Learning from Experience - Paperback

by Wilfred R. Bion (Author)

In this book Bion describes his use of the term 'alpha-function' to conceptualize how the data of emotional experience is processed and digested. This includes his thinking on 'contact barriers' and the bearing of 'projective identification' on the genesis of thought.

Author Biography

Wilfred Bion worked clinically with psychotic patients and made many significant contributions in this area, viewing schizophrenic thinking as a difficulty in the linking of thoughts and objects. His concept of the container and the contained emphasizes the role of empathy in the infant-mother dyad. He used the term alpha function to conceptualize how the data of emotional experience is processed and digested, and he developed the grid to locate the development and transformation of psychic elements. Wilfred Bion died in 1979.