Providing the means for thinking: The seeds of a Bionian theory of education

publisher奈良The purpose of the present paper is to shed light on Bion's conception of education, a conception which has never been discussed by other researchers. The reason for that residesin the fact that Bion did not address this topic in a specific work. This does not however mean that he was not interestedin education. On the contrary this topic is reflected in most of his theoretical and clinical works. Bion's legacy includes numerous "seeds" or,to use his terminology,"wild thoughts" pertaining to theproblem of education. Therefore,I have tried here to search for these thoughts to finally integrate them into a Bionian theory of education. One of the fundamental premises of this theory is that, unlike what the Freudian drive theory has suggests, the aim of education is not freeing the infant from his/her self destructive self-part (narcissistic omnipotence, egoistic instincts) in order to transform him/her into a mature social being. But,the educational objective is rather to provide him/her with the thinking means,or alpha-function,to help him/her grow furter