James Grotstein – Psychoanalytic ‘multilingualism’

From his first encounter with Bion’s ideas, Grotstein was a committed advocate of his work. He went on to be both supervised and analysed by him for 6 years.

Grotstein himself was sometimes perplexed, though always enthralled, by Bion’s extensions of Kleinian and Freudian concepts. He was fascinated by Bion’s quite philosophical – indeed, spiritual – concept of ‘O’.

Wilfred Bion's concept of O is his most mysterious idea, representing absolute truth and the mind necessary to apprehend it. 

It is also his most controversial idea, for it reflects infinite, unknowable, ultimate reality – all ideas that, like O, cannot be defined in logical terms.

In a way O is a more transcendent version of the Unconscious.

In his book, “Who Is the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream? A Study of Psychic Presences”, James Grotstein integrates some of his most important work of recent years in addressing fundamental questions of human psychology and spirituality.

He explores two quintessential and interrelated psychoanalytic problems:

〰️ the nature of the unconscious mind and 〰️ the meaning and inner structure of human subjectivity. 

James Grotstein truly had, and never lost, the beginner’s attitude: he felt fascinated by what he was privileged to hear, see and think in relation to others.