found their way into various
conferences papers that were presented at the Association of Psychoanalysis, Cul-
ture and Society conference and Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference.
My thanks go to the comments I received from colleagues that helped to make this
book stronger. For embracing and pursuing Bion’s ideas in the world of television,
I thank my Dodge College students, whose own research has taken Bionian and
Bollasian ideas into interesting areas of cultural identity politics.
I thank the following publisher for their permissions:
Ogden, Thomas H. (2008). Rediscovering Psychoanalysis: Thinking and Dream-
ing, Learning and Forgetting. New Library of Psychoanalysis. pp. 90, 91, 93,
95, 97, 98, 100–3, 113. Routledge Publishers. Reproduced by permission of
Taylor & Francis, LLC.
Finally, thanks to my Patrick who has always been the best container; and to Mor-
gan, Noah and Joshua who have been so supportive of this work and the time and
attention it has required.
1
INTRODUCTION
In “The Psycho-Analytic Study of Thinking”, Wilfred Bion argues that his theory
of thinking, whilst sharing similarities with other philosophies of thought, is differ-
ent because “it is intended, like all psycho-analytical theories, for use” (Bion 1962b:
306). Similarly, in Learning from Experience, he writes “danger lies in being cramped
by a theoretical system that is frustrating not because it is inadequate but because
it is not being properly used” (Bion 1962a: 88). In that spirit, and ideally what will
also come to be seen as a particularly Bionian approach, this book seeks to counter
the frustrations a classical application of psychoanalysis has engendered within film
and media studies. I explore the ways in which Bion’s theory of thinking might
work as a thematic frame of ‘being embedded’ that investigates different contexts
for aesthetic and emotional experience with moving images, one that foregrounds
the question of affect through a specific psychoanalytic point of view. This very
specific frame is to explore the validity of Bion’s ‘theory of thinking’ by examining
in detail its varying components, so that a different application of psychoanalysis
for the study of moving image experience might emerge. It also looks closely at
the vital correlation Bion emphasizes between thinking as a psychic apparatus and
the sensoria of lived emotional experience by discussing some of his core concepts
together with other thinkers whose works are relevant for his theory of thinking.
Bion, an object-relations psychoanalyst, offered an approach that set out to
examine our reactions to different and new experiences in everyday life by devel-
oping a theory of thinking that observed and analyzed affective, emotional experi-
ence. It was essential for Bion that his theoretical model was to be used in practice,
because as noted above, there is the invitation to question previous uses and inad-
equacies of psychoanalytic theory and to determine which model can be used bet-
ter, particularly for film and media studies. In terms of what counts as ‘better’, Bion
offers a warning, stating that whilst all ‘helpful endeavors’ have a wish to improve
things, he does not “imply that it is ‘nicer’ or ‘pleasanter’. Whether it is ‘better’ is a
