Bion on "Container" and "Contained"
Bion believed that thinking develops to “cope with thoughts”. “Thinking is a development forced upon the psyche by the pressure of thoughts,” he said, “and not the other way around”. beta-elements are the building blocks for the development of the mind because it is their intolerable buildup that initiates the mind’s ability to think. The infant mind needs to do something with, or about, these beta-elements, but is unable to do so at such an underdeveloped stage. The only way the baby can tolerate these experiences is through the help of another mind that can think about them, and this is where the mother comes in.
When the child is soothed by the mother--through words, eye contact, a gentle touch--the child's experience was "contained" by the mother: she has made the experience more palatable for it:
through the mother’s presence and reverie (which is to say, her ability to perceive what is going on for the child), she can take in the child’s experience, use her mental capacity to digest the child’s intolerable experience, and give it back to the child in a form that he can now tolerate.
The mother does this by transforming beta-elements into meaningful units--that is, by using what Bion refers to as an alpha-function: "a more developed capacity in the mind to be able to take raw sensory experiences and endow them with meaning so that the mind can think about them."
Quotes are from Wilfred Bion and the Importance of Not-Knowing (Part 1).
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