This is that rare thing that is a pleasure to discover - a text which manages to present important philosophical ideas in ways which are both challenging and accessible, and which in the process illuminates a significant area of clinical practice.
Chris Mawson has written a remarkably lucid and scholarly book which offers a much-needed bridge between psychoanalytic and existential formulations of anxiety. It will be required reading for anyone interested in contemporary psychoanalytic or existential therapy, not least because of its rigorous account of the common roots of both in the ancient world, and the engaging way in which it traces these influences down the centuries to the present day. This is a finely-crafted book which shines with veracity and knowledge - a joy to read and a valuable resource for all practitioners, regardless of their theoretical orientation, who are concerned to engage as fully as possible with those who consult with them.
Some of the material presented here will be familiar to existential therapists, but the comparisons between the work of, in particular, Heidegger and Bion provide enlightening and compelling new contributions to an understanding of the irreducible fact of anxiety which unifies both the psychoanalytic and existential communities. Mawson's work promises to stimulate and provoke practitioners in equal measure. A ground-breaking book which deserves the widest possible readership. --Professor Simon du Plock, Metanoia Institute & Middlesex University, Editor, Existential Analysis
Chris Mawson offers us a fascinating set of ideas that clarify and develop some of the fundamental theories of Klein and Bion. For example, he attempts to illuminate the meaning of Bion's otherwise obscure recommendation to suspend memory and desire. He discusses the role of 'intuition' in understanding and responding to the patient, and the value of attending to 'the world of the drama of internal relations'. In each case he brings a thoughtful and refreshing perspective to these areas, thereby enriching our clinical and theoretical perspectives. --Dr Michael Feldman, British Psychoanalytical Society and The Institute of Psychoanalysis
When Chris Mawson and I met for the first time in 2016, he brought me the book 'Transformations' because of a question Bion asks on page 148 about 'how to pass from knowing phenomena to being that which is real' - a question which was just a puzzle for me at that time. In the meantime Chris Mawson has written a book which is dedicated to the legacy which is contained in this very question. It is an excellent book because its author is - as the Editor of the collected works of Bion - best suited not only for elucidating the shift of Bion's thinking expressed in this question, but also, what is much more, for exploring and elaborating the consequences of this shift for psychoanalytic practice, especially for a new understanding of the analytic relationship (as a 'being with') and a new 'indicative' form of interpretation (which stems from 'being informed-from-being').
This book is also a model example for the rare capability of a psychoanalyst to feel free to look beyond their own psychoanalytic garden fence (namely towards existential philosophy for one thing and towards the field of drama for the other), but not as an end in itself, but as a necessary means for unfolding and answering Bion's question in its deepness and complexity. What Chris Mawson has won by doing so he defines as 'inspirations'. I am happy that some of my daseinsanalytic ideas were able to work in this way too. --Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Ph. D., President of the Society for Hermeneutic Anthropology and Daseinsanalysis, Zurich
This book is both a sophisticated and erudite work of interdisciplinary scholarship and a re-envisioning of the clinical psychoanalytic project, the nature of anxiety and the way in which the psychoanalytic process may address the deepest forms of anxiety. -- Richard Zimmer, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (102)(2):403-408
