In addition to the soulful consolation that I got from the book, I was grateful to observe how a Bionian analyst works with patients. Dr. Reiner shows how Bion’s vision has profound implications for how to work with clients and she demonstrates how she has shaped that vision into an extremely coherent and powerful tool for analyzing the lives that we are privileged to touch as therapists.
This is a book, an example of psychoanalytic writing at its best, is for professionals and students wanting to know more about Bion, for clinicians needing new inspiration for their practice, and for the general reader who appreciates the possibilities of psychoanalysis as a program for life.
Annie Reiner is a senior faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Center of California. She is a poet, playwright, and author-illustrator of children’s books. Her psychoanalytic writings have been published in many journal and anthologies. Recently, she edited a festschrift collection of essays about the work of James Grotstein, published in 2015. She maintains a private practice in Beverly Hills, California.
Philip Lance, PhD, New Books Network, July 16, 2017
"Dr. Annie Reiner's exceptional new book, Bion and Being: Passion and The Creative Mind, is that rare analytic book that combines thoughtful reflections on the nature of being, moving clinical vignettes, philosophical discussion, exploration of art and poetry, and explication of psychoanalytic theory into a wonderfully written meditation on the nature of O. Of course, given that O is unknowable, the reader is left substantially moved by the book without quite knowing how to define O but having had an experience of what Bion called "becoming in O." Reiner is perfectly suited to examine the essence of O... In addition to having studied with Bion in the 1970's, she is a practicing psychoanalyst in Los Angeles as well as a painter, poet, playwright and author-illustrator of children's books...
"This book is divided into 10 well-written chapters that have an additive effect of deepening the reader's immersion into this subject matter... Being and non-being is a central theme in this book and she contrasts Freud's and Bion's views on this matter..."
"In summary... Reiner provides her audience with an opportunity to glimpse Bion's concept of O through reference to clinical work, the arts and, finally, an immersion in an experience at the edge of what is known and unknown. I recommend it for therapists and psychoanalysts at all levels of training for there is much richness here awaiting the reader."
Lawrence J. Brown, Int. J. Psychoanal, Vol 95, Number 5, Oct, 2014
"Fresh from the recent publication of her first book related, The Quest for Conscience and the Birth of the Mind (Karnac, 2009), a remarkable work in its own right, Dr Annie Reiner has written an outstanding follow-up work. Noting the paradox in the enormous popularity of Bion's works existing side-by-side with great mystery and confusion about their meaning, she lucidly and astutely plunges into the centre of his most recondite discovery, transformations in and from "O", relating them to others of his more complex ideas. Furthermore, she presents numerous clinical examples that aptly reflect many of these ideas. This is an incredibly credible work which, along with her first book, places her high among Bion scholars."
Dr. James Grotstein (Los Angeles)
"The clinician and the poet come together in this lucid presentation of Bion's central thinking about the nature of Being. With uncommon erudition and deep clinical experience, Reiner brings the abstract to life in a work filled with apt clinical vignettes and sensitively chosen poetry. Bion, properly, is not made easy, but he is made more accessible."
Dr. Warren Poland (Bethesda, MD)
"In this remarkable book, Dr Annie Reiner helps us open our bodies, hearts, and souls to our own unique emotional discovery of Bion's "O". She does this by sharing her own personal odyssey with poetry, music, literature, philosophy, theology, science, in addition to her work as a psychoanalyst engaged with her analysands in the intimate discovery of their authentic selves. Dr Reiner's writings are organic, practical, spiritual, and, as usual, very scholarly. She effectively explores the frontiers of Bion's perspective of analysis in a creative way, and adds an important new voice of depth and understanding to psychoanalytic theory and practice, which should be useful to all theoretical and clinical points of view. This book is a "MUST" read."
Dr. James Gooch (Los Angeles)
"In this remarkable work, Dr. Annie Reiner explores a hitherto unthought-of perspective on man's moral endowment, and, in so doing, reclaims its lost innocence and positive value for man. After reading the work, one realizes that psychoanalysis had to wait for Bion to shed new light on the numinour or transcendent significance of conscience as opposed to superego. One of the rewardrs one acquires when reading this book is receiving a profound and extensive survey of Bion's contributions... Reiner sees both the capacity to think and the capacity for conscience as mental potentials not yet realized, but which may be helped toward a process of becoming through analytic work."
lDr. James S. Grotstein (Los Angeles)
"This is a remarkable book... Dr. Reiner equates the birth of conscience with the birth of the mind, a courageous stance and one that flies in the face of the ethical relativism that permeates our postmodern culture... The implication is very clear that without consciene there can be no authentic mind. ... This book should give us all a good jolt."
lDr. Neville Symington (Australia)
"Dr. Reiner has written an outstanding theoretical and clinical discussion of the archaic superego. The work is unusually clear and succinct and I think it will contribute significantly to clinical understanding across theoretical points of view."
lDr. Michael I. Paul (Los Angeles)
"[Reiner's] expedition - through territories of literature, philosophy, science, theology and, most significantly, psychoanalysis - reaches its summit with clinical illustrations made vivid through extensive sequences of dream analysis. Reiner's is a unique and poetic voice that both echoes and extends those who ventured ahead of her."
lDr. Judith L. Mitrani (Los Angeles)
Sigmund Freud
by Annie Reiner
In the Collection of Mel Brooks
