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Bion (1958, 1965) considers hallucination as a mechanism that serves to evacuate anxiety and an excess of sensory stimuli, on the same level as psychosomatic illness and the functioning of the mind in basic assumptions.
In hallucination, this evacuation takes place through the sense organs. The functioning of these organs is inverted; undigested beta-elements are expelled into the outer world together with ego and superego traces (fragments of the psychic apparatus with which these elements have come into contact), giving rise to bizarre objects. (The image is that of a film projection disturbed by a mechanical failure: In addition to portions of the film, images of the projector's crank, lenses, and spools are violently projected onto the screen, with the effect that the viewer's visual experiences can no longer be integrated into the sequence of images as they appear on the screen and are thus meaningless.)
Hallucinations signal the need to resort to massive evacuations in order to escape even worse situations, such as the confused oneiric situations of the most dramatic psychotic experiences. According to Bion, then, the content of hallucinations is the result of the reversal of alpha-function.
Meltzer (1978) adopts this view when he speaks of the irreversible cannibalization of alpha-elements that, once fragmented, can never again be used for thinking but can only be evacuated. He also sees no possibility of these damaged elements being repaired and reutilized. Successively, in a discussion of clinical material Meltzer (1982a, 1982b, 1986) hypothesizes that the reversal of the alpha-Psychoanalytic Review, 80(3), Fall 1993