The Language of Bion

A Dictionary of Concepts

P.C. Sandler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367328115
• eBook ISBN: 9780429921216
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Considering that introductory books cannot replace an author's original words,and that Bion' s concepts are often found to be difficult to grasp, Dr Sandler has compiled an unusual style of dictionary. He assembles. He assembles relevant quotations from Bion's texts together with the meaning of concepts and their place in the history of their development.

A

Absolute truth: An imaginary, lying entity created by paranoid states. It has at least three factors:

• (i) An attempt to deal with the animate with methods that are fairly successful in dealing with the inanimate. It is an offshoot of a state of mind that tries to turn dynamic situations into static ones. The static state seems to the “beholder” to be one that is “amenable” to be owned, in phantasy.
• (ii) An attempt to replace the discrimination of true and false (or reality and hallucination) with moral values, to dictate how things, events or people should be.
• (iii) Primary envy, primary narcissism and disregard for truth and love.

The “beholder” abhors movement, transient evolution, development and reality. “How” is replaced by “ought to”, “have to”. Autism and “independence” are some of its perceptible manifestations.

Suggested cross-references: Analytic view, Atonement, Becoming, Common sense, Compassion, Correlation, Disturbed personality, Enforced splitting, O, Jargon, Lies, Manipulations of Symbols, Mystic, Philosophy, Real psycho-analysis, Reality Sensuous and Psychic, Sense of Truth, Thinking, Truth, Truth-Function, Ultra-sensuous, Unknowable, Unknown.

Ad hoc theorising Please refer to the entries, Manipulations of symbols and Multiplicity of theories.

Alpha (α) An early concept that was discharged in favour of the concept of α-function. It was also used as a shorthand notation for dream-work-α In consequence, it is part of the development of this theory. Please refer to the entries,α-function and dream-work-α.

It was used almost exclusively as a heading for papers written during the year of 1959. Curiously, after sixteen years it would resurface, in isolated form, in 1975 (AMF, I, 59).

Alpha-elements Hypothetical elements belonging to an observational model. The model tries to deal with an unknown chain of events. The chain itself can be known through manifestations of its beginning and ending situations. Sensory stimuli are the beginning; manifestations of the psychic realm linked to the stimuli are the end. How is it that sensory stimuli are transformed, in order to get access to the inner mental realm? The mysterious pathway of such a transformation remains unknown; only the transformation itself is acknowledged.

Alpha-elements are defined as the end-product of the action of alpha-function in ultimate reality, the things-in-themselves, which are apprehensible as inner or outer sensory stimuli. Bion called the latter, beta-elements (q.v.).

Bion names the model that depicts that such a transformation has occurred alpha-function (q.v.). The process itself remains unknown. One can grasp the meaning of the function using the words, “traduction” or “translation”. It seems to this author that a precise term may be borrowed from physics and neurophysiology: “transduction”. Microphones, loudspeakers, Meister and Paccini corpuscles are transducers. Alpha-function “transforms” Beta-elements—raw sensory impressions—into alpha-elements. Alpha-elements are the transduced products of this operation that could be named, “betalphalization”. Therefore, alpha-elements are transduced beta-elements.

In a second phase, hypothetical Alpha-elements are “put into use”. They can be regarded as elementary immaterial particles, building blocks, amenable to be used to dream, to think, to store in the memory.

Usefulness: The mystery lingers on. How is it that sensuous impressions can ever gain the status of psychically useful inputs? Bion does not resolve the problem, which borders one of the most mysterious secrets of life itself. It has to do with no less than the transition from inanimate to animate. The most gifted authors from time immemorial tackled the same issue. This was the research of the ancient writers of myths, and of the Bible; Plato, Kant, Goethe, Freud, Dobzhansky, Schrödinger and a list too long to mention made attempts to deal with the issue.

To ask how this occurs equals asking, what is life? Many times the answer—if it exists at all—is represented by flights into religion. Bion’s scheme of an alpha-function and alpha-elements is restricted to a specific path, namely, from non-mental to mental. In Freud’s terms, from material to psychic reality.

Bion started critically from Freud’s suggestions of consciousness as the sense organ for the perception of psychic quality. He also started from Freud’s theory of instincts. It provides a practical working model for the practising analyst. The analyst who profits from this theory is armed with a tool that enables him to detect some inanimate features in the analysand’s discourse that usually passes for “normal”. Also, it provides a fresh approach to the dream work made when the person is awake.

Parthenope Bion Talamo, at the unofficial second meeting of “Bion’s Readers Around the World”, organized by Thalia Vergopoulo at the IPAC, San Francisco, 1995, compared the alpha-elements to “LEGO”™ blocks.

Antonino Ferro suggested the existence of narrative derivatives of alpha-elements, as seen in the clinical material (1999).

Suggested cross-references: Alpha Function, Bizarre Elements, Dream-Work-α, K

Alpha-element oedipal pre-conception An inborn pre-conception of Oedipus. This apparently cumbersome term is shorthand for a precise definition in Bion’s work. It encircles the most profound mystery of mankind, that of procreation, first studied in its psychic sense by Freud. It is a synthetic unification of Freud and Klein:

Analysts need ... to consider that the Oedipal material may possibly be evidence for primitive apparatus of pre-conception and therefore possessing a significance additional to its significance in classical theory. I am postulating a precursor of the Oedipal situation not in the sense that such a term may have in Melanie Klein’s discussion of Early Phases of the Oedipus Complex, but as something that belongs to the ego as part of its apparatus for contact with reality. In short I postulate an aelement version of a private Oedipus myth which is the means, the pre-conception, by virtue of which the infant is able to establish contact with parents as they exist in the world of reality. The mating of this a-element Oedipal preconception with the realization of the actual parents gives rise to the conception of parents.

[EP, 93]

Procreation is one of the bridges from inanimate to animate.

Suggested cross-references: Alpha-Elements, Alpha-function, Concept, Conception, Pre-conception.

Alpha-function A mental function that transforms sensuously apprehensible stimuli into elements useful for thinking, dreaming, memory.

But there are no sense-data directly related to psychic quality, as there are sense-data directly related to concrete objects.

[LE, 53]

The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs.

[Freud, 1900, p.613; Freud’s italics]

The theory of functions and alpha-function are not a part of psychoanalytic theory. They are working tools for the practising psychoanalyst to ease problems of thinking about something that is unknown.

[LE, 89]

We do not know what is concerned in the transformation from inanimate to animate though we know, or think we know, something of the change from animate to inanimate.

[AMF, I, 129]

The verbal formulation “alpha-function” refers to a model that developed into a theory. It was created by Bion around 1960 and first published in 1961. It was an attempt to deal with a puzzling question: how do sensory stimuli achieve the status of psychic facts? Conversely, why in some cases do they not achieve it?

In order to realize what this function is all about, one should keep in mind:

1. The concept of function, borrowed from Euclidean geometry. A simple formulation is: a given variable functions in some given way vis-à-vis another given variable. The two have a relationship with each other.
2. Alpha-function is a model that tries to deal with a cognitive issue, namely, the apprehension of reality.
3. The “port of entry” of reality into us is the sensuous apparatus.
4. Freud’s model of consciousness as the sensuous organ for the apprehension of psychic quality (Freud, 1900).

The theory of alpha-function has a philosophical (Kantian) and a biological (neurophysiological) foundation.

It is linked to Kant’s work in the sense that it deals with phenomenal manifestations (sensuous impressions, which Bion names beta-elements). It is linked to neurophysiology to the extent that it bridges the Autonomic Nervous System (the receptors and transducers of the sensory apparatus) with the Central Nervous System. The study of this passageway had been neglected hitherto.

Bion’s model of alpha-function purports to describe the fact that human beings’ ANS takes raw sensuous apprehensible facts and then couples with the CNS in order to translate them into something else. This “something” is not just a “thing”; it has an immaterial nature. In brief, we human beings are able to “de-sense-fy” the stimuli that comes from exterior reality and from inner reality. Bion uses the terms “translate” and “transform”. One may borrow from physics and from neurophysiology and use the term “trans ducer”. Transducers are devices that transform one kind of energy into another, without debasing the invariances conveyed by them. For example, a microphone and a loudspeaker are transducers. The former transforms a mechanically conducted form of energy—sound—into electric energy; the latter does the obverse. The human body’s corpuscles of Meissner and Paccini do the same.

The stimuli are things-in-themselves. This means that alpha-function allows for a recognizance that one cannot have a direct contact with ultimate reality. Things-in-themselves are called, in the frame of the theory of alpha-function, “beta-elements” (q.v.). When one is not able to “de-sense-fy” the things-in-themselves, either stemming from the sense apparatus or inner feelings, one is pervaded by sensations of “ownership” with regard to absolute truth. In this case, beta-elements remain undigested.

In his first published definition, Bion still did not posit the “existence” of beta-elements:

“I have described ... the use of a concept of alpha-function as a working tool in the analysis of disturbances of thought. It seemed convenient to suppose an alpha-function to convert sense data into alpha-elements and thus provide the psyche with the material for dream thoughts and hence the capacity to wake up or go to sleep, to be conscious or unconscious” (ST, 115). To study the development of the definition of function as well as that of β-elements, please refer to the entries,βelements; Dream-work-α.

One can state that alpha-function is a “de-sense-fying” function of the mind.

This definition includes particulars that would be greatly expanded in the ensuing four years: the sense data would be seen as phenomena betraying the thing-in-itself, which would be called beta-elements (in 1962) and thereafter, “O” (1965). The dream-thoughts would be seen as an ongoing daytime activity. Concepts such as contact barrier (q.v.) would be created to deal with consciousness and its relationship with the unconscious. The particulars of the theory were to be expanded and polished like jewels; meanwhile the definition itself remained unchanged (EP, 4).

A second definition of it appeared one year later. It augments the scope of the theory that was created to deal with patients with disturbances of thought. It was in 1962 that its more general character was fully recognized:

Alpha-function operates on the sense impressions, whatever they are, and the emotions, whatever they are, of which the patient is aware. In so far as alpha-function is successful alpha elements are produced and these elements are suited to storage and the requirements of dream thoughts.

[LE, 6]

This broader range of application coincided with Bion’s growing awareness that a permanent underlying layer of psychosis permeates the so-called “normal” personality. It also coincides with Bion’s movement towards revising his concepts of cure and pathology. They were made more explicit in 1967—in the Commentary to Second Thoughts. In 1970 they reached a more mature form—with a critical view on using ideas of cure derived from medical goals as a model to analysts—in Attention and Interpretation.

An analogy with the functioning of the digestive system was put forward in the second, expanded definition of Alpha-function. If mind can “process”, “digest”, beta-elements, they are transformed into “something else” that was called “alpha-elements” (q.v.).

Alpha-elements can be used to think, to store in memory and to dream. Alpha-function abstracts the “concreteness” of sensory impressions. Conversely, beta-elements are only suitable for projective identification. The similarity between the metabolism of a meal is striking. Alpha-elements can be compared with glycogen being stored in the liver, or ATP. Beta-elements can be compared with faeces. Both are by-products of a process that transforms raw material into nourishment and faeces.

Alpha-elements are postulated to be present in infant life—if and when a good enough mother is capable of “reverie” (q.v.). The exercising of reverie is a kind of temporary borrowing. Infants, so to say, “borrow” from their mothers’ alpha-function. Therefore the mother detoxifies the child’s beta-elements; they are returned to the infant in a digested form. “Reverie” refers to an ability of mothers to contain their own anxieties of annihilation. A continuous exposure to someone who does this may allow learning that such a state—not to become unstructured, fragmented before anxiety—may be achieved.

Some personalities have a low capacity to tolerate frustration and the pain associated with it. This capacity seems to be innate. The first frustration to be coped with seems to be the absence of the idealized breast. There is no possibility of abstracting immaterial qualities from a breast. The baby who does this is enabled to use warmth, solace and understanding. Conversely, these personalities cannot apprehend more than, or cannot go beyond the concrete breast, nipple and milk. An enforced splitting ensues (q.v.)

The concept appeared first under the somewhat vague denomination of α It was then, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• Introduction
• The dictionary
• BIBLIOGRAPHY