ABSTRACT
Wilfred Bion, beginning with his papers on schizophrenia, sought to amplify the model of the mind which authors employ in psycho-analysis so that processes of thinking and disturbances in this capacity could be investigated. He writes in evaluating the analyst's and patient's separate contributions to the situation in which the beta-screen is being formed: The analysand contributes changes which are associated with the replacement of alpha-function by what may be described as a reversal of direction of the function. He continues, instead of sense impressions being changed into alpha elements for use in dream thoughts and unconscious waking thinking, the development of the contact-barrier is replaced by its destruction. This is effected by the reversal of alpha-function so that the contact barrier and the dream thoughts and unconscious waking thinking, which are the texture of the contact-barrier, are turned into alpha-elements, divested of all characteristics that separate them from beta-elements and are then projected, thus forming the beta-screen.
