Wilfred Bion, His Indian Ayah, and the Social Unconscious (Online Presentation)
Saturday, May 10, 2025 | 9:30 – 11:30 AM (Eastern) | via Zoom
2 CE Credits for Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, and Social Workers
Wilfred Bion produced original psychoanalytic theories and insights. His ideas are rooted in classical analytic theory while being distinctly discontinuous from it. The discontinuity, I conjecture, came from his contact with an Indian ayah (nursemaid) during the first nine years of his life when he lived in Mathura, India. The unconscious is both dynamic/private and cultural/social. We will look at Bion’s approach from both vertices — private and social. His theories, on the surface, are focused on the dynamic unconscious — how do we think our feelings, how do we learn from our experience, how do we make meaning in our relationships with others. In addressing these questions, he reproduced social or cultural dispositions acquired during his infancy and childhood that animated and directed his later thinking, theories, and praxis. Bion’s work, taken in full, points to novel ways of working with patients and novel ways of reading and understanding psychoanalysis.
Karim G. Dajani, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with a specialization in working with issues related to cultural dislocation and displacement. His research and writing include publications on the links between cultural systems and the unconscious of individuals and groups. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His recent works include a special issue dedicated to the social unconscious and an upcoming chapter on race and ethnicity in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and praxis that will appear in the next edition of the Textbook of Psychoanalysis.