On the therapist's reverie and containing function

Containment and interpretation are two inseparable aspects of the psychoana lytic technique