Pages From Clinical Application of Bions Concepts. Sandler P. C

CHAPTER NINE
Bions theory of container

and contained
A
ll Bions concepts derive from practice. His texts contain real
technical hints, albeit formulated in colloquial, rather than
technical terms (which are often just jargon). Let us first look
at the concept and then proceed to the clinical illustrations.
As I tried to adumbrate in The Language of Bion: a Dictionary of
Concepts (2005), the double term container-contained embodies a
paradox: something that contains and something that is contained
perform a double function, namely the function of containing and
of being contained vis--vis each other. It seems to me that in order
to be able to use the concept of Container-Contained, it is seminal
to keep firmly in mind the paradoxical double feature of every fact
happening in nature (and in human nature) which was described
in the Introduction of this booknamely, that psychic reality and
material reality are two forms of an ultimate same existence.
Container-contained is a form of relationship from the incep-
tion of life that allows emotional growth and the growth of think-
ing processes. It is the process through which accrual of meaning is
obtained; therefore container-contained is equated to thinking itself.
It represents the most developed form of Bions theory of thinking,
257
SANDLER-Book 257 7/6/09 4:31:39 PM

258 A C L I N I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N O F B I O N S C O N C E P T S
which took him approximately nine years to complete. It can also

be seen as a formulation of Freuds observation on human sexuality
under the vertex of the thought processes.
Growth
Container and contained constitutes a theory of psychoanalysis, one
of the very few that Bion formulated. It is the essential feature of
Melanie Kleins conception of projective identification (1963, p. 3).
As with most of Bions main formulations, this specific concept inte-
grates Freuds and Kleins discoveries. In this case, it derives from and
integrates Freuds theory of human bisexuality (in a non-sensuous,
non-concrete way; rather as a feature of psychic reality) and Melanie
Kleins theory of projective identification. Bions concept maintains
a close kinship with both. The concept defines both a function of the
personality and an element of psychoanalysis (1963). It is an ele-
ment in so far as it is basic and fundamental, as a substratum per-
meating the ethos of mental life, deeply intertwined with the basic
biological mysteries of life: namely, the exercise of sexuality itself,
as the basic spring and manifestation of creativitythe creation of
something living.
Its first analogy resorts to the relationship of a baby with his or
her mother. Any baby is prey, as Melanie Klein observed, to the
basic fear of annihilation. This is natural and at the same time still
much disputed in the literature. Klein describesas in any truth-
ful scientific descriptionthe obvious. But the obvious is often the
most difficult thing to realise. In this case, the obvious is the physical
unpreparedness of the small baby, which lacks the necessary matu-
ration of myelin and other neurological basic endowments as well
as sheer raw knowledge and experience of the world. Bion makes
an analogy with a mother who may digest and return those fears
in a more manageable form to the infant. The degree of this natural
fear of annihilation varies, according to the endowment of primary
narcissism and primary envy, but this is not important for us now,
except in so far as it will present some difficulties in finding what
Bion will define as a containerin the first instance, the breast and
the mother. Even an adequate container, if dealt with by an envious
or greedy personality, is found to be inadequate to deal with those
fears (Klein, 1957).
SANDLER-Book 258 7/6/09 4:31:40 PM

B I O N S T H E O RY O F C O N TA I N E R A N D C O N TA I N E D 259
The quotation from Bion at the start of this part of the book tries
to introduce the second analogy made by him in defining the con-
cept: with the signs drawn from the biological discipline of genetics.
Receptive observation and being absorbed in the task of observa-
tion and absorbed in the facts can be demonstrated as the exercising
of femininity or masculinity during an actual analytic session. They
become clear in the second-to-second (or perhaps a scale of time yet
to be devised), microscopic, subtle, non-sensuous realm evolving in
the session.
The concept may furnish to the psychoanalytical establishment, to
outsiders, and above all to the practitioner, a developed way to deal
with sexuality as an element of psychoanalysis. Freud was criticised
in his own lifetime as being a pan-sexual ideologue. This seems to
me a popular psychotic sensuous-concretisation of the ethos of
psychoanalysis, in that it debases sexuality into sex. Most of his dis-
coveries were, in Bions opinion (1975, p. 9), denied and buried. Bion
was one of the authors who tried to unearth some of them.
Returning to Bions use of quasi-mathematical symbols, his first
attempt was to use well-known symbols drawn from biology: I
shall use the sign for the abstraction representing the container
and for the contained (1962, p. 90). The use of a biological figura-
tive depiction may be seen as an ideogram and stresses right from
the beginning that female and male functions are at work. It is just
this aspect that must be worked through during the minute events
of an analytic session.
Bion, at the same time as (but independently of) Rosenfeld, had
earlier observed the communicative function of projective iden-
tification. Now he displayed another function of this unconscious
phantasy, which is also a mental mechanism: relating growth and
learning. Bion uses a quasi-mathematical symbol derived from
genetics to denote the evolving relationship between container and
contained: . Growing provides the basis of an apparatus for
learning from experience (1962, p. 92).
The most primitive aspect is to try to get rid of something that is
phantastically expelled as undesirable, hostile, potentially annihilat-
ing. It would be called nameless dread (Transformations) and sub-
thalamic fear (A Memoir of the Future). This something struggles
to find an adequate container. But this something is the mind itself,
full of fear and hostility. At this point in Bions work it is already
SANDLER-Book 259 7/6/09 4:31:40 PM

clear that such containment should be made originally by the breast,

in the sense that it can either refuse or agree to receive those phan-
tasies. A refusal heightens the predicament. As often happens with
psychoanalysis, those findings were first seen in severely disturbed
patients. Later it was realised that those phenomena emerge in any
person; they are typical of the newborn, and encircle its relationship
with the breast. They emerge in many forms in the analytic situa-
tion, and we will try to deal with a specific one in this text: namely,
container and contained as functions of Femininity and Masculinity
as they may be observed in an analytic session.
The lack of capacity to contain those fragments of ego jeopardises
at the outset all the features of the personality which should one day
provide the foundation for intuitive understanding of himself and oth-
ers (Bion, 1957a, p. 47). As Melanie Klein had already adumbrated, it
is not just some unwanted parts of the ego that are expelled, but also
those functions of the ego that provide contact with reality.
This chapter will deal with functions of ego, but also with the gen-
erators of these functions, which are real biological instincts linked
to life and creativity. The functions of the ego are consciousness of
sense impressions, attention, memory, judgment, and thought. They
have brought against them, in such inchoate forms as they may
possess at the outset of life, the sadistic splitting eviscerating attacks
that lead to their being minutely fragmented and then expelled from
the personality to penetrate, or encyst, the objects (ibid).
In Learning from Experience (1962), the concept of container and
contained is given as a new theory in psychoanalysis:
Melanie Klein has described an aspect of projective identifi-

cation concerned with the modification of infantile fears; the
infant projects a part of its psyche, namely its bad feelings, into
a good breast. Thence in due course they are removed and re-
introjected. During their sojourn in the good breast they are felt
to have been modified in such a way that the object that is re-
introjected has become tolerable to the infants psyche From
the above theory I shall abstract for use as a model the idea
of a container into which an object is projected and the object
that can be projected into the container: the latter I shall desig-
nate by the term contained. The unsatisfactory nature of both
terms points the need for further abstraction Container and
SANDLER-Book 260 7/6/09 4:31:41 PM

