ABSTRACT
The concept of unconscious mental life acquires more breadth, depth, and credibility when it is contemplated from the consideration of vitalism rather than of "scientism"—that is, drives. Bion assumes that all experiences, whether originating in the internal or the external world, must first be dreamed before they can be mentalized—that is, remembered, thought, repressed, or reflected upon. He calls this process "alpha-function" or "dream-work-alpha", and its product "alpha-elements". Bion uses the concept of the unconscious in a variety of ways, but he never specifies to what aspects of the unconscious he refers. One of the principal tenets of psychoanalytic treatment has been that the cure comes from making the unconscious conscious, an act that presupposes that an unconscious belief or phantasy that is the nucleus of the disorder dissolves or falls away once the correct interpretation is made.
