Wilfred R. Bion

A strictly axiomatic comparison of Bion's statements is only partly possible since Bion's theory is presented as an original descriptive and linguistic system which, while not in conflict with Freud's, cannot be precisely correlated with it. However, by examining his axioms it is possible to highlight some significant aspects in which Bion's thought diverges from Freud's.

1 The aim of my work, states Bion at the beginning of Elements, is to make psychoanalysis content-independent and thus capable of achieving the level of abstraction necessary for functioning as a scientific theory. And so he designates the psychoanalytic elements - that is, the «abstractions» to be used in his theory - by means of symbols (α, β, ξ, ψ, ♂, ♀,… with the aim of distinguishing them from «realisations», from particular observable phenomena. Thus, the elements are understood as representing logical entities, notations for use in theory, and not as contents existing in reality.

«Because psycho-analytic theories are a compound of observed material and abstraction from it, they have been criticized as unscientific. […] I propose to seek a mode of abstraction that ensures that the theoretical statement retains the minimum of particularization. The defect of the existing psycho-analytic theory is not unlike that of the ideogram as compared with a word formed alphabetically; the ideogram represents one word only but relatively few letters are required for the formation of many thousands of words. Similarly the elements I seek are to be such that relatively few are required to express, by changes in combination, nearly all the theories essential to the working psycho-analyst. The task is to abstract such elements by releasing them from the combination in which they are held and from the particularity that adheres to them from the realization which they were originally designed to represent».130