ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to indicate parallels between W. R. Bion's O and the body-mind relationship. It explores on various occasions in the light of clinical experience—setting out variations on several theories of A. B. Ferrari, which assign a central position to the body as the concrete original object. Bion reminds the need for a "constant conjunction" within the analytic setting, although it might take us years to understand what it is in our experience of analysis that is doing the conjoining and what exactly this conjunction means. Karl was apparently icy and impassive, but from what he related it emerged that he was capable of turning into a volcano in full eruption that threatened to destroy everything around it. The dream about the hat on top of the volcano thus seems to represent his approach to his own personal O, with decisive developmental, and also terrifying, characteristics, together with his assuming a transcendent position.
