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When a new theory is proposed in psycho-analysis it can be said to undertake two functions: one is to organise in a more aesthetic (beautiful?) way the clinical phenomena that have already been observed; the other is to provide a tool of observation that will open to view previously invisible phenomena of the consulting room. Bion, beginning with his papers on schizophrenia, sought to amplify the model of the mind which we employ in psycho-analysis so that processes of thinking and disturbances in this capacity could be investigated. The first systematic presentation of this effort, Learning from Experience, formulated an “empty” concept of alpha-function by means of which the “observation of the sense impressions of emotional experiences” were converted into elements, building-blocks for dream thoughts, which could be used for thinking, might be available for storage as memory, and whose continuity formed a “contact barrier” that separated conscious from unconscious mental processes.
The “emptiness” of this model was stressed over and over again by Bion, along with a caution against over-hasty attempts to fill it with clinical meaning. He himself, almost single-handedly, explored its possible meaning in the series of books which followed, namely Elements of Psycho-analysis, Transformations and Attention and Interpretation. It is with a certain trepidation that this paper is offered as a tentative exploration of his fascinating idea that alpha-function can perhaps work backwards, cannibalising the already formed alpha-elements to produce either the beta-screen or perhaps bizarre objects. It is probably best to quote rather than to paraphrase. He writes (page 25, Learning from Experience) in evaluating the analyst's and patient's separate contributions to the situation in which the beta-screen is being formed: “The analysand contributes changes which are associated with the replacement of alpha-function by what may be described as a reversal of direction of the functi