ABSTRACT
The act of transformation involves two combined processes: the subject being transformed undergoes an alteration in form, and some aspect of the subject shall remain unaltered. The concept of “transformations” would ultimately attain almost the same prominence as the “container ↔ contained” theory but would fatefully suffer in esteem, at least among contemporary London Klein-ians, from Wilfred Bion’s final extension of its reach to embrace O. In Bion’s scheme of transformation the operation of a-function and dreaming, and the movement of a pre-conception to becoming realized as a conception, is subtly implied but nowhere specified. Bion next categorizes types or classes of transformations. He divides them into “rigid motion” transformations, “projective transformations”, and “transformations in hallucinosis”. Rigid motion transformations involve the displacement of whole entities, such as past memories, from the past into the present—without alteration.
