Back to Table of Contents
leading to a creation of a new product. The use of the ♂-♀ symbols highlights the biological nature of the mind, and also includes Freud’s and Klein’s concepts on sexuality and oedipal configuration. In his later writings, Bion emphasizes the reciprocity between the two parts , and the potential towards growth and interchange between them. The paradox of the dynamic relationship of Container-Contained lies in its reciprocal mutuality: Something that contains and something that is contained also perform the functions of mutually containing and being contained. Developmentally, this means that the breast as a container for the baby’s anxieties can also be the reverse: the baby as a container for some aspects of mother´s personality. Later, in the clinical context, this reciprocity is highlighted: “ The clue lies in the observation of the fluctuations which make the analyst at one moment ♀ and the analysand ♂, and at the next reverse the roles…” (Bion, 1970, p.108). Throughout, Bion stresses that “to contain” implies an activity and a process that allows for the formation of thought and its transformation into words; this is in opposition to the trivialized, constricted use of containing and receiving as merely passive receptivity. The full exposition of complexity and many facets and processes of transformation are at the center of his 1965 publication “Transformations: Change from learning to growth.” Here, Bion introduces a meta-theoretical concept of ‘O’, as the beginning but also potentially the end point of multidirectional transformative processes. It encompasses the unthinkable ‘nameless dread’, ‘beta elements’, ‘things in themselves’; but also, the ‘Ultimate Reality’, ‘reverence’ and ‘awe’ (Bion, 1965; Grotstein, 2011a, p. 506). As the Container-Contained is a part of Bion’s deductive scientific system, the theory of thought and thinking (Bion, 1962a, 1962b, 1963, 1965, 1970), it is important to place it in this context. According to this broad theory, “thoughts” and “thinking apparatus” have distinct origins, with “thoughts” existing independently of its thinking apparatus: “thoughts” are not generated by the thinking apparatus. In both, the Container-Contained relationship is seminal. Accordingly, Container-Contained relationship could be viewed as the embryo of mental life . According to this theory, the genesis of a “thought” is a process in which the Container- Contained relationship is the initial step. The condition for the psychic content (emotion, sensorial perception) to achieve mental quality (representation, thought) is the existence of the container capable of containing it. The prototypical object of this function (“Container”, with ♀ sign) is the mother’s breast, an innate preconception waiting to be realized. Sensorial and emotional stimuli (“contents”), conjugated with this adequate “container” transforms into a “Contained” (with ♂ sign), thus creating the “Container-Contained” relationship, an initial developmental moment of a thought by the thinker. This Container-Contained relationship (♀- ♂) allows for the occurrence of an Emotional Experience, which will be characterized by the bond that qualifies it, L (love), H (hate), or K (knowledge, thought). Obtaining attention from Consciousness, this Emotional Experience can be transformed into alpha element, the monad of mental life, through the operation of the alpha function.
71
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online