Concept
Container–contained
Bion's model of a relation in which one thing receives and holds another. In its first form the mother takes in the unbearable feelings the infant projects into her and returns them in a form the infant can bear. Generalised, it describes how the mind holds thoughts, how the analyst holds the patient's projections and how a group holds an individual, and the relation may foster growth or harm either side.
Read more- Narrower concepts
- Reverie
- Introduced by
- Wilfred Bion
- Key works
- 5
introduced by
- Wilfred Bion 1962 Sketched in Learning from Experience (1962), given its sign ♀♂ in Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963) and extended to the individual and the group in Attention and Interpretation (1970).
developed by
- Thomas H. Ogden 2004 Ogden read Bion's container-contained as concerned chiefly with the processing, or dreaming, of thoughts and feelings, and set it beside Winnicott's holding, which he read as concerned with being and with the experience of time.