ABSTRACT
Pictograms are not yet thought processes, since they are expressed in images rather than in verbal discourse and contain powerful expressive-evocative elements, and are different from beta elements, when they are not transformed by the alpha function into alpha elements. Thomas Ogden has been one of the most prolific and quoted psychoanalytic authors. It is easy to understand why after immersing oneself in his work. The chapter explains two clinical examples from Ogden’s vast output to demonstrate his view of reverie, along with how it translates into a specific clinical way of thinking that is different from his post-Bionian colleagues, and other theories about the curative process in analysis. While there is agreement amongst post-Bionians that the analyst’s reverie is a co-construction of two minds in the analytic session, there are different views regarding in what part of the analyst’s mind a reverie is formed, and sometimes a writer will change his view without noting this modification.
