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In this chapter I repeat the configuration in formulations that appear to be descriptions of events in psychoanalysis or history but have not the status of historical narrative. They are C category elements, images derived from a background of experience or reported experience, reassembled for my purpose.
Description 1: The signs ♂ and ♀ I call the contained and the container. The use of the male and female symbols is deliberate but must not be taken to mean that other than sexual implications are excluded. These signs designate a relationship between ♀ and ♂ The link may be commensal, symbiotic, or parasitic.
Description 2: A word contains a meaning; conversely, a meaning can contain a word – which may or may not be discovered. The relationship is established by the nature of the link. A constant conjunction of elements in a psychoanalysis can be ‘bound’ by the attribution to it of a word, a theory, or other formulation. The word by which it is bound can have such a powerful pre-existing penumbra of associations that it squeezes the meaning out of the constant conjunction it is supposed to mark. Conversely, the constant conjunction can destroy the word, theory, or other formulation that the formulation is intended to ‘contain’. For example, a man is attempting to express such powerful feelings that his capacity for verbal expression disintegrates into a stammer or a meaningless, incoherent babble of words.
Description 3: The container (♀) extracts so much from the contained (♂) that the contained is left without substance. A psychoanalysis is so
long continued that the patient can get no further meaning from it. A converse example would be the continuation until the patient had no more patience, tolerance, fortitude, or money left. The container can squeeze everything ‘out of’ the contained; or the ‘pressure’ may be exerted by the contained so that the container disintegrates. An illustration would be the word used as a metaphor until the background is lost and the