ABSTRACT
In 1962 Wilfred Bion wrote: Confronted with the complexities of the human mind the analyst must be circumspect in following even accepted scientific method; its weaknesses may be closer to the weakness of psychotic thinking than superficial scrutiny would admit. The author's first meeting with Bion took place when he presented a patient, supervised by Herbert Rosenfeld; this was in a clinical seminar, in the second year of his adult training at the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1963. Donald Winnicott had written earlier (1945) about the holding mother; Bion invited people to think about what goes on inside the mother, to enable her, to digest, or not, that which is being projected into her. And when Bion (1962b) speaks of 'digesting' the experience, it implies that this projection goes into a human 'stomach' system which has its own make-up and history.
