On Minding and Being Minded: Experiencing Bion and Beckett

Abstract

On Minding and Being Minded explores links between depictions of lived experience written by Samuel Beckett and the experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy pioneered in the writings of W.R. Bion. These robust literary and clinical intersections are made explicit within the demanding culture of twenty-first century psychotherapy as patient demand for time-limited, result-driven therapeutic outcomes conflicts sharply with the contours of intensive, long-term psychotherapy.Bion and Beckett present elements of familiarity to the practicing psychoanalyst which emerge tantalizingly, out of explic