ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author utilizes the film, Pi, to illustrate some aspects of what Wilfred Bion describes as the psychotic part of the personality. The film begins with the credits superimposed on images of brains, neurons, and dendrites, lists, numbers, a Moebius strip, and, finally, a sun that fades into a screen of absolute black. The author examines the film, using it as if it were clinical material to illustrate Bion's ideas. The tempo of the score to the film is remarkably fast, underlining the accelerated and overwhelming functioning of the mind of the main character, Max, who does not find a good enough container for his overwhelming anxiety. In contrast to Max, who is using mathematics as a defence against psychotic anxieties, the author wants to end with some words about a mathematician who was the main creator of fractal geometry: Benoit Mandelbrot. Fractals are geometric structures that combine irregularity and structure.
