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Chapter Two Part One – Literature review - Page 35
and almost certainly reflects something of the nature of the human mind (Matte-Blanco,
1988; Rayner & Tuckett, 1988). It is crucially important for a number of reasons other
than as a mechanism of defence, not least for its role in the interpersonal
communication of experience, as in countertransference. Here, it leads to evocation of
feeling in the analyst, which can be understood and shared with the patient, through a
way of being as well as through the construction and offering of interpretations.
There are other key psychoanalytic concepts related to transference and
countertransference. Of particular interest to this study is that of containment (Bion,
1959). Bion’s interest in the earliest stages of the mind led him to focus on the link
between something innate (an infant) and something foreign (an experience perceived in
external reality). For example, a newborn baby already seems to know what to do when
the nipple touches its cheek. Its head turns and it begins to suckle. The reflex seems to
be innate, but the nipple has to be there in the external world to realise the reflex. In
Bion’s view, when an innate pre-conception meets with a realisation (in perception),
they link to create a mental object, and with it, a mind to hold the mental object.
Bion went on to note that in this type of example of linking, one thing (the nipple) goes
inside the other (the infant’s mouth). This notion of linking is of an intimate process,
rather like a hand in a glove, and captures the important notion of the inside quality of
links. Bion developed this into the notion of containment, and the concepts of container
and contained (Bion, 1970). Most simply, containment is a function where primitive
emotional material (often consisting of anxieties) can be held on to until it can be
transformed by thinking. Importantly, he stressed that containing is not a passive
function, but an active inter-relationship, in the case of this example, between mother
and infant. He described a range of possibilities along a continuum between rigid,