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Dr Bion has had considerable experience with patients displaying disorders of thought due to severe emotional disturbance. For him, both epistemology and clinical psychoanalysis are involved. His knowledge is unique since, as a rule, neither philosophers nor most psycho-analysts have an intimate experience of the grosser expressions of such disturbance. Learning from Experience is a first attempt both to communicate this experience and also to develop, for psycho-analysts, a method of scientific notation in algebraic terms. The result is a slim but difficult book that is unlikely to yield much on a first reading. Difficulty is inherent in the exposition of this kind of new theoretical conception, but the book is worth the effort of attention and thought that it requires.
Bion describes a state in which the individual experiences the “sense-impression as if it were a part of the personality experiencing the sense-impression, and the sense-impression as if it were the thing-in-itself to which the sense-impression corresponds” (p. 26). Again, “the emotions likewise are objects of sense” (p. 6). The patient is dealing with what Bion calls “beta-elements” on a level demanding, for its understanding, the application of concepts, proposed by Melanie Klein, such as splitting, and projective identification on an oral and alimentary level. There are, also, “evacuating” acts by which “the psyche is supposed to be rid of accretions of stimuli” (p. 7). An example would be talking as a mechanical discharge of tension, rather than in order to convey meaning in an interpersonal relationship. This part of Bion's analysis amplifies Freud's well-known distinction between the modification of frustration and its evasion.
Bion progressively builds up a theory of what he calls “alpha” function. This is important in learning from experience. For example, in learning to walk, “thoughts that had originally to be conscious become unconscious, and so the child can do all the thinking needed for