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This book takes the form of a sustained reverie, linking in an associative rather than didactic way ideas stemming from the more philosophical reaches of post-Kleinian thought. The central theme is that of the psychic journey from foetal to depressive position functioning and the catastrophic nature of change. Ideas and illustrations drawn from social anthropology, myth, primitive and Western art and sculpture, literature, aesthetics and philosophy, as well as from the author's own personal and clinical experience, interweave in a rich tapestry — sometimes perhaps too rich — in the task of substantiating a thesis on the nature of thought, psychic function and a theory of psychosis. The occasional references to a paper of Klein, or a quotation from Bion, stand out like lonely signposts towards thinking that one thankfully recognises as familiar.
The underlying conceptual framework expresses the rationalist view of mind underpinning an exploration of foetal thought; and the structuralist binary division theory of meaning of the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, whereby meaning is said to arise from differential relationships between opposed elements within a system. These theoretical notions, alluded to but never spelt out, inform the central themes amidst a wealth of idea and imagery, so that the effect is considerably fragmented, if not psychotic. It is as if a Pandora's-box of ideas has burst open, creating, in this reader at least, a combination of fascination and frustration: fascination because of the richness and extensiveness of the ideas and the obvious erudition of the author; frustration because of the way one is left struggling to make connections and links that are often only tantalisingly implied. This effect, however, is presumably intended, since a central concern of the book is the Bionic notion of the turbulence that is at the heart of catastrophic change.
One important function of the book is to draw the reader's attention to some of the metaphysical quest