ABSTRACT
As Bion moved further into the later phases of the development of his theory, he struggled to find concepts that would express or address that which was unformed and ineffable in the human unconscious. What he was after was nothing short of a language, which he could use to describe—or at least allude to—and communicate about a dimension of human prepsychic, proto-experience and becoming that was beyond our ability to fully render and capture in words. This dimension, which Bion called O, the “thing-in-itself,” is something that we might think of as the raw, existential Experience (with a capital E) in which each of us is immersed, and which forms the substrate and basis for that part of our “experience” (with a small e) that we may ultimately come to know and feel.
