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to listen, to transformatively contain, and to build the psychic structures especially in patients of a borderline spectrum. The movement is from reflexive towards reflective, from presymbolic and prerepresentational functioning towards representational and symbolic functioning, and from intra-systemic (within ego) towards inter-systemic (between id, ego, superego) conflicts. This conceptualization has many connecting points also with Wilma Bucci’s (1994) translation between the non-symbolized, unconsciously symbolized and verbally symbolized, experiential domains, and the later work of Mauro Mancia (2006). Psychoanalyst and neurologist Mauro Mancia (2006) attempts an integration of the neurosciences and molecular biology with the psychoanalytic theory of the non-repressed unconscious, which he considers the nucleus of the self, and where the primary mother-infant relations are stored. In his view, the neurobiological correlate of such earliest pre-symbolized pre-psychic experiences is the network of ‘morpho-functional organization’, pre-dating the full development of hippocampus, the center of the affective autobiographical memories. The unrepressed unconscious can be brought to the surface in analysis through the ‘musical dimension’ of the transference, characterized by the voice (its intonation and rhythm) and the prosody of the language. Dreams can symbolically transform presymbolic and preverbal experiences, so that they can be put into words and thought about even without their recollection. This reconstruction enables the patient to speak and think about them even without the actual recollection. Mancia contends that this integrative model, drawing on plurality of perspectives, from Freud, Klein and contemporary developmental and neurobiological research is in line with Bion ’s (1962a, b; 1991) theory of thinking: The clinical approach based on such integration facilitates the development and internalization of α- function of the mind, so as to confer a new order to the pre-psychic β-elements reaching it. This follows Mancia’s (1981) earlier attempt at linking central nervous system activity specifically to Bion’s (1963) conceptualizations of ‘container-contained’ and ‘alpha function’. He writes: “According to Bion, the functions of the mind are in fact operative within neurobiological functions which permit mental operations to organize themselves and become manifest. This is particularly true of the alpha function of dreaming, which may be viewed as part of a neurobiological activity which, to use Bion’s language, acts as a ‘container’ for the organization of thinking processes.” (Mancia 1981, p. 450).
VII. CURRENT USAGE AND CONCLUSION
The model of Container-Contained has wide application in contemporary psychoanalysis. In clinical psychoanalysis the containing function is used by a significant number of contemporary psychoanalysts, independent of theoretical orientation. The term is applied not only for understanding the processes of projective identification, but also for work with psychic states dominated by excess tension/emotions due to trauma and/or undifferentiated psychic states. Today, many would also stress the importance of internalizing
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