ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents the meaning of the concepts of the container and the contained, first formulated by Wilfred Bion and developed in Attention & Interpretation, and elaborated in a further chapter in the same book. Her arguments are grounded in Bion’s and theory of thinking and in his various statements regarding the concepts of the container and the contained that are scattered throughout his work. Container and contained are developing a kind of interrelation, in which the infant has considerable influence over the mother’s ability to contain. When the contained uses the container to fill it up, their roles may become reversed: the contained containing the container and vice versa. The container’s envy of the contained or vice versa curtails the development of the containing function. The author provides some different facets of the concept “container and contained” and to look at the vivid relationship between the container and the contained.