contained are susceptible of conjunction and permeation by

emotion. Thus conjoined or permeated or both they change
in a manner usually described as growth. When disjoined or
denuded of emotion they diminish in vitality, that is, approx-
imate to inanimate objects. Both container and contained are
models of abstract representations of psychoanalytic realisa-
tions. [Bion, 1962, p. 90]
I suppose that the intrinsic character of the counterpart in real-

ity which the concept of container-contained strives to elicit can
be formulated in verbal terms as Vitality, having the features of
life itself. This is what will be expanded in this text. Bion relies on
Kleins seminal paper from 1946 and refines the study of paranoid-
schizoid mechanisms. Melanie Klein focused on the alive feature
in the mother-baby relationship; Bion will extend it to relationships
between adults.
To return to the borrowing of the symbols hitherto used by the
geneticist: they denote natural facts that can be depicted verbally:
penetration, lodging, insemination, growing and experience. At
the same time the use of symbols divests the situation of the pleas-
ure principle. It conveys the natural, biological nature of the mind.
Bion states that has a power of penetrability in elements
(1962, p. 93). It also brings with it the indication that container and
contained are amenable to being dealt with as functions. (On fac-
tors and functions, concepts derived from mathematical usage, see
Bion, 1962, reviewed in Sandler, 2005.) The concept of function,
borrowed from mathematics, presumes that something or someone
functions. It is a dynamic activity:
The activity that I have here described as shared by two indi-

viduals becomes introjected by the infant so that the appa-
ratus becomes installed in the infant a model is provided by
the idea of the infant who explores an object by putting it into
his mouth. What talking was originally done by the mother,
possibly a rudimentary designatory function, is replaced by the
infants own baby talk. [Bion, 1962, p. 91]
The internalised emerges as an infants own talk transformed in

the adults talk during an analytic session. The process of maturation
SANDLER-Book 261 7/6/09 4:31:41 PM

appears in the extent that the theory of container and contained is

part of the theory of alpha function and had a model in the area of
thinking: the mating of a pre-conception with a realisation (whose
origin is sense impressions) to produce a conception. The word con-
ception has an obvious biological origin and is pregnant with bio-
logical implications and connotations. Perhaps this fact has passed
unobserved since Bion used it. Perhaps he thought it was so obvious
that it did not demand explanation. The lack of attention to it, vis-
ible in the scarcity of literature dealing with the concept, indicates
otherwise.
The container and the contained, the mating of pre-conceptions
and realisations, in their repetition (Bion, 1962, p. 91, item 14) pro-
mote growth in . Bion would later assume a benign operation
of (1963, p. 33). This benign operation is in 1963 seen as an evolu-
tion in genetic terms of the lettered axis of the Grid. The benignity
or otherwise of change effected by the mechanism depends on
the nature of the dynamic link L, H or K.
The growth is not necessarily good or constructive, for there
are no judgmental values in analysis. For example, a container-
contained link can evolve in the minus sense:
The infant feels fear that it is dying, and projects its feelings of
fear into the breast together with envy and hate of the undis-
turbed breast. Envy precludes a commensal relationship. The
breast in K would moderate the fear component in the fear
of dying that had been projected into it and the infant in due
course would re-introject a new tolerable and consequently
growth-stimulating part of its personality. In -K the breast is felt
enviously to remove the good or valuable element in the fear of
dying and force the worthless residue back into the infant. The
infant who started with a fear he was dying ends up by contain-
ing a nameless dread. [Bion, 1962, p. 96]
The growth of this process is inextricably associated with violence of

emotion. Its increased sophistication is conveyed by saying that the
will to live, that is necessary before there can be a fear of dying, is a part
of the goodness that the envious breast has removed (ibid., p. 97).
The possibility of a( ) (minus container-contained) is expanded.
It possesses a growing morality. There emerges a super-superego
SANDLER-Book 262 7/6/09 4:31:42 PM

that asserts the moral superiority of undoing and un-learning and

the advantages of finding fault with everything.
The most important characteristic is its hatred of any new devel-

opment in the personality as if the new development were a
rival to be destroyed. The emergence therefore of any tendency
to search for the truth, to establish contact with reality and in
short to be scientific in no matter how rudimentary a fashion is
met by destructive attacks on the tendency and the reassertion
of the moral superiority. This implies an assertion of what in
sophisticated terms would be called a moral law and a moral
system superior to scientific law and a scientific system. [Bion,
1962, p. 98]
This is growth, even though it occurs in a reversed form. A couple

(mother and infant, female and male) can grow either creatively or
destructively.
Clinical practice shows that the person feels that his or her mind
is unbearable, especially when there is a defusing of life and death
instincts. Dealing with this case seemed to be aided by the appre-
hension of the realm of Minus (which will be discussed in the next
volume).
The mind is too heavy a load for the sensuous beast to carry.
I am the thought without a thinker and the abstract thought
which has destroyed its thinker Newtonwise, the container that
loves its content to destruction; the content that explodes its
possessive container. [Bion, 1975, p. 38]
The reference to Newton was that, according to Lord Keynes and

some historians, he lost his sanity when he was on the verge of mak-
ing new discoveries. He turned to religion and almost killed himself
in a mysterious fire. Bion was impressed with this comment, which
was recorded in Transformations (1965, p. 156).
The perverse growth in the realm of minus is made more explicit
when Bion formulates transformations in hallucinosis. The abil-
ity of 0 [i.e. zero] to increase thus by parthenogenesis corresponds
to the characteristics of greed which is also able to grow and flour-
ish exceedingly by supplying itself with unrestricted supplies of
SANDLER-Book 263 7/6/09 4:31:43 PM

nothing (Bion, 1965, p. 134). The final result seems to be a raging

inferno of greedy non-existence. Negative growth is exemplified in
Bions reflections on Freuds The Future of an Illusion:
Too much of the thinking about psychoanalysis precludes the

possibility of regarding as good a theory that would destroy
the individual or the group. Yet there will never be a scientific
scrutiny of analytical theories until it includes critical appraisal
of a theory that by its very soundness could lead to a destruc-
tion of mental stability, e.g. a theory that increased memory and
desire to a point where they rendered sanity impossible. [Bion,
19581979, p. 378]
In Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963) Bion would propose that

qualifies as an element of psychoanalysis. This implies that it is
an elementary particle of the psyche itself. It is a representation
of an element that could be called a dynamic relationship between
container and contained. Bion was gradually reviving the dynamic
ethos of Freuds conception of psychoanalysishence the term
psychodynamics.
Learning, thinking and sexuality: From the baby-mother relationship

to the exercising of femininitymasculinity
Still in Elements of PsychoAnalysis, is, so to say, upgraded to
the status of thinking itself, where it concerns the construing of
meaning:
I propose provisionally to represent the apparatus for think-

ing by the sign . The material, so to speak, out of which this
apparatus is manufactured is I We must now consider I in
its operation, an operation usually spoken of in ordinary
conversation as thinking. From the point of view of meaning
thinking. [Bion, 1963, p. 31]
I stands for Ideait is the growth (as well as the backward move-
ment) of thinking processes and can be seen through the Grid.
Tolerating doubt and the unknown is the essence of a succes-
sion of in a loosely connected and perforated reticulum. (Bion
borrows the concept of reticulum from Elliott Jaques.) In other
SANDLER-Book 264 7/6/09 4:31:43 PM

