Introduction

The difficulties that the analyst meets in the approach and discrimination of primitive emotional levels in the patient-analyst communication are the focus of Bion’s research: at stake are alpha function and the theory of transformations as an observational method of the phenomena embedded in the analytic encounter. He was acutely aware of the apparent divide between knowledge that accrues by knowing a thing through sense experience (transformations in K) and experiencing that aspect of the object which “lacks contours and boundaries” (transformations in O).