ABSTRACT
Dr. Wilfred Bion has produced a work in which many examples are given to support the idea that a specific pattern has meaning that is discernible in many different situations. This pattern or configuration is of a relationship of things being respectively a "container" and the "contained", and this is first illustrated by descriptions taken from psychoanalytic situations, where "container" or "contained" may be feelings, thoughts, ideas, functions, situations, people, and abstract concepts. This chapter highlights one of the great difficulties in being a psychoanalyst, because unlike many people who can specialise in one or another of the types of communication. Each type of communication has its function. Evocative or poetical or metaphorical communication, in which every word stimulates many images, is far richer in content, and therefore far more economical, than words aimed at pedantically spelling out each idea singly. Poetical or metaphorical language is often used in scientific communications.
