ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Wilfred Bion's theory of thinking and his conceptualization of links as emotion. Bion's activity of 'linking' within the apparatus of thinking, highlighting that such links occur between perception, thought and appearance, contributing to our emotional experience with moving images. Bionian psychoanalysis relates to phenomenology's notion of intentionality precisely because it shares similar priorities and positions on consciousness and corporeality. The chapter provides an exploration of Bion's container-contained theory as an alternative psychoanalytic model that prioritizes affective, sensory experience to show that not all psychoanalytic theory is focused on "pleasures including masochism, sadism, and voyeurism because of unconscious drives or repressed psychosexual fears and desires". By utilizing key concepts from Bion's theory of thinking such as 'linking' and his 'container-contained' model, contemporary psychoanalysis contributes to the phenomenological perspective that examines emotional experience with moving images, offering a psychoanalytic phenomenological method.
