ABSTRACT
In an earlier publication (Wright 1991) I explored the idea that seeing gives form. At that time, I thought it was the organizing power of vision that ®rst gave form to experience, and re¯exively, through being seen, to the experiencing self. I now think this focus was too narrow and realize that we grasp at form through any medium that will yield it to us. In this chapter I use the term shaping for the processes through which we come to know in a felt way the form or pattern of our own experience. My subject overlaps with existing topics in the psychoanalytic literature, in particular structuring, holding and containing (Bion 1962a, 1962b, 1965; Ogden 2004; Winnicott 1960a). I shall discuss these, but only in so far as I need to further my argument.
