The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion's O

Annie Reiner

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English

Routledge
20 October 2025

Poetry; Literary theory; Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology); Psychotherapy

The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion’s ‘O’ pays homage to Wilfred Bion’s lifelong love of poetry and his desire to integrate it with his psychoanalytic work as a means of communicating profound levels of emotional experience.

Annie Reiner was a student of Bion in in the 1970s in Los Angeles. She illustrates here the fundamental similarities in the states of mind of creative people across diverse disciplines in the Arts and Sciences to exemplify Bion’s concept of ‘O’. Reiner, herself a poet and artist, shows how psychoanalysis and poetry rely on the same tools – symbols, metaphors, images and narrative – to communicate and express otherwise inexpressible metaphysical matters of mental life. Focusing on key psychoanalytic ideas, such as dream interpretation and trauma, she weaves in the poetry of Rumi, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa and William Blake, and ideas of artists like Matisse, Rothko and Jackson Pollock, as well as ideas of Christian and Hindu mystics to show analysts how creative arts can help them better understand primitive mental life. She shows how examining ideas from other disciplines in the arts, philosophy and religious thought can reveal an underlying unity of our ancient efforts to understand ourselves as human beings.

Written in an accessible style and drawing on Reiner’s decades of experience within the creative and psychoanalytic fields, this book is a valuable resource to all analysts in training and practice, as well as those interested in understanding the deeper levels of the mind and emotional life.

By: Annie Reiner
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 270g
ISBN: 9781032742519
ISBN 10: 1032742518
Pages: 134
Publication Date: 20 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Annie Reiner is a senior faculty member and training analyst at The Psychoanalytic Centre of California (PCC) in Los Angeles, USA, and Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She lectures throughout the world and is published in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of three psychoanalytic books, The Quest for Conscience and the Birth of the Mind (2009), Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind (2012) and W. R. Bion's Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (2022), and is the editor of Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight: Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein (2016). Dr. Reiner maintains a psychoanalytic practice in Beverly Hills, California.

Reviews for The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion's O

'I spent precious moments in reading Dr. Annie Reiner’s new book, The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion’s ‘O’. Dr. Reiner worked with Bion in Los Angeles and shares with him a view of poetry as a particularly valuable language for communicating the mysteries of the mind. This book is a welcome follow-up to her Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind (Karnac, 2012). In her new book, the author explores Bion's ‘O’ from the perspectives of psychoanalytic practice, philosophy, spirituality, and the visual arts. Each chapter offers many refreshing insights that are illuminated by Reiner’s own poetry, as well as that of other poets.' Rudi Vermote, M.D., Ph.D. Member, and former President of the Belgian Society of Psychoanalysis. ‘Dr. Annie Reiner’s writing about poetry, art, and Bion’s ‘O’ is absolutely exquisite. Her style is clear and accessible while also being sophisticated. The author, with great delicacy, offers the reader beautiful poems of her own creation, which vividly express the search for a direct language that comes closer to emotional truth. There is not much written about the similarities between the languages of art, science, and psychoanalysis, so this book fills an important need.’ Celia Ruth Fix Korbivcher, Ph.D. Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of Sao Paulo, Brazil