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of reflective awareness. The only way to access it is by resonance in ‘O’ with it. By introducing the concept of ‘O’ and linking it with the-thing-in-itself and ‘infinity’, Bion places the concept of the unconscious in a postmodern age of understanding: it is thus “linked to infinity, chaos and complexity theory, catastrophe theory, and spirituality” (Grotstein 1997, p.84). It must be highlighted that a strong correlation between primary environment and the possibility of encountering ‘O’ exists: it is the quality of the primary objects and interlocutors (and in analysis the quality of the analytical stance of the analyst) which determines the possibility that the baby/patient can bear the encounter with ‘O’ (Gaburri & Ambrosiano, 2003) and with the emotional reality which resides in it. For Bion, O is the domain of “the psychoanalytic object,” the true north towards which analytic inquiry should be directed, even if it can never be fully ‘known.’ This vision of something that is there but can only be intuited or ‘become,’ because it is not ‘of the senses,’ is epistemologically reminiscent of the thinking of Plato, Kant, and various mystics. To the extent that the elements or ‘occurrences’ of the O of one’s existence can never be fully known or verbalizable, then that ineffable dimension of being is by definition ‘ unconscious .’ However, the unknowable ‘unconscious’ part of O is not the Freudian dynamic unconscious of the repressed. It is more akin to the deeper layers of the Freudian id, something that is emergent, unstructured, not yet formed. If one can speak of ‘elements’ in the domain of O, one might say that they consist of sensorial disturbances or turbulences that are not yet psychic (‘ pre-psychic’ or ‘proto-psychic ’). Bion never designated the contents of O, but did describe prepsychic, protomental phenomena he called Beta elements , which are unsuited to be thought with or thought about, unless or until they are transformed by a kind of psychic ‘dreamwork’. He assigned the name of ‘ alpha function’ to this latter activity and asserted that alpha function was central to a continuous, 24 hour/day process that created “ waking dream thoughts ” built out of “ alpha elements .” The latter are assumed to be the building blocks of thought, thinking and psychic organization. Once created, alpha elements are used to establish a contact barrier that is, in turn, essential to the processing (mentalization) of experience, the delimiting of psychic space, the creation of a container for thoughts and the topographical division of the contents of mind into the systems Ucs and Pcs/Cs. Since beta elements are sensory stimuli before they have acquired any meaning , they are different from Freud’s concept of “representations.” While the latter can be conscious or unconscious, Beta elements are by definition beyond – or rather before – consciousness , in that they are not psychic, but ‘ exist ’ or are registered only at a somatic or neurobiological level (the sensory organs and the brain as a part of the latter). This formulation relates to Freud’s early model of the hypothetical neuronal pathways of conduction of pleasure and pain, which Freud drew and described in his “Project of a Scientific Psycholog y” (Freud 1895, pp. 320,324). It is important to note that beta elements are necessarily unconscious, because they are not yet psychic , but not because they have undergone repression or other defensive alteration necessitated by conflict with the superego or the anxiety produced by their wishful or fearful content and meaning. Once beta elements are transformed into alpha elements – i.e., once they have become psychi c – they can then achieve saturation of meaning, acquire symbolic status ,
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