Along with Jacques Lacan, he is one of the most "difficult" psychoanalysts to read. Along with him, he is one of those who revolutionized the discipline. We are talking about Wilfred Ruprecht Bion , a British psychoanalyst. Unlike Lacan, discovered and celebrated by the extra-analytic cultural world, he is almost totally unknown outside of the field. Wrongly so. Bion's "Bionian" interest in the experience that precedes the onset of the activity of "thinking" brings him very close to the Zen and Theravada practices of subjectivation which, among other things, and in non-coincident ways, aim to develop "that inner eye" (to quote the recent Battiato) capable of "observing" thoughts as they "give themselves." “ Thoughts without a thinker ” is one of Bion's most famous statements and refers to the idea according to which thoughts, those concerning truth , the thing in itself, the absolute – which he indicates with the sign “ O ” – pre-exist the thinker and are independent of him.
The alpha function
A key concept in W.R. Bion's " theory of the growth of thought ." According to this author, thought can only evolve if the psychic apparatus processes, or metabolizes, the sensory impressions of the emotional experiences that manifest themselves in the individual in every situation. These raw impressions, called beta elements by Bion , originate on the sensorial and emotional plane and are destined to remain on that plane unless they are metabolized, that is, "purified" of their characteristics as sensible objects. The characteristics of beta elements are such that they are not suitable for the operations of thought, but only for "evacuation" from the psychic apparatus. The alpha function has the precise task of eliminating the object-like residues of beta elements, thus making them available for thought oriented toward modifying reality. Once the beta elements have reached consciousness, the alpha function transforms them into what Bion calls alpha elements , that is, psychic elements that have characteristics that allow them to be used both as dream thoughts and as waking thoughts. The importance of the alpha function for the "growth of thought" lies in its ability to produce and "deposit" alpha elements, thus creating a separation between the conscious and the unconscious , preventing the latter from interfering with the former's way of thinking.
The function of personality
The alpha function is conceived as a "function" of the personality, that is, as a psychic movement that, on the one hand, results from the simultaneous operation of multiple factors and that, on the other, is directed towards a goal. The goal, as already mentioned, is the constitution of a psychic apparatus that operates under the dominion of the reality principle , and which is therefore capable of discriminating perceptions originating from the internal world from those originating from the external world, with the aim of modifying the latter. The fundamental factors of the alpha function are traced to maternal reverie and the container-contained configuration (♀♂). The alpha function develops in the reverie relationship that the child has with the mother in the first years of life: his inability to discriminate sensations leads him to project the distressing contents , through projective identification, onto the mother, who receives them, "purifies" them of the distressing aspects, and returns them to the child. In this situation, the mother-container (♀), together with the purified distressing sensations (i.e. the ♂ contents) projected by the child, also restores the ability to act on these contents autonomously in the future: the alpha function.
Beta elements
In Bion's theory of the growth of thought, beta elements are the original constituents of what will later become thoughts. They are defined as "the sensory impressions of emotional experiences," that is, any emotional and sensorial movement that originates in the subject when in contact with external and internal reality, both in sleep and waking states. In order to gain knowledge of reality and develop an adaptive attitude toward it, beta elements must pass through the alpha function, which metabolizes them, transforming them into alpha elements, that is, mental elements capable of representing and symbolizing reality, which thus becomes "mentally manipulable." Before this, beta elements are configured as "undigested facts," experiences devoid of meaning other than what they actually have, and therefore incapable of providing knowledge. Bion compares them to the Kantian "thing-in-itself," incapable of "binding" together to form images and representations of the state of affairs inherent in the external or internal world, but having the sole destiny of evacuation, through acting out and projective identification. Unlike their "metabolized" counterparts (the alpha elements), in fact, they cannot condense together to form that structure of the mental apparatus called the "contact barrier," essential for preventing the interference of the unconscious in the conscious. They therefore leave the subject in the mental state of someone who experiences reality not as a "phenomenon," in the Kantian sense, but rather as a " noumenon ," where things have the meaning of words and words the meaning of things. Given their inability to "bind", these raw experiences agglomerate in the psyche, forming the " beta screen ", which has the function of evacuating the beta elements, experienced as undigested facts, since they are the result not of the symbolization of the subject's experiences in relation to the perception of reality, but of their de-symbolization.
Gianni Broggi