words, thinking is regarded as a thrust into the unknown rather than

a deposit of logic and rationality. This thrust has a counterpart
in reality: namely, the supreme creative act of a parental couple, as
Klein called it (1932).
The graphic symbol to represent the growing container is a mix-
ture of mathematical notation and biology: n. Learning depends on
the capacity for n to remain integrated and yet lose rigidity (Bion,
1962, p. 93). One may visualise it through some models drawn from
its counterparts in external reality. Their concrete aspect may facili-
tate the apprehension of n: a uterus with a growing foetus, a theoret-
ical system that accepts new empirical data. This is the foundation
of the state of mind of the individual who can retain his knowledge
and experience and yet be prepared to reconstrue past experiences in
a manner that enables him to be receptive of a new idea (Bion, 1962,
p. 93). This receptive state can be described in terms of feminine sur-
render. It is a reconstruction of past experiences, in the same sense
that a baby who returns to the feeding process can have a renewed
contact with a renewed breast (a constant conjunction of the concrete,
sensuously apprehensible and material milk with its non-sensuous
accompaniments, solace and warmthor their negatives), which is
simultaneously the old breast (the old faithful which can be relied
upon) and the new breast (a new experience).
What started primitively as preconceptions probably related to
feeding, breathing and excretion evolves in a growing sophistica-
tion of tolerated doubt. The very sophisticated systems of hypothesis
in science, though hardly recognisable in their origins, nevertheless
retain the receptive qualities denoted by (Bion, 1962, p. 94). Grow-
ing, thinking and learning are fundamentally an evolving experience
of penetration into the unknown and the capacity to be penetrated
by the unknown. Perhaps one may consider that the term penetra-
tion means both piercing and insight: Tolerance of doubt and tol-
erance of a sense of infinity are the essential connective of n if K is
to be possible (Bion, 1962, p. 94).
The sexual nature or oedipal component of is implicit in the
use of the genetic symbol. In any case, the term sexual may impart
a sensuous and concretised sense that is alien to the theory (Bion,
1970, p. 106). The constant resorting to analogiesthe mother-baby
relationship, penis and vaginais just a consequence of the impos-
sibility of talking about ultimate reality that calls to be experienced.
SANDLER-Book 265 7/6/09 4:31:44 PM

Real concepts in psychoanalysis (as in any science) are approaches

to the numinous realm (O in Bions notation). This calls to be
experienced, not understood. It forms part of the numinous realm;
the bisexual nature of the human mind is made clear:
I [Idea] develops a capacity for any one of its aspects to assume

indifferently the function or to any other one of its aspects
or . We must now consider I in its operation, an operation
usually spoken of in ordinary conversation as thinking. From
the point of view of meaning thinking depends on the success-
ful introjection of the good breast that is originally responsible
for the performance of -function. On this introjection depends
the ability of any part of I to be to the other part's briefly,
explanation may be seen as related to the attitude of one part of
the mind to another, and correlation as a comparison of content
expressed by one aspect of I to content expressed by another
aspect of I. [Bion, 1963, pp. 312]
That is, the breast may be the container of the baby but the baby
is also the container of the breast. The analyst is the container of
the patients free associations and the patient is the container for the
analysts constructions, remarks, and interpretations.
In terms of functions, there is no mother-in-abstraction, or mother-
in-itself. The entity mother exists because there is a baby that propiti-
ates an environment for motherness. Winnicott is the other author
who realised thisthere is no such a thing as a baby. Ditto for a penis
and a vagina, for masculinity and femininity as existing in any person
irrespective of the biological or sensuous-concrete sex. It can be said
that in the same way as a PSD exists, a has in its interior a func-
tioning that is an ever-changing . It can be subsumed as expulsion
ingestion (Bion, 1963 p. 42). Some of its realisations can also be stated
by models other than the digestive system. Of these the most sugges-
tive are (1) the respiratory system, with which is linked the olfactory
system; (2) the auditory system, with which is linked transformations
such as musicnoise; and (3) the visual system (ibid., p. 95).
If is an element of psychoanalysis, the issue is important
clinically. It must be duly weighed in the analytic session. Some
apparently familiar statements display an unfamiliarity that is the
clue to their emotional significance.
SANDLER-Book 266 7/6/09 4:31:44 PM

Judgment of the importance or significance of the emotional

event during which such verbalisations appear to be apposite
to the emotional experience depends on the recognition that
container and contained, , is one of the elements of psychoa-
nalysis. We may then judge whether the element is central
or merely present as a component of a system of elements that
impart meaning to each other by their conjunction.
Considering now whether it is necessary to abstract the idea
of a container and contained as an element of psychoanalysis I
am met with a doubt. Container and contained implies a static
condition and this implication is one that must be foreign to
our elements; there must be more of the character imparted
by the words to contain or to be contained. Container and
contained has a meaning suggesting the latent influence of
another element in a system of elements. [Bion, 1963, p. 7]
In Attention and Interpretation Bion furnishes a prcis of his theories

on thinking and container-contained in terms of their emotional
origins:
In the primitive phase, which Freud regards as dominated by

the pleasure principle and from which he excludes the opera-
tion of memory, this last being dependent on the prior devel-
opment of a capacity for thought, the prototype of memory
appears to reside in one of the aspects of projective identifica-
tion. This mechanism, employed to fulfil the duties of thought
until thought takes over, appears as an interchange between
mouth and breast and then between introjected mouth and
introjected breast. This I regard as reaction between container
and contained . seems to be the element which is nearest in
this phase to the memory []
evacuates unpleasure in order to get rid of it, to have it
transformed into something that is, or feels, pleasurable, for the
pleasure of evacuation, for the pleasure of being contained.
takes in the evacuations for the same motives. The nature of
the relationship needs investigation. , which may evacuate
or retain, is the prototype of a forgetful or retentive memory.
Pleasure may be retained if possession is the dominant con-
cern; grievance if a store of ammunition is the main concern.
SANDLER-Book 267 7/6/09 4:31:45 PM

Evacuation may be forcible as if to convert the evacuated object

into a missile; introjection likewise as fulfilment of greed. [Bion,
1970, p. 29]
Further expansion
The theory of includes three possibilities for the nature of the
relationship between and : commensal, parasitic and symbi-
otic. By commensal I mean and are dependent on each other
for mutual benefit and without harm to either. In terms of a model
the mother derives benefit and achieves mental growth from expe-
rience: the infant likewise abstracts benefit and achieves growth
(Bion, 1962, p. 91). Later Bion redefined the term: By commensal
I mean a relationship in which two objects share a third to the advan-
tage of all three (1970, p. 95). At the same time he added two further
possibilities thanks to clinically obtained insights into (-K). These
new possibilities he called parasitic and symbiotic. The issue is that
the container may destroy the contained, or vice versa. In the ana-
lytic sessionas in groupstruth is seen as a potentially explosive
contained. Bion defined the new possibilities in the following terms:
By symbiotic I understand a relationship in which one depends
on another to mutual advantage. By parasitic I mean to represent
a relationship in which one depends on another to produce a third,
which is destructive to all three (1970, p. 95).
The hasty reader or the concretised reader may feel a discrepancy
between the two definitions of the commensal relationship, but this
is more apparent than real. The first definition already includes the
third element, albeit an immaterial one: it is called mental growth;
there is also a material element, milk. The later definition is truer
to the biological definition as well as being more psychoanalytically
explicit.
Couples can be uncreative if in the sexual relationship plays
such a part that there is no room for any of the other activities in
which the married couple might engage (Bion, 1970, p. 107; the same
theme would be expanded in A Memoir of the Future). The dynamic
sexual intercourse represented by is the actual analytic session
when the unknown is considered and doubt is tolerated: The clue
lies in the observation of the fluctuations which make the analyst at
one moment and the analysand , and at the next reverse the roles
SANDLER-Book 268 7/6/09 4:31:46 PM

(ibid, p. 108). In the clinical cases which follow, I hope to demonstrate

these fluctuations.
The evolving, transient, elusive nature of life itself is observ-
able and liveable in the analytic session. In order to elicit it, Bion
says, we must distinguish between memory and remembering;
he also illustrates the flexible and dynamic use of the theory:
or may represent memory. The container is filled with

memories derived from sensuous experience The mem-
ory is saturated accordingly. The analyst who comes to a ses-
sion with an active memory is therefore in no position to make
observations of unknown mental phenomena because these
are not sensuously apprehended. There is something that has
often been called remembering and that is essential to psy-
choanalytic work; this must be sharply distinguished from
what I have been calling memory. I want to make a distinction
between (1) remembering a dream or having a memory of a
dream and (2) the experience of the dream that seems to cohere
as if it were a whole, at one moment absent, at the next present.
This experience, which I consider to be essential to evolution of
the emotional reality of the session, is often called a memory,
but it is to be distinguished from the experience of remember-
ing. [Bion, 1970, p. 107]
SANDLER-Book 269 7/6/09 4:31:46 PM

CHAPTER TEN
Empirical sources: container

and contained in the clinic
Andrew
Andrew was a gifted young professional in his twenties. He has
already contributed to this book (in Chapter Six). He did not know
exactly why he had sought me outhe said that his fathers best
friend, a successful professional, had undergone an analysis for
many years and had greatly valued the work done. His father
insisted that he should come, stating that this friend was successful
because of his analysis.
Andrew kept coming for the next fourteen years, four times a
week. His history, if taken superficially, gives no hints of overt psy-
chosis. But here and there some facts emerge that indicate otherwise.
To give just one example, he had undergone a kind of accident in the
sea, with a surfboard. Since he was an expert swimmer and used to
practising this sport, this was a hint that allowed me to hypothesise
the presence of a covert suicidal tendency. He narrowly escaped
drowning thanks to the swift action of another surfer who happened
to notice that something had gone badly wrong (it seems that the lace
became loose and the surfboard ended up hitting his head; he can-
not say exactly what happened). Soon some lifeguards came to help
271
SANDLER-Book 271 7/6/09 4:31:47 PM

both. When confronted with this view in the very first interview with
me, he became very sad and burst into tears. He now mentioned his
father, whom he saw as a successful man in terms of earning money.
But only after a financial disaster when Andrew was six: his father
worked in a rather large engineering firm which went bankrupt and
he suddenly found himself unemployed. Later, his father set up a
consultancy firm to organise lobbies for contractors who could have
plenty of government-ordered work without the risk of crashing. It
seems that he developed a greed-control system that avoided preda-
tory competition between contractors of the kind that destroyed the
firm he had worked with. The work demanded heavy involvement
with politicians and had some shadowy, seemingly illegal intermedi-
ate steps linked to bribery, but it worked so well that all parties were
always satisfied. The father enjoyed an enduring, stable position and
respect for more than two decades. Andrew nevertheless feared that
he could be unmasked and humiliated or prosecuted. He also stated
that he very much liked cultural activities such as philosophy, theatre
and literature, but decided to work in an exacting profession which
he felt was far removed from this.
Andrew displayed markedly submissive behaviour (though not
overtly) and a tendency to fear his superiors, as well as awful wor-
ries about his future, even though he had always been an outstand-
ing student, attending the best school and university available in
Brazil, and had not had a problem finding a job as soon as he fin-
ished his courses. He was pervaded by a generalised sensation of
impotence; this was not stated and not felt at all as such. It became
clear that his worries and fears were not of a phobic naturein
psychoanalysis, one must beware of appearances and reported
symptomsbut linked to that feeling of impotence. He made no
mention of his mother. I did not even know if he had one, physically
speaking. Some questions were aroused in my mind: was she alive?
Was she physically alive? I usually ask no questions in first inter-
views, preferring to wait and observe the spontaneous way each
person delivers data, which I find more informative.
We agreed to analysis four times a week and from the very first ses-
sion Andrew maintained verbal silence for six months, with no sign of
letting up. He was also physically immobile; the most immobile person
I had ever seen. He would come, greet me very cordially and shyly, lie
down and keep quiet. No queries, no qualms, no nothing. Sometimes
SANDLER-Book 272 7/6/09 4:31:48 PM

E M P I R I CA L S O U R C E S 273
he would fall asleep. I already had experience with verbally silent

persons, but Andrew was the most silent I had ever seen. Since see-
ing him I have never experienced such a situation again. Sometimes
I thought he might be suffering from a physical limitation, but this
was not the case. The one and only feeling he occasionally reported
was guilt because he was verbally silent in the session. His guilt was
all-pervading and in due course I began to feel guilty too. Why carry
on seeing him? What were the factors involved in his continuing to
come, session after session? He was always on time, never missed a
session, and would pay rigorously on the day agreed, with a show
of gratitude. I had ample opportunity to test my ability to stand this
situation of unknown, utter sensuous deprivation and my prejudices
about how an analysis must be conducted. Andrew taught me some
lessons about possibilities and judgmental rules. I supposed I was prey
to a violent desire, namely, the desire that he should talk. When I find
myself influenced by desire during a session, I think that I must disci-
pline it. Desire does not make good observations; hastiness is inimical
to patience. Both of us, without words, were forced by ourselves to talk.
We shared a common belief which gradually revealed itself as a genu-
ine prejudice: in analysis, one must talk. My experience with this patient
and others taught me that in analysis, the analyst must talk; the patient
may talk if possible and may not talk. There is no such a thing as patients
who are difficult to reach; there are analysts who are not up to their job
and there are non-creative couples Moreover, the talking cure occurs
beyond what the patients say, and sometimes despite their talking.
These demands seemed to indicate the intent to establish a para-
sitic relationship between container and contained. As soon as such
a situation is detected, I suppose it indicates the necessity to try to
change course. Parasitic means, in Bions terms (Bion, 1970; Sandler,
2005), a kind of relationship that results in the destruction of one or
both participants.
Was Andrew refusing to talk? Or was he unable to? Was he con-
ducting a kind of scientific investigation? Was it a matter of utter
curiosity? It seemed it was, because I was always being left alone
with my own curiosity. My hypothesis was that he was commu-
nicating his curiosity to me through an attempt to put it into me.
I supposed that there was plain curiosity and guiltdenied, split
out and projected into me. The denial of guilt appeared through his
rarely voiced claims of wrongdoing; self-criticism is often a form of
SANDLER-Book 273 7/6/09 4:31:48 PM

