THE BODY SPEAKS: BION’S PROTOMENTAL SYSTEM AT WORK 1 Richard Morgan-Jones abstract Psychoanalysis has primarily explored somatic experience in relation to love and intimacy.This paper focuses on the body in relation to work. It explores the experience that what patients increasingly present for analysis are the traumas and pleasures of being caught up with and belonging to a body larger than their own, whether in a couple, a group, a work organization or the body politic. It begins with an exploration of Bion’s idea of a relationship between protomentality and group disease. It goes on to consider what can be conceived of as his ecological methodo- logy, which enables movement between different ‘fields of study’ (Bion 1962).These are applied to the health risks encountered by psychotherapists and the profession as a whole. Finally, there is a proposal for mentoring to address professional health, as an under-developed element in the profession. Key words: psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, group dynamics, basic assumptions, protomental, psychosomatic, socio-somatic, organizational dynamics, language of the body, organizational body, mentoring for psychotherapists, health and safety risks for psychotherapists The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego. (Freud 1927) Bion’s Protomental System Chapter 5 of Bion’s Experiences in Groups 2 (Bion 1962) forms part of the background 3 to this paper. It outlines his idea of the protomental matrix.This is generally less well known than his idea of the need for containment to transform sense experience (beta-elements) into emotional experience that can be symbolized and thought about (alpha-function), and that can be explored through the various permutations of the relationship between container–contained  (Bion 1963). Bion conceived the protomental ‘as one in which physical and psycholo- gical are undifferentiated’ (Bion 1962, p. 104), and in which there is: richard morgan-jones is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and organizational con- sultant with a practice in Eastbourne, Sussex. He is a training therapist and super- visor at the London Centre for Psychotherapy and a former chair of Psychotherapy Sussex (previously the Brighton Association for Analytic Psychotherapists). He directs Work Force Health: Consulting and Research. He is a member of the Organ- ization for Promoting the Understanding of Society (OPUS), the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO) and of the Restor- ative Justice Consortium. Address for correspondence: [rmj25@talktalk.net] 456 © The author Journal compilation © 2009 BAP and Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.