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The author begins by presenting Bion's model of the mind in a simplified form to allow the reader to understand how Bion's model can explain various levels of psychopathology and offer guidelines for treatment by highlighting the curative factors for each level of psychopathology. Ferro presents helpful case material to illustrate his points, and also draws attention to the analyst's countertransference reactions in the termination phase of long analyses.
In summarizing Bion, Ferro describes the following aspects of the mind:
Beta elements—the mind's receptivity to perceptual and sensory impressions. It encompasses everything that has had an impact on our minds in the past and present, but has not yet been “digested.”
Alpha elements and alpha functions—referring to a person's ability to “digest” or transform sensory perceptions and impressions (such as pain, for example) into an image, and thus represent them. In other words, alpha elements are the results of stimuli reaching the mind that have become manageable by the patient after having been represented in the form of an image.
The tools of thinking (the container/contained, the paranoid schizoid position, and satiated versus unsatiated states of thought). This refers to the phenomenon that in order to be further processed, the sequence of alpha elements needs to be woven into a coherent narrative. This happens through oscillations between (a) container and contained (the ability to hold thoughts and emotions and keep them inside); (b) the paranoid schizoid and depressive positions (that is, between a
more fragmented form of thinking and feeling, and a more coherent form); and (c) a more vague versus a more definitive form of thinking and feeling.
The author suggests that each sector (alpha elements, beta elements, and tools of thinking) has curative factors associated with it. If the patient's pathology primarily consists of a mass of “not digested” experiences—i.e., in which micro- and macrotraumatic events canno