ABSTRACT
Bion’s main theories—alpha function, links, elements of psychoanalysis, transformations and the language of achievement—form an interdependent, evolving whole which actualises itself in the decisive moments that compose a session. Here I will attempt to display a mode of their clinical use through focusing on their most developed form: Bion’s application of the mathematical concept of transformations and invariants. With the exception of this concept I have not encumbered the text with quotations and bibliographic references to definitions (for example, container and contained, elements of psychoanalysis); all the terms used can be seen in the annotated historical and epistemological presentations of the theory available elsewhere (Sandler, 2005, 2006).
