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transformations’ (innumerable) forms, but also to evoke the reader’s imagination to further transform and organize their understanding of the concept as they find useful. Grotstein adds these to Bion’s forms of rigid motion and projective transformations, as well as transformations in hallucinosis, to which he devotes several pages of discussion. He also discusses Korbivcher’s contribution of “autistic transformations” (pp. 229-230). III. Bb. Lawrence Brown Lawrence Brown , who has written on Bion’s work extensively, wrote a book entitled, “Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions, and the Present Moment”, which he dedicated to Grotstein (Brown 2019). Brown makes significant contributions to studying and applying Bion’s work in this incisive and thoughtful book. Its title situates Bion’s theory of transformations as the core orientation for psychoanalytic observation, clinical intervention, and subsequent theorizing. Chapter 4, “Bion’s Transformations and clinical practice”, presents an excellent overview of the concept suitable for both newer and more advanced Bion students alike, and explores its clinical ramifications in depth. Brown emphasizes the orienting power of Bion’s work when stating that the theory of transformations and its wide-ranging applications may well “suggest a new and additional Weltanschauung for psychoanalysis; a world view that emphasizes constant change, evolution and growth” (p. 203). He offers two chapters studying Korbivcher’s proposal of autistic transformations, and adds another category he calls somatic transformations; his clinical example depicts “a transformational process occurring that oscillated between Ms. G.’s body experienced as dismembered and, only moments later, she was sufficiently integrated to communicate verbally” (p. 217). Brown’s work provides a creative and useful example of considering psychoanalysis from the vertex of transformational processes. Together, Grotstein and Brown’s books provide a comprehensive overview of North American perspectives on Bion’s work in general, and the theory of transformations in particular. III. Bc. Howard Levine Howard Levine has made significant use of Bion’s concept of transformations through multiple papers and two books, one edited with Brown, and the other with Giuseppe Civitarese; the latter contains Levine’s paper on O, the originating element of transformative mental processes (Levine and Brown, 2013; Levine and Civitarese 2016). Levine uses the term “transformations” more frequently than most other North American contributors on Bion’s work. For example, he wrote that according to Bion “the therapeutic action of analysis—the aim of which is transformation and expansion of the patient’s capacity for psychic functioning—is closely linked to the analyst’s function as container for the patient’s unmetabolized and projected emotional experience”; “This is a view of the ego as possessing
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