ABSTRACT
In Learning from Experience, Wilfred R. Bion adapts the mathematical concept of functions. Bion developed his theory of thinking further over the course of four books: Learning from Experience (1962), Elements of Psycho-Analysis(1963), Transformations (1965) and Attention and Interpretation (1970). Alpha-elements are suited to storage (the Freudian notation and memory) and are the building blocks of dream thought. In Cogitations Bion (1992) also refers to dream-work-a as 'waking dream thought'. Applying the mathematical function theory, one can see the unknown alpha-function as a factor of the contact-barrier, which is an unknown function in itself. In the psychotic personality existing alpha-elements are further stripped of their psychic characteristics to become beta-elements which can form a beta-screen by compression rather than a living contact-barrier. Ogden focuses on the intersubjective experience of the analytic couple. Bion supposes a movement between the two meta-levels: model and abstraction. Psychoanalytic objects have Kant's primary and secondary features.
