Wild Things

IN MY READING, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, IS, AMONG OTHER things, an illustration of what Bion called “alpha function” in action. Alpha function refers to the way in which experience is rendered thinkable. “Experience” in this context refers both unthinkably traumatic experience and more ordinary experience that can be overwhelming to the infant's mind. Max's monsters are an amalgam of the strange and the familiar, the scary and the benign. Their features are monstrous and wild, but their expressions are quite benign and humanly identifiable. That which is terrifying because rendered alien has been tamed through being humanized, as Max identifies with his monsters. In the cases we heard about today, and in our practices, the monsters are not always so tame.

I had a dream last night that I was amazed to realize was inspired by this conference and some of the themes I have just touched on. I dreamt there was a war going on, a real war with killing and dying. The feeling was awful. But at the same time, it was a Steven Spielberg movie, like Saving Private Ryan, with its realistic depiction of D-day. The war ended, as a movie would, and I watched a man in a wheel chair, I think he had lost his legs, and wondered how he would go on with his life after what he had seen.

In my view, this dream was about the interface between art and trauma, between art and real life. This was a real war, but it was also a movie, and it was somewhere between being truly horrifying and being thinkable, that is, representable in a work of art.

As I said, in Bion's language we might say that Where the Wild Things Are catches alpha function in the act. Max tames his monsters while his mother outside the door calms herself down and sets dinner out for him as Sendak, I imagine, tames his monsters in the process of generating his stories and illustrations. Marsha's presentation raises the possibility, even the likelihood, that a modern-day Max would have gone to his room and turned on