ABSTRACT
W. R. Bion begins from Elements of Psycho-Analysis by subtly differentiating his own concerns from Melanie Klein's or, rather, by showing the need to get underneath Kleinian thinking. In this chapter, the author confines himself to a close reading of Chapter 9 from Elements of Psycho-Analysis, complemented with a discussion of the central thrust of Attention and Interpretation. The author have chosen these texts because through them people can get down to the most basic terms of Bion's discourse: the movement between catastrophe and faith. Bion's account of human psychic life begins with catastrophic beta elements, whether pristine prethoughts requiring a birth process or the perverse dendritis of psychic collapse. Bion writes that the sense of catastrophe linlcs aspects of personality. The sense of catastrophe seems to have had a history when the infant first screams and perhaps is older than life itself.