denying guilt with the outward appearance of proclaiming it. I took

into account that many of my patients are talkative, but communi-
cate nothing: empty words, sometimes intended to fill a void.
I already had the impression, stemming from my previous experi-
ence of psychiatric observation, that he could well be hallucinating
something. It was as if he would become attentive to something,
but for a while I had not the least idea what that could be. Slowly I
began to realise that the sensuously apprehensible silence harboured
a deafening noise. I was constantly reminded of my idea that he had
suicidal tendencies.
I tried many times to ask him some exploratory things, such as
Are you thinking about something? or the like, but his answers
were perfunctory, issued in a low tone. Respectful, cordial and aloof,
they were gentlemanly, quasi-aristocratic, but ended the conversa-
tion even before it could begin. Soon I realised that it was useless
to carry on along this path. It seemed to me that a mix of stupid-
ity and arrogance was in play. I was reminded of Bions seminal
papers which show that a mix of curiosity, stupidity and arrogance
emerges as a behavioural compound when one feels prohibited to
perform projective identification (Bion, 1957b). After some of these
rather stupid queries, I noticed that he would no longer look at me
when entering or leaving the analytic room, avoiding eye contact.
That was only fleeting before, but now it was avoided. I thought
extra-sessionally that now not only the curiosity but also the stupid-
ity was projected into me, and I was behaving accordingly. I noticed
in myself a strong desire to hear him saying something. I think
that noticing desire in ourselves, which is equivalent to searching
for pleasure and avoiding pain, is something to be disciplinedit
forms part of the necessary discipline of the analyst. Freud likened
it to the attitude of the surgeon, and Bion suggested the conscious
discipline of memory, understanding and desire. They seem to me
two different ways of proposing the same thingan attitude that
will foster the analysts free-floating attention. I must stress that my
experience in analysis shows that the action of projective identifica-
tion in the analyst, when detected, does not belong to the field of
countertransference. The latter remains unconscious (unknown) to
the analyst, the only exception being that if the analyst undergoes
an analysis, he (or she) and his (or her) analyst may have a chance
to illuminate it. The action of countertransference is a phase that
SANDLER-Book 274 7/6/09 4:31:49 PM

depends on the difficulty for the analyst to observe it realistically.

To observe it realistically means to realise its phantastic nature. In
any case, to be prey, so to say, to projective identification is a nec-
essary provisional phase, a step towards the apprehension of psychic
reality. In this sense, all projective identifications are successful, albeit
in analysis this must be a transient state. Bion puts it in terms of par-
ticipating in a state of hallucinosis as a preparatory step to grasping
it and overcoming it. To tolerate and further discriminate a projective
identification-charged environment in the analytic room gauges the
capacity to tolerate a PS (paranoid-schizoid) experience as a prepara-
tion for experiencing D (a depressive moment). Without this move-
ment and back to PS it is not possible to furnish an interpretation
(Bion, 1967b). When giving the interpretation, that is, when the inter-
pretation reaches a verbal form, one is back to PS. The cycle goes on.
Then, after those six months, finally an idea came to me, in a
thinkable and verbal guise.
We begin the session as usual: Andrew greets me with a subdued
smile, cordially, and lies down. After ten minutes of the blackest
silence possible I interrupt it:
You seem to be in need of a mother, who would be able to

explain to you your needs here, what you feel and think.
His answer is not verbal but not silent either: he sheds
some subdued tears and sobs; the sobbing is replaced by a
convulsed cry.
Perhaps it would be timely to stop now and to put those experiences

into technical terms. The profusely acted out, violent emotional situ-
ation qualifies to be described as an environment full of elements.
That is, concrete ultimately unknowable ultimate truths. Although
ultimately unknowable, in terms of the theory of the primitive emo-
tions, they seem to be amenable to being regarded as expressing a
fear of dying. In its most elementary situation, the element, say
the fear that it is dying, is projected by the infant and received by the
container in such a way that it is 'detoxicated', that is, modified by
the container so that the infant may take it back into its own person-
ality in a tolerable form" (Bion, 1963, p. 27).
That is, I, as the analyst, formulated a hypothesis which brought
to the fore an infantile fear of dying and the claim for a mother. The
SANDLER-Book 275 7/6/09 4:31:49 PM

sensuously apprehensible deep silence needed to be contained by

the analyst. It is not a case, as some readings of Bions texts insist, of
containing the analysandwhich I suppose is a superficial, mech-
anistic misunderstanding. The analyst contained his desire and lust
for satisfaction and avoidance of pain. In doing so, he could verbal-
ise something and offer it to the patient. Therefore, like a mother, the
analyst contains himself and in doing so he provides an emotional
experience of containment to the patient.
The hypothesis fear of imminent annihilation came from the
experience I had with this patient, and was added to data from:
The first interview. Namely, the hypothesised suicidal tenden-

cies, indicated dramatically by the surfboard accident and my
idea that Andrew entertained suicidal ideas, but also hinted at
in his description of his father becoming unemployed and hav-
ing (what Andrew regarded as) a risky profession thereafter; and
Andrews conscious advertising of his cultural preferences, but
having chosen the opposite professional path.
The immobile physical demeanour, which can be likened to that
of a corpse.
The pervading superegoic pressures of having done everything
wrong. The containment also includes the maintenance of a
capacity to think and to formulate the thought in words.
An unknown factor that may be called analytically trained intui-
tion (Bion, 1970, p. 18) that allows one to follow a hypothesis one
sincerely or truthfully has within oneself.
In terms of container and contained, what needed to be contained

was my own anxiety before the unknown. This seems to be the
sense of Bions analogyoften mistaken for a claimed containment
of the baby performed by the mother, as if the mother contained
the baby. Mothers do contain babiesfor something in the region of
nine months, up to the instant of delivery. From then on the mother
can only contain her anxiety in the face of the babys anxietyand
in this sense, there is a phantasy (projective identification) that the
babys anxiety moves into the mothers body and being. The moth-
ers relative ability to contain her anxiety can be learned, in terms of
introjection, by the baby. Continuous exposure to a mother who can
do this results in a baby who learns that anxiety is something he or
SANDLER-Book 276 7/6/09 4:31:50 PM

she can cope with. In this sense, I was performing a function (not a
role!) analogous to that of Andrews mother when he was a baby.
Up to this point I was not able to know many things about his intro-
jected mother, but now I had a clue: he seemed to be investigating
whether anyone would be able to help him in his anxious state and
not leave him alone with it. He also seemed to be able to be inter-
ested in having this kind of experience (analysis itself), his repeated
coming to the sessions being proof of this. If this is true, the relation-
ship between container and contained is more likely to turn into a
commensal one. That is, a mutually collaborative relationship that
benefits a third party. In terms of a creative sexual couple, the third
party is a baby. In terms of analysis, the third party is the analysis
itself.
The analyst, in order to be patient and receptive (which seems to
me to constitute a necessary condition for exercising his or her free-
floating attention and intuition), must perform a feminine function,
regardless of his or her sexual endowments. We will return to this
expansion later. Let us return to the session:
Andrew stops crying and says: When I come home, my mother

says: Here comes this homes happinesshe says this mock-
ingly, in a sarcastic, disapproving tone. It is the first time he
makes any verbal reference to his mother, and immediately
he resumes his silence. It is an unmistakably different kind of
silence: it is less anxious. I think it may be timely to offer him
another hypothesis I have had for almost the whole six-month
period: that he was hallucinating and feeding himself with
his hallucinations. His real mother may or may not be an aloof
personwhat is at stake is his reaction to it. Is he stubbornly
inviting the container to contain him? Does he think that if he
irritates (in the neurological sense of the term) his mother, she
will become responsive as he desires?
After something in the region of twenty minutes, I inter-
rupt the silence and state: I think you are seeing something.
Andrew nods, as if it were the most natural thing in the world;
he gives me the impression that the only unexpected thing
about it is that it took me so long to realise it. He reacts to my
statement saying: An igloo no not an igloo they are
made of ice it is rather a wall hmm a slope a sloping
SANDLER-Book 277 7/6/09 4:31:50 PM

wall it is a mountain, completely made of cheese, white,

round, piled up. I am looking at it from below a rather high
slope it is, all white
I cannot adequately reproduce my emotional experience at this

