The author applies Bion's intersubjective theory of thinking to study the influence of imaginative literature on the development of the capacity for figurative or metaphorical thought in response to affect-laden experience. Using a selection from Emily Dickinson's poetry and a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet in a study group model to illustrate this application of Bion's theory, he proposes that such literature may itself serve as a potential container/contained of unique affective power to maturation of the thinking apparatus and sustain the capacity for reverie and creative interpretive thought in the midst of intense emotional engagement.