ABSTRACT
The P–S ↔ D formula represented another change in Kleinian thinking. Until Bion’s reformulation, Kleinians tended to pathologize the paranoid-schizoid position and privileged the attainment of the depressive position. Bion saw them both from the vertex of binocular vision—that is, dialectically. P-S exerted a mediating function on D, as D exerted a mediating function on P-S. D is in danger of becoming an ossified Establishment signifier, whereas P-S is in danger of too much scattering or fragmentation. Bion finally, and ingeniously, placed P-S ↔ D into a configuration of triangulation with O through a process of binocularization whereby P-S and D both mediate O, but from differing vertices. He was to do the same with the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious vis-à-vis O.