moment. I was taken by surprise that he made the effort to answer
me at all, after so many sessions when I had become used to him
not answering me. Again and again I have practical proof of
Humes scientific truth about the fallacy of induction (the pseudo-
scientific predictive belief that things which have always occurred
will continue to occur in the future)! As soon as Andrew answered
me, an image came to my mind which I had seen twenty years
before, in a magazine dedicated to a photography competition
(promoted by the Nikon Camera Co. in the late sixties). The first
prize winner was a photograph depicting a baby looking atten-
tively at a breast. It seemed to me that my personal image was
depicting Andrew: he hallucinated that he was a little child look-
ing at a breast. I emphasise that the image-producing activity is not
evidence of hallucination.
There was a hallucinatory component and a day-dreaming activ-
ity at work. I suppose that both my association and his image share
the features of a waking dream work; his image was a free association
to my hint about his seeing something. The hallucinatory compo-
nent was conveyed by the image, as happens in dreams that satisfy
desires. The hallucination could be stated in terms of his feeling enti-
tled to be a small child looking at a breast. The cheese stands for the
milk, and there seemed to be an indication of splitting (the pieces
of piled cheese) and hardness. I took this free association of mine
stemming from his image as being the clue to the hypothesis that
he was hallucinating a breast, the hard (wall) and split breast that
corresponded to his internalised breast. I could not know whether
his mother, of whom he never spoke, was hard and distant (the first
fleeting idea that was rejected, the igloo made of ice) or whether
this is just the way he felt her. It is not important in the analysis to
know this, for we deal with introjected breasts and imagoes as well
as phantasies. The correction from ice to cheese was not amenable
to being investigated at this moment, in the same sense. I could not
know if the first sub-image (igloo) depicted the real breast and the
second (piled cheese) a hallucinated, idealised one or vice-versa,
SANDLER-Book 278 7/6/09 4:31:51 PM

with the first standing for an envied, denigrated breast. I left this
aside for the momentperhaps future evolutions would give me
more illumination about this. The fact was that it seemed to be an
image of a breast. Igloo or not igloo, cheese slope or not, both were
domed. I suppose that my free association was possible because of
two factors: analytically trained intuition and free-floating attention
that linked seemingly dispersed facts.
I had just this hypothesis in my mind when another one came
to me, more centred on the word wall, as if there were a wall
between us. I dismissed the second hypothesis. I kept wondering
at how easy it wasat least for me; each reader can confront it with
his or her own experienceto construct a heavily sensuous, poor,
limited and concretised hypothesis. It seemed to be formally cling-
ing and restricted to Andrews consciously uttered words, instead
of looking for what the words indicated. Anyway, the wallness
could also indicate the difficulty of communicating with a breast. In
terms of container and contained, this hypothesis pointed more to
the resistancemy resistance to functioning as a container for his
unknown. He was able to link himself in some way with his uncon-
scious (which means unknown, unbewut), and offered it to me. This
kind of intra-session thinking (albeit assembled here for purposes of
communication) led me to choose the first hypothesis as the best I
had to furnish to Andrew at that moment and in that contextthat
he was seeing a breast.
Andrews reaction is of clear assent, with no words at all; he

just nods. The he says: Yes, yes, with an unmistakable smile,
which reminds me of a baby who has just been fed. After nod-
ding, he nods off, and I have to wake him up in order to finish
the session.
Again and again Andrew is giving me opportunities to test my

containment abilities, and to develop them. I stressto contain
myself, not him. This image poses more questions. He seems to
give up any attempt to get nearer to what he hasthe real breast
that is available. Regardless of whether or not it may be hard,
it is a breast after all. Then he enters into a state of hallucinosis.
The delivery of the image is not hallucinated, but what the image
depicts can be.
SANDLER-Book 279 7/6/09 4:31:52 PM

The timelessness of the unconscious was illustrated by the span

of time we had to endure back in the world of verbal silence. Some
weeks after that session, out of the blue, Andrew suddenly and
spontaneously said something about his mother. He returned to
the issue after three or four sessions and continued for a couple of
months. The mentions were perfunctory and desultory.
My mother is a very good mother, much better than her

sisters.
Mother is adamant on buying new toothbrushes every
week. Since I was a little boy she took care of me and of my
sister, always kept us tidy and clean, bought us new clothes.
Mother always travels with Dad, she takes care of him.
They went to Singapore.
Dad often travels.
It seemed to me that some oedipal phantasies were at play, in

a confused mosaic that had some earlier container-contained
vicissitudes.
A few sessions later, Andrew described another image. It was
a house made of stones by the sea in a holiday resort. His fam-
ily kept a house there and he was used to seeing that stone house
since I was a boy. He was seeing the building at that moment
and felt the need to confirm: This house actually exists! As he was
describing the image, Two rather tall buildings appeared, and they
were suffocating the house. And again, They actually exist. My
attention was caught by the term suffocating. I was reminded that
he had that accident with the surfboard in that city when he was
on holiday. Again I thought that the image was a reference to the
breastthe stones as well as the high buildings, of which there were
now two. I conjectured about a person who could not count on his
mother and lacked the necessary zest for life that seems to origi-
nate from a good enough introjected breast. I asked him if this house
faced the same beach where he almost drowned himself; he assented
and began to cry, in a way that strongly reminded me of the earlier
session when I suggested to him that he was looking for a mother,
or looking for Mother.
Again he cried. There was a question to me: to what extent was
his internal Mother damaged by greedy attacks on his good objects
SANDLER-Book 280 7/6/09 4:31:52 PM

mixed with oedipal phantasies, or to what extent did his Mother have
real difficulties in mothering? The crying seemed to indicate the onset
of depressive feelings, in the sense of taking some responsibility for
his aggression, which up to now had been directed inwards.
As analysis progressed, with Andrews unrelenting silences
which I suppose were renewed tests of the breasts containment
capacities and willingness to contain and tolerate not him, but
the analysts anxietythis image underwent transformations that
seemed to me to configure developments. Or, putting it in other
terms: they were variations on a theme. Or, in Bions terms: transfor-
mations around the same invariant, Breast. The single icy, stony
or hard breast turned into persistently double images, as the build-
ings. They gradually lost their hardness. After some months the
image returned as two McDonalds hamburgers which turned
into McSalad, with a slice of tomato on top. Perhaps two years
later he saw two rather large fruits of a weird kind which he
had never seen before: perhaps water-melons, for they have juicy
red flesh inside with a papaya-like skin, pink or perhaps yellowish-
orange. His descriptions of the sandwiches and fruits are voiced
with evident satisfaction.
It also seemed that as analysis progressed, the inanimate imagery
increasingly gained an animate character, as if his internalised breast
was becoming alive. It seemed to me that containing myself so as
not to lean towards any real or imagined tenets of how an analy-
sis should be (which would constitute a failure to discipline desire,
memory and understanding, or possible impatience or abhorrence
before the unknown) was giving good results. Meanwhile, Andrew
had given up a seeming love affair with a strong girl dancer and
begun to attend theatre performances and rock music concertshe
had been a drummer in his teens.
Sometimes one part of an image was described in one session and
other parts were voiced in sessions scattered over time. It seemed
to me that he was always looking for a container. It was up to me to
link those descriptions; which was not exactly a difficult task, pro-
vided I allowed my free-floating attention to come to the fore. This
is the analysts use of his own dream-like memory.
The images can be seen as a special kind of free association, in
which the contained was able to find a visual container, akin to
what happens in dreams. The uttering of the images can be seen as
SANDLER-Book 281 7/6/09 4:31:53 PM

a contained looking for an external containerthe analystwhich

could digest them and return them in a consciously graspable,
verbal form. The noxious or toxic content could be seen as the
unknown and Andrews fear of the unknown. Effectively, for the
whole duration of his analysis, he maintained a low opinion of this
image-producing activity, fearing: What would my parents think
of me, if they knew? He gradually became less interested in his
favourite pastimecollecting Playboy magazine. In due time he
told me, in his usual perfunctory way: What I really liked to look
for and look at in the magazine was the asses and breasts. Some-
times he commented on some events that happened in his work-
place. But my attempts to explore or talk about what he reported
were invariably fruitless. He would answer Yes or No, or not
answer at all. I felt this attitude was much more linked to my own
persisting anxiety before his silence, ideas of not performing my
job properly, than anything else. The only kind of comment that
resounded with him was when I talked about those feelings in the
here and now of the sessions, such as: You think you are not doing
your job properly here. He immediately said: Not only here. He
had a very low opinion of himself as an employee, even though he
was fast climbing the career ladder. Soon he had a haunting idea,
that he would be dismissed in the next week or even the next
day. But the dismissal never came. Quite the contraryhe contin-
ued to gain promotions, being given greater responsibilities and
thereafter being promoted, earning more, etc. In the end, the firm
he worked for (a multinational enterprise that had been in Brazil
for the last hundred years) surprisingly decided to pull out and
close its Brazilian branch, but he was not dismissed at all. He took
charge of dismantling the enterprise and winding the business
down over the next few years!
After growing fears about the image-producing activity, Andrew
returned to the posture of blackest silence. Again I felt that the only
thing I could tell him that seemed to me to have an anchor in reality
was the returning idea that he was seeing something.
Yup. I saw myself lying down, wearing a special helmet with a

built-in metallic plate that can be slid up and down. He makes
a movement with his left hand, as if lifting a sliding cover
(which could imaginarily block my view of him) over his head,
SANDLER-Book 282 7/6/09 4:31:53 PM

and lowering it again. He repeats this movement twice, ending

in the lift position.
I tell him: Oh, it seems that you have created an
anti-psychoanalyst helmet.
Yup!
I carry on: so it can protect you from my interpretations
or whatever comes from me!
He just nods and laughs mildly. I have never seen him even
smiling before; he has always displayed a serious and mute
demeanour.
Anyway, when confronted with this opportunity, he seemed to per-

ceive it.
This experience led me to the hypothesis that Andrew was tak-
ing my interpretations as an intruding penis rather than as a feed-
ing breast. The latter experience in the here and now of the session
seemed to prevail at first, but it was being replaced by the former.
To my mind, he was beginning to display (perhaps beginning to
feel?) homosexual phantasies. The fact that I am a male analyst may
have had importance here. Were budding oedipal phantasies taking
shape?
On many more occasions I found that Andrew increasingly
confused the penis with the breast, as well as entertaining homo-
sexual fantasies during the sessions. These situations were the sub-
ject of earlier communications in paper form, but for our purposes
now what matters is that he was already acting these fantasies out
through his silence; he expressed them in this very session through
the image of the helmet. It furnished a kind of paradigmatic reac-
tion that took some years to be more fully apprehendedin the first
session, it was no more than a hypothesis of mine, even though it
was evident that he was in a defended stance. He felt as if he were
being penetrated by analysis, mistaking its value as nourishment
for penetration by a penis.
The visual imagery took a different course. It seemed that Andrew
was mimicking himself and producing images just to please me. I
will not describe them now; but the issue was duly detected, and he
agreed that he was doing this. Therefore I think that this corresponds
in some cases to hallucinations and in other cases to waking dream-
thoughts. He loathed these visual images, and he usually refused
SANDLER-Book 283 7/6/09 4:31:54 PM

to report them. His relationship with his image-producing ability

reflected his fear of exercising his intuition. Therefore the seemingly
incoherent image was a pointer which both revealed and concealed
his homosexual fantasies, actually experienced in the session.
The eliciting of the homosexual phantasies allowed Andrew to
gradually increase his collaborative work in analysis. In due time he
looked for a partner. Until then, he was as if glued to a girl whom he
reported as domineering and stronghe emphasised that she was a
dancer and referred to her physical strength. Six months after begin-
ning analysis he gave up his (always failed) attempts to be with
herhe thought she was often snubbing him. After this session, he
reported having met another girl. His impression of this girl was not
favourable. He depicted her as coming from a poor family, and in
the next two years always referred to the precarious financial situ-
ation of her father, who was always wearing a torn T-shirt, and
her mother, a sickly woman who will not live too much longer.
According to him, she was always grumbling, becoming aggres-
sive and so on. It seemed to me that he avoided reporting the good
moments he had with her. Only occasionally he would express his
fondness for her because she is hard-working and does not seem,
as my mother thinks, to be after my money. After six years, he mar-
ried her. The conscious comments about her were usually derisive
and sometimes denigrating. It seemed that his attacks against his
mother or the internalised Breast were being gradually manifested
as a denigration of the Woman-in-itself, or femininity and procrea-
tion. During this time, one day he said, I would not like to have a
parent like me. If I ever had a son, I would make a bad and faulty
father. The realisation of his aggression would take more time to
occur, as would our opportunity to elicit it in a non-persecuted way
in the analytic settingthe silence during the session.
After five years of analysis Andrew was dating; after six years he
got married. One year later he said: We must provide some hap-
piness for the oldies [both his wifes parents had died a few years
earlier]. My sister refuses to give them the pleasure of a grandson.
They quarrelled more often than not; he usually described his wife
as grumpy and demanding. Both seemed to claim for a container in
the marriage. Then his wife became pregnant.
Disaster struck and the young couple were able to test their
own containment abilities. Deep suffering displayed the strength
SANDLER-Book 284 7/6/09 4:31:54 PM

of their bond. The foetus had one of the worst abnormalities pos-
sible: it lacked a brain (anencephaly). They realised how maturely
they could consummate a marriage through mutual collaboration,
support and friendship. She became pregnant again; he was about to
interrupt his analysis, but was reminded of his own comment years
earlier about being a rigid and violent parent. He asked me to carry
on, then decided to interrupt his analytic contact with me three years
later, when their little daughter was four.
Andrew seemed to me to display some evolutions of his sexu-
ality in developmental terms, as seen in the evolution of his inner
container-contained relationship: from an undifferentiated state of
a contained (helplessness, fears of annihilation, nameless fear) look-
ing for a container, mouth and nipple, to a pre-oedipal phantasy that
confuses a penis for a breast, and a working through of his oedipal
phantasies.
Ferdinand
Another example of homosexual phantasies that seemed to be based
on confusion of breast and penis (and therefore illustrative of some
vicissitudes of the container-contained situation due to the action
of an unconscious phantasy) may be seen in Ferdinand. He sought
analysis in his late thirties. He was a very successful professional in
his field, able to command a high salary. In the first week of analysis
he asked my advice on the purchase of a house. It was striking for
me to see this man, seemingly so resourceful as regards business,
asking for the advice of a medical doctor in matters of real estate.
I confronted him with the fact that although he hardly knew me,
overtly he wanted me to serve as his common sense and to take his
decisions for him. He seemed, in a more superficial, albeit valid view,
to be a person unwilling to be responsible for himself. In technical
terms, he was trying to get rid of his normal superego and phanta-
sised that he could deny it, split it and expel it into me.
He replied to my comment by reporting that some months before
starting analysis, he committed the management of his enterprise to
a former teacher, who had since proved not to be up to the task. My
view that his request for advice expressed his unwillingness to be
responsible for his own behaviour was supported by his free asso-
ciation: he asked someone else to take care of his business. I did not
SANDLER-Book 285 7/6/09 4:31:55 PM

feel quite satisfied with this interpretation and decided to look for
data that might confirm other hypotheses that appeared plausible
to me. My impression was that my idea of responsibility failed to
reach unconscious levels, as it appeared to be restricted to the verbal
discourse and to the issues he was reporting consciously. I cannot but
agree with Freud and Bion that there is little use in telling patients
what they already know. In terms of container and contained, telling
the patient what he knows is not accepting the pregnant unknown
piercing into us; it is equivalent to an impotent analyst. No crea-
tive intercourse is being offered to the patient in this case. Ferdinand
already felt that he was not a responsible person, even though he
saw this from a judgmental point of view. To be responsible also
means, in terms of femininity or masculinity, to be potent. It may be
painful to be potent, and this pain may demand to be denied, split
out and expelled.
At this stage of Ferdinands analysis I assumed that more deeply
rooted situations were struggling to surface. Are these at the same
time both conveyed and hidden by the patients apparently common
discourse? I then inferred that a homosexual phantasy was lurking
underneath. Is the patients request for advice a solicitation for pen-
etration? As the analysis developed further, my assumption was
confirmed. Ferdinand was unwilling to dismiss the former teacher
on the grounds that this is not right, he will be hurt; but I need to
dismiss him, he is ruining my business. And again: What should I
do, doctor? Thus he was not only trying to confer authority on me
in a projective identification of his own capacity and need to decide,
but he was actually attempting to make me feel like a potent part-
ner in order to be able to phantasise that he was impotent. When I
confronted him with my interpretation, he replied: He was a good
lecturer he lacks the know-how no enterprise could prosper
under him everyone knows he is gay, he was ridiculed by the stu-
dents I felt so sorry for him, he had affairs with some colleagues
and the other lecturers wanted to remove him from the university
he can be a very difficult person, always personal, exaggerating,
fussyyou know what those gay people are like Perhaps the
you know what those gay people are like was a reference to him-
self and to what I tried to tell him.
In a certain sense Ferdinand had an embryonic insight, but
he resisted, and deflected it into a less disturbing container.
SANDLER-Book 286 7/6/09 4:31:55 PM

As the analysis proceeded, apparently irrational, maniacal acts were

illuminated by my hypothesis: he had a huge income, but he often
lent large amounts of money, only to menwho invariably failed
to pay him back. He spent his money extravagantly, and as result
he occasionally got into serious financial trouble. His vulnerability
to friendly loans and his financial losses expressed attacks on his
own potency. With women, conversely, he was harsh and hard. He
regarded his wife as a vile whore. He lived with her in a not-married
state, both having separate homes; he always looked at her with
contempt, thinking that she came from an inferior background and
he saved her from the streetseven though he had never been in
the streets. It was only after three years of analysis that he decided
to live with her under the same roof. Both were previously married
(if it was a real marriage), with children of their own. One year after
they moved in together, their son was born. It was a novel experi-
ence for him. He became attached to the boy in a way he never dared
to imagine being attached to someone. It allowed him to adopt, so to
say, the products of his first marriage, inviting them to live with
him and befriending them.
Charles
Charles, who is in his forties, has been in analysis for two years.
In the course of a session he extols the striking gains he believes
he has achieved in his analysis: his relationship with his wife has
improved, his job satisfaction has increased, and the symptoms
that brought him to analysis, which were fashionably diagnosed as
panic syndrome, have virtually disappeared. He proceeds with a
dream: I was in an emergency care unit I hate hospitals the
stretcher bearers had put the stretcher on a trolley I was lying
down shot in the neck I was bleeding and paralysed immo-
bilised. He actually puts his left hand on his neck, as if to show
me the wound. He feels as if he is recollecting a real fact. What is
occurring is a rapid oscillation between gratitude and a persecutory
move, expressed through the recollection of the dream representing
the analysis as a really abominable life event (the emergency care
unit). The dream may also express his homosexual feelings of being
impotent, submitting (lying down, being carried, paralysed); he
might even be menstruating (blood pouring from his neck) as if he
SANDLER-Book 287 7/6/09 4:31:56 PM

Pages From Clinical Application of Bions Concepts. Sandler P. C

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Pages From Clinical Application of Bions Concepts. Sandler P. C

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

CHAPTER NINE

Bions theory of container

SANDLER-Book 257 7/6/09 4:31:39 PM

which took him approximately nine years to complete. It can also

SANDLER-Book 258 7/6/09 4:31:40 PM

SANDLER-Book 259 7/6/09 4:31:40 PM

clear that such containment should be made originally by the breast,

Melanie Klein has described an aspect of projective identifi-

SANDLER-Book 260 7/6/09 4:31:41 PM

contained are susceptible of conjunction and permeation by

I suppose that the intrinsic character of the counterpart in real-

The activity that I have here described as shared by two indi-

The internalised emerges as an infants own talk transformed in

SANDLER-Book 261 7/6/09 4:31:41 PM

appears in the extent that the theory of container and contained is

The growth of this process is inextricably associated with violence of

SANDLER-Book 262 7/6/09 4:31:42 PM

that asserts the moral superiority of undoing and un-learning and

The most important characteristic is its hatred of any new devel-

This is growth, even though it occurs in a reversed form. A couple

The reference to Newton was that, according to Lord Keynes and

SANDLER-Book 263 7/6/09 4:31:43 PM

nothing (Bion, 1965, p. 134). The final result seems to be a raging

Too much of the thinking about psychoanalysis precludes the

In Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963) Bion would propose that

Learning, thinking and sexuality: From the baby-mother relationship

I propose provisionally to represent the apparatus for think-

SANDLER-Book 264 7/6/09 4:31:43 PM

words, thinking is regarded as a thrust into the unknown rather than

SANDLER-Book 265 7/6/09 4:31:44 PM

Real concepts in psychoanalysis (as in any science) are approaches

I [Idea] develops a capacity for any one of its aspects to assume

SANDLER-Book 266 7/6/09 4:31:44 PM

Judgment of the importance or significance of the emotional

In Attention and Interpretation Bion furnishes a prcis of his theories

In the primitive phase, which Freud regards as dominated by

SANDLER-Book 267 7/6/09 4:31:45 PM

Evacuation may be forcible as if to convert the evacuated object

SANDLER-Book 268 7/6/09 4:31:46 PM

(ibid, p. 108). In the clinical cases which follow, I hope to demonstrate

or may represent memory. The container is filled with

SANDLER-Book 269 7/6/09 4:31:46 PM

Empirical sources: container

SANDLER-Book 271 7/6/09 4:31:47 PM

SANDLER-Book 272 7/6/09 4:31:48 PM

he would fall asleep. I already had experience with verbally silent

SANDLER-Book 273 7/6/09 4:31:48 PM

denying guilt with the outward appearance of proclaiming it. I took

SANDLER-Book 274 7/6/09 4:31:49 PM

depends on the difficulty for the analyst to observe it realistically.

You seem to be in need of a mother, who would be able to

Perhaps it would be timely to stop now and to put those experiences

SANDLER-Book 275 7/6/09 4:31:49 PM

sensuously apprehensible deep silence needed to be contained by

The first interview. Namely, the hypothesised suicidal tenden-

In terms of container and contained, what needed to be contained

SANDLER-Book 276 7/6/09 4:31:50 PM

Andrew stops crying and says: When I come home, my mother

SANDLER-Book 277 7/6/09 4:31:50 PM

wall it is a mountain, completely made of cheese, white,

I cannot adequately reproduce my emotional experience at this

SANDLER-Book 278 7/6/09 4:31:51 PM

Andrews reaction is of clear assent, with no words at all; he

Again and again Andrew is giving me opportunities to test my