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the whole of whose function would be on a concrete level or whose concrete symbols would ever be completely concrete; only predominantly so.” (Segal, 1991, p. 43) Segal also states that she does not even consider the symbolism of the depressive position to be free of concrete elements. To this, one must add that if we accept the existence of an ego from the beginning of life, albeit with precarious functions, one will also find some depressive elements (a degree integration and tolerance of object separation) in the paranoid–schizoid position and, therefore, vestiges of symbolisation. On the other hand, there is a note from Segal in which she warns that the fact that psychotic patients have been capable of abstract thought, and for which acquiring the capacity for symbolisation was necessary, does not in itself constitute a sign of mental health, because this might be the result of a splitting process where abstract thought has remained devoid of emotional meaning (Segal, 1991, p. 48). Finally, Pérez-Sánchez (2018, p. 124) notes that years later, Segal continued to maintain that there are several forms of transition from concrete symbolism to mature symbolic representation, and that primitive forms of symbolism coexist with more evolved ones within a single individual (even in the non-psychotic), although in variable proportions (in: Quinondoz 2008, p. 65). III. Aac. Wilfred Bion and Meltzer’s Contemporary Elaboration Working at the same time as Segal, Bion (1957, 1962) developed his ideas on symbol formation and symbolic thinking based on his theories of maternal containment and reverie (See the separate entry CONTAINMENT: CONTAINER/CONTAINED) It is the mother’s containment of the infant’s anxiety filled projections and their return in a form that the infant can tolerate and internalize that sets the conditions for the transition from concrete thinking (beta elements) to true symbolic thinking through the mother’s ‘alpha function’. Beta elements are for Bion raw unmetabolized somatopsychic elements of preverbal thought fit only for expulsion unless modified. While alpha elements are those that have been transformed via maternal alpha function and reverie, and can be used for symbolic thinking and ‘the furniture of dreams.’ He refers to the mother's alpha function as necessary for reverie, the mother's capacity to receive and transform the infant's beta elements (raw sensory data) into meaningful thoughts (alpha elements), an aspect of the container function. For Bion, symbolic thinking becomes possible when two basic factors are met: First, the infant’s capacity to bear frustration during the object’s absence and second, the mother’s capacity to contain the infant’s projective identifications. Symbol formation is thus triggered through absence and separation while at the same time making separation possible. Through repeated experiences of successful maternal containment, the infant gradually takes in these transformed alpha elements thus endowing the world with meaning, while also internalizing the mother’s containing function allowing the infant to bear longer periods of frustration. When images and meanings can be linked in a creative way, they lead to complex symbolic representations. These dynamic processes Bion associated with dreaming (dream-work-alpha) which continue even during the waking state. Bion (1957) writes also about ideograms, as a
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