Parthenope took away with her when dying a lot of projects. I want to mention here two of them that she was particularly fond and proud of:
The first one is a book she had been preparing since many years (to be published by Karnac Books, London) to illustrate the historical roots of her father's thoughts. As far as I can know - from what she had told me and from what I could find in her files - the title of this book should have been
BION AND HIS BOOKS - PATHWAYS TO THE WORLD OF BION.
I could find the outline of it, that I print here, courtesy of Luigi Talamo:
INTRODUCTION - Sub Tegmine Fagi:
i) The blend of love of nature, love of art, and the awareness of man as a group animal as
exemplified in the "sub tegmine fagi" episode of the autobiography.
ii) Bion's multiple cultural roots, India and England, Rome and France.
iii) His experience of colonial groups, of school and war, as the humus of experience
behind "Experiences in Groups".
PART ONE - Official and Unofficial Schooling:
Learning to read books and to experience people;
i) India
ii) School
iii) Tanks and planes
iv) Oxford
v) Medical School
PART TWO - Groping towards psychoanalysis:
i) Psychotherapy - feel it in the past
ii) Tavistock -
iii) Jung
iv) Official psychoanalytical training
PART THREE - Psychoanalysis
i) belonging to a group: Institutional activities as a psychoanalyst
ii) Los Angeles, a different relationship to psychoanalytical groups
iii) The social side of psychoanalysis: homosexuality, death penalty, Dept. of Justice,
San Quintino.
I could also find, together with a lot of notes and 'cogitations' about it (they cannot, though, be published, in our opinion, as they are written simply as raw material still to be deeply worked through), the following one, that I find really very touching:
TODAY, 27/02/98, AT THE AGE OF 53 YEARS, I START TO WRITE MY BOOK ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF MY FATHER, W.R.BION.
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion was gifted to a high degree with a well-tempered curiosity. He slaked, and nurtured, it through many channels, first and foremost his work with his patients, which was a continual stimulus, but also through his wide reading, his journeys, with visits to museums and galleries, his appreciation of architecture, nature and music, and, naturally, his personal relationships with other people, particularly his immediate family. I cannot think of anything of importance in which he was not interested: but he had no patience whatsoever with what might be termed mental junk-food. My aim in this book is to try to follow up some of the channels along which his curiosity flowed, with the aim of illuminating his development as a psychoanalyst, and some of the ‘ingredients’ which became part, in the end, of his psychoanalytical theories.
She was so lively and active!
Farewell, Addio, Parthenope!