ABSTRACT
The fiction has a number of 'containing images' and shows the effect of connecting the mother to safety and to the home. It is with the notion of containment, as this features in psychoanalysis and the literary texts. In Saplings and 'Tears', a simple want of self-control gives rise to containment problems, particularly when a mother struggles unsuccessfully to contain her own emotions in front of the children. Developing Klein's idea, Wilfred Bion identifies the container as a positive image associated with a mother's ability to identify and absorb an infant's dread of death. Bion's work on containment makes a connection between a mother's reaction to her child's anxiety and how that child learns to manage these emotions in later life. Bion's adoption of a 'tank' or container as a positive image of psychoanalytic mothering is an attempt to make peace with his experiences with tanks.
