Mental Debris: On Analytic Listening (Zoom Registration)

Bion hypothesized attacks on linking and the minute fragmentation of the mind as strategies for enduring the pain of encountering a reality that exceeds the psyche's capacity to bear. Under such conditions, emotional experience may become dispersed and fragmented, appearing as raw, unmetabolized, often incoherent elements commonly experienced as mental debris.

This field is required.
This field is required.

Join us for the Second Anton O. Kris Visiting Scholar Plenary

Saturday, May 9, 2026
10:00-12:15 PM EST

Registration is required for this program.
This event will be held in-person at BPSI and live streamed via Zoom.
 

Mental Debris: On Analytic Listening 

Bion hypothesized attacks on linking and the minute fragmentation of the mind as strategies for enduring the pain of encountering a reality that exceeds the psyche's capacity to bear. Under such conditions, emotional experience may become dispersed and fragmented, appearing as raw, unmetabolized, often incoherent elements commonly experienced as mental debris. 

Through an integrated reading of Bion's early and later writings, Avner Bergstein differentiates between different manifestations of this phenomenon: fragmented bits of experience appearing as mental debris arising from attacks on linking; traces of as-yet unmentalized, pre-representational, non-symbolized experience, which, despite their different genesis, may nonetheless present themselves phenomenologically as debris; and formations of pseudo-meaning that may themselves constitute mental debris disguised as coherent and articulate narrative. 

Bergstein emphasizes the analyst's task of sustaining attentiveness to communication in all its forms – whether abundant or absent, coherent or fragmented. As self-evident as this may seem, analytic attention is frequently drawn toward narrative content and verbal communication, thereby overshadowing unrepresented emotional experience and psychic reality. The discussion thus considers an analytic presence capable of meeting – and potentially imbuing with meaning – the wreckage of thought, recovering aspects of the personality otherwise at risk of being discarded. One might then approach a more truthful, lifelike apprehension of reality. 

 

Speaker

     

Avner Bergstein, MA, FIPA is a training and supervising psychoanalyst and a faculty member of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. He maintains a private practice working with adults, adolescents, and children and has worked for several years in a kindergarten for children with autism. He has authored numerous papers exploring the clinical implications of Bion’s and Meltzer’s writings, and is the author of Bion and Meltzer's Expeditions into Unmapped Mental Life: Beyond the Spectrum in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2019). A visiting lecturer at several psychoanalytic institutes worldwide, he conducts reading seminars on the works of W.R. Bion. He has received the IPA 2021 Elizabeth Young-Bruehl Prejudice Award and the Holtzman Interdisciplinary Prize for 2024. 

 

 

Moderator

     

Steven Cooper, PhD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Columbia Center for Psychoanalysis. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. In the Fall of 2025, he was the Visiting Erik Erikson Senior Clinical Scholar at the Austen Riggs Center. He is Chief Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Dr Cooper is the author or editor of eight books in psychoanalysis, including three recent books, Playing and Becoming in Psychoanalysis published in 2023, Psychoanalysis in Play: Expanding Psychoanalytic Concepts from a Play Perspective in 2025, and with Christopher G. Lovett, Winnicott’s Letter to Bion: Playing, Dreaming, and Beyond all published by Routledge. He is the recipient of this year’s best paper prize of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a prize he also won in 1988. He is in private practice in New York. 

 

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this program participants will be able to: 

  1. Describe Bion’s concept of “mental debris” and its relevance to psychoanalytic listening and clinical process. 
  2. Discuss how apparently meaningless or disorganized material may function as a primitive form of communication within the analytic relationship. 
  3. Describe the analyst’s role in tolerating uncertainty, fragmentation, and incomprehension as conditions necessary for the emergence of psychic meaning. 
 

Schedule

10am - Introductions
10:15am - Paper Presentation
11:15am - Moderated Audience Discussion 

 

             

Honoring Anton O. Kris

We express deep gratitude to the Kris family and Tony’s friends for establishing the Anton O. Kris Visiting Scholar Program at BPSI.

To make a gift, please click here.

 

Anton O. Kris (“Tony” to his friends and colleagues) was a gifted psychoanalyst, an accomplished clinician, and an internationally acclaimed psychoanalytic scholar, known for his masterful clinical teaching. To all who knew him at BPSI and in the larger psychoanalytic community, he was a mentor, friend, and inspiration.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The target audience for this program is mental health clinicians at all levels of training and members of the community.
 
 
Registration Fee
$125* Program Fee
 
We are committed to accessibility for all of our programs. BPSI offers an Equity Rate, and we invite you to pay what you are able for this event.
 
*The fee is waived for Early Career Clinicians (within 5 years of licensure), BPSI Members & Partners.

 

Recording

Parts of this event will be recorded. The video may also be used for educational purposes or made available for purchase. If you do not wish to be recorded, please turn your camera off.
By registering for this event, you grant permission to BPSI to the rights of your images, in video or still, and of the likeness and sound of your voice as recorded on audio or video.  

Continuing Education

Physicians: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint provider ship of American Psychoanalytic Association and The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute . The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.”
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support. 

Psychologists: The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This course offers 2 hours of CE credits for psychologists.

Social Workers: Application for social work continuing education credits has been submitted. Please contact us at team@bpsi.org or 617-266-0953 for the status of social work CE accreditation.
Please note: Per NASW requirements, social workers must attend 80% of a course in order to be eligible for continuing education credit.

Licensed Mental Health Clinicians: The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6913. BPSI is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program offers 2 NBCC Clock Hours.
 
 

Event Cancellation Policies & Procedures
Any program participant requesting their individual program registration be canceled must submit their request in writing via email to BPSI Office at team@bpsi.org. For fee-based events, a request for cancellation (and refund using the original form of payment) must be received no later than 48 hours in advance of the event. Requests received later than 48 hours prior to the event will not be processed or accepted. All approved refunds are subject to a $10.00 administrative fee. If BPSI cancels an event, all registrants will receive a full refund of fees paid (no administration charge) no later than two business days following the scheduled date of the event, using the original form of payment.

Grievance Policy
Please address any questions or concerns about your experience at this or any program or event you have attended at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute to the Program Chair, via the Administrative Team, BPSI,141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459; team@bpsi.org; 617.266.0953.

The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Inc.,141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459, does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, national origin or handicap in the admissions, administration of its educational programs, scholarship programs or employment.