Neurobiological Significance of Some Models Proposed by W. R. Bion

This brief paper has the aim of contributing to Bion's theory of alpha function during wakefulness and sleep. The ethological hypothesis (Tinbergen, 1951), confirmed by numerous neurophysiological findings (see Mancia, 1975, 1976, 1980), considers sleep to be a form of instinct, therefore activated by the energy of the unconscious, in which preparatory or appetitive phases alternate rhythmically with consummatory ones. This hypothesis besides permitting a multidisci-plinary approach to the phenomena of sleeping and dreaming, provides psychoanalysis with the means necessary to complete the knowledge obtained in clinical practice and to enrich the theories proposed by Freud (1900) in his Interpretation of Dreams.

It would be outside the scope of this paper to set forth the findings which modern etho-neurophysiology has produced in agreement with and in contradiction to Freud's theory. Many confirmations have been important — for example that of the biological universality at least as far as the level of the birds — of that stage which in Man is connected with dreaming, and of the indispensability of this particular REM stage, parallel to dreaming activity, for mental growth and even for biological life itself.

I would prefer, in this paper dedicated to the work of Bion and to the biological relevance of some of his models deriving from a thorough experience in psychoanalysis, to relate certain aspects of his theories to the more recent contributions made by etho-neurophysiology