ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an account of Wilfred Bion's life as a context for his work. It examines the kind of mental apparatus Bion constructs to account for how human beings develop psychically. The chapter explores what Bion terms 'alpha and beta elements' and functions and the preconceptions, conceptions and concepts that follow on from them, and return briefly to the proto-mental/proto-physical states. Bion examines in detail the pathological versions of the basic psychical processes. With the container-contained interaction being the vehicle for developing psychological health, failures of containment engender psychological fragility and a disturbed relation to reality. Instead of linking, the fundamental psychic process is compulsive splitting. Regarding his psychoanalytic contributions, one must marvel at the breadth and depth of his thinking. His clinical work is remarkable, from his early work on groups and their 'basic assumptions' to the introduction of K as a basic urge on a par with love and hate.
