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between and within the patient and the analyst, and to further precision of communication among the psychoanalysts. For instance, he saw mathematics (as a development of geometry) and the philosophy of mathematics, as an early attempt to deal with psychosis. In numerous examples throughout, Sandler (2005) documents that Bion is not ‘mathematizing psychoanalysis’, his use of mathematical analogies is aimed at investigation of primitive modes of apprehending reality. Similarly, terms borrowed from various branches of philosophy and other interdisciplinary sources is used, in Bion’s own words, “for psychoanalytical purposes because the meaning with which they are already invested comes near to the meaning I seek to convey “ (Bion 1965*, p. 6). Those who expand understanding of Bion through the lens of complexity, uncertainty and infinity (Schuster 2014, 2018; Bergstein 2018) note the importance of his move from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometry towards algebraic calculus, as the move towards the mathematics of change, approximation, and transformation of infinite processes. Avner Bergstein (2018) points out explicitly; “These days he [Bion] might talk about complexity theories in mathematics” Bergstein 2018, p. 197). II. B. PSYCHOANALYTIC ROOTS The most prominent psychoanalytic influences were, as acknowledged in Transformations throughout, Freud and Klein. Given that “The theory of transformation and its development does not relate to the main body of psycho-analytic theory, but to the practice of psycho-analytic observation ” (Bion 1965*, p. 34), Bion provides the fresh formulation (not a new theory) of Freud’s earlier formulation of the objective of psychoanalysis, i.e., of Freud’s making the unconscious conscious (1900, 1915b), Or: ‘Where id was, there ego shall be’ (1933, p. 80), as in “to help the patient to transform that part of emotional experience of which he is unconscious into an emotional experience of which he is conscious” (Bion 1965* p. 32), while the emphasis is on the “nature of the transformation in a psycho-analytic session” (Bion 1965*, p. 34). Most specifically, according to Sandler, Bion draws and further extends Freud’s illusory/hallucinatory character of transference (Freud 1912), draws on and further extends many other Freuds contributions, such as resistance, free association (1912), interplay between manifest and latent contents and in day dreaming activities, the unconscious domain and unconscious communication (1915b), free associations, countertransference and ‘personal factor’ Freud (1909, 1933, 1938) and their extensions in Sándor Ferenczi (1909,1928) and Theodor Reik (1948), construction (Freud 1938), representation, interpretation, observation of the genesis and vicissitudes of thought processes (Freud 1911), among others. Klein’s influence is mainly felt in employing projective identification (Klein 1930, 1945, 1946) including his previous extension of its function as a communication, internal objects and part objects, and primitive symbolization, akin to psychotic actions and thought. Their direct utility, most notably as it pertains to Rigid Motion Transformation (Freud) and Projective Transformation (Klein) is noted in various expositions of Bion’s work, below.
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