The origins of Bion's work

This study attempts to identify the scientific, philosophical and psychoanalytic origins of Bion's work, and includes an organization of these in a comprehensive and synthetic way with the help of a synoptic table. Investigation has revealed Bion's scientific orientation, fed by classical and modern authors--notably, Locke, Hume, Kant, Sylvester and Cayley, Poincaré, Heisenberg, and the German Romantics. Bion was able to rescue certain transcendent aspects of human, and also of Freudian, knowledge that had largely fallen into neglected obscurity. He made an original use of new verbal expressions related to the immaterial facts of psychic reality, the unconscious and the id. The method involves a search for counterparts in reality with two kinds of evidential source: some works and their authors have appeared ipsis litteris in Bion's work. In those situations where Bion does not cite the sources, the study has been able to establish connections with the lengthy marginal notes which Bion left in the texts of the books from his library.