Bion’s Containment and Container

What follows is a brief outline of how Projective Identification is understood as a ‘bedrock of unconscious communication and interaction’ within the therapeutic relationship. Additionally, it will highlight how the relationship between therapist and client* parallels that of the primary-carer and infant. Finally, while this article is in no way complete, it’s inteded purpose is to serve as a touchstone reference for upcoming articles which will link directly back here.

*patient and client hereon are used interchangeably, as are therapist and analyst.

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Wilfred Bion (1962) posits that both the container and the contained are abstract representations of psychoanalytic realizations; meaning that while the mediation of growth can be understood as a relationship between mouth and breast, the abstract correlate applicable to the therapeutic relationship is between how the contained of the analysand is projected into the container analyst. Thence whatever part of the psyche is projected into the containing analyst is in due course experienced to have been modified so as it can be re-introjected in a form that is tolerable for the analysand’s psyche (Bion, 1962).

As Bion (1962. pp.90–91) states “projective identification is internalized to form an apparatus for regulation”. Through this summation it is understood how ‘states of expectation’ are paired with sufficient ‘sense impressions’ which in turn form knowable concepts. With repeated pairing, abstraction, growth and capacities for awareness are afforded to the infant(Bion, 1962; Scharff, 1996). The inverse of this fundamental communication is an abnormal mechanism what is devised (albeit unintentionally) as an exercise of intimidating control over another individual (Trevithck, 2011).

A similar, yet theoretically distinct, concept found in the writings of Winnicott is ‘Holding’ in which the caregiver’s primary maternal occupation enables them to provide the infant with sufficient ego-support in early life (Abrams & Hinshelwood, 2018).

Gomez (2017) further cites Bion to illustrate how an example of therapist-as-regulator may be seen within the psychical growth function of projective identification in session. As with the infant, resilience for their distress is assumed to grow if the primary caregiver can take within them the full extent of the infant’s feelings in order to return said feelings to the child in a safer, tolerable form (Gomez, 2017. p.45).

Analogous to the therapeutic relationship, Bion refers to this accommodating mental state as ‘Reverie’ in which the containing therapist may make sense of the patient’s difficult feelings for what they are, further returning this experience to the patient with a sense that it can be understood and managed (Gomez, 2017. Pp.45–46).

Projective Identification, as used by Bion, describes a mechanism that enables unconscious communication of meaning and emotion within the container and contained dynamic. Reverie itself is the aspectual state of the therapist’s suspended attention whereby the patient’s relevant unconscious material may be registered. Thus, the containment of meaning and emotion that are constitutive of the infant’s growth and subject formation may be contained, with this process taken as akin to what may occur in the therapeutic relationship (Gomez, 2017. pp.46–48).

Thus, Projective Identification is considered a bedrock of unconscious communication and interaction.

The mother’s introjection and reverie of the infant’s anxieties allows for metabolization of them that provides a structure for re-projection of this anxieties in a detoxified form (Schraff, 1996).

The task for the therapist is to attune to the details of their countertransference enough in order to comprehend their patient in the here-and-now of the transference relationship… despite how strange, affectionate or non-verbal some of their expressions might appear! If the patient can experience being with a therapist who is either less terrifying or terrified than the patient perceives themselves to be, then they too may join the therapist and attend to their emergence of their feelings (Gomez, 2017. p.63). In doing so the infant also introjects a containing object who can deal with anxiety, this containment is the root of mental stability (Trevithick, 2011. p.407)

Rereferences:

Abram, J., & Hinshelwood, R. D. (2018). The clinical paradigms of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott: comparisons and dialogues. Routledge.

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from experience. London: Heine-mann. Reprinted by Karnac 1984, ‘’The K-link,” pp. 89–94. By permission, Karnac Books.

Gomez, L. (2017). Developments in Object Relations: Controversies, Conflicts, and Common Ground. Taylor & Francis.

Scharff, D. E. (1996). Object relations theory and practice: An introduction. Rowman & Littlefield.

Trevithick, P. (2011). Understanding defences and defensiveness in social work. Journal of Social Work Practice, 25(4), 389–412.