Night Vision

A philosopher’s personal meditation on how painful emotions can reveal truths about what it means to be truly human Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. The self-help industry, determined to sell us the promise of a brighter future, can sometimes leave us feeling ashamed that we are not more grateful, happy, or optimistic. Night Vision invites us to consider a different approach to life, one in which we stop feeling bad about feeling bad. In this powerful and disarmingly intimate book, Existentialist philosopher Mariana Alessandri draws on the stories of a diverse group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and writers to help us see that our suffering is a sign not that we are broken but that we are tender, perceptive, and intelligent. Thinkers such as Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Miguel de Unamuno, C. S. Lewis, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Søren Kierkegaard sat in their anger, sadness, and anxiety until their eyes adjusted to the dark. Alessandri explains how readers can cultivate “night vision” and discover new sides to their painful moods, such as wit and humor, closeness and warmth, and connection and clarity. Night Vision shows how, when we learn to embrace the dark, we begin to see these moods—and ourselves—as honorable, dignified, and unmistakably human.

A philosopher’s personal meditation on how painful emotions can reveal truths about what it means to be truly human Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. The self-help industry, determined to sell us the promise of a brighter future, can sometimes leave us feeling ashamed that we are not more grateful, happy, or optimistic. Night Vision invites us to consider a different approach to life, one in which we stop feeling bad about feeling bad. In this powerful and disarmingly intimate book, Existentialist philosopher Mariana Alessandri draws on the stories of a diverse group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and writers to help us see that our suffering is a sign not that we are broken but that we are tender, perceptive, and intelligent. Thinkers such as Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Miguel de Unamuno, C. S. Lewis, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Søren Kierkegaard sat in their anger, sadness, and anxiety until their eyes adjusted to the dark. Alessandri explains how readers can cultivate “night vision” and discover new sides to their painful moods, such as wit and humor, closeness and warmth, and connection and clarity. Night Vision shows how, when we learn to embrace the dark, we begin to see these moods—and ourselves—as honorable, dignified, and unmistakably human.

All his life, Wilfred Bion strove to find a narrative form for the traumatic experiences he went through as a tank commander in the First World War. The body of his autobiographical and literary works documents his efforts to wrest a biography of his own from the most devastating processes of world history. As a whole, it is the result of a lifelong struggle to express something unspeakable, to restore something destroyed. What emerges is something like the prehistory of the psychical catastrophe from which Bion was unable to escape until his death. As such, however, these autobiographical fragments also reflect the prehistory of the historical catastrophe under whose spell the world still stands today. This book is the first comprehensive study of Bion’s autobiographical and literary writings. Drawing on the concepts of experience and thinking developed in his theoretical and clinical works, with which they are genetically linked, it discusses Bion’s strategies of writing and cognition, and for the first time systematically places a hitherto unexplored part of his work in the context of his entire œuvre . Following the chronological thread of his life, from childhood in India through youth in England to his experience of the First World War in France and Belgium, the book traces how Bion developed his unique method of writing. Detailed narrative analyses reveal the painful work of coming to terms with the war experiences which had haunted him throughout his life – a crippling trauma whose causes extended far beyond the individual and private. The book thus provides deep insights into Bion’s life, his thinking, and his writing, and offers the reader a portrait of the primal catastrophe of the twentieth century and its devastating effects.

All his life, Wilfred Bion strove to find a narrative form for the traumatic experiences he went through as a tank commander in the First World War. The body of his autobiographical and literary works documents his efforts to wrest a biography of his own from the most devastating processes of world history. As a whole, it is the result of a lifelong struggle to express something unspeakable, to restore something destroyed. What emerges is something like the prehistory of the psychical catastrophe from which Bion was unable to escape until his death. As such, however, these autobiographical fragments also reflect the prehistory of the historical catastrophe under whose spell the world still stands today. This book is the first comprehensive study of Bion's autobiographical and literary writings. Drawing on the concepts of experience and thinking developed in his theoretical and clinical works, with which they are genetically linked, it discusses Bion's strategies of writing and cognition, and for the first time systematically places a hitherto unexplored part of his work in the context of his entire oeuvre . Following the chronological thread of his life, from childhood in India through youth in England to his experience of the First World War in France and Belgium, the book traces how Bion developed his unique method of writing. Detailed narrative analyses reveal the painful work of coming to terms with the war experiences which had haunted him throughout his life - a crippling trauma whose causes extended far beyond the individual and private. The book thus provides deep insights into Bion's life, his thinking, and his writing, and offers the reader a portrait of the primal catastrophe of the twentieth century and its devastating effects.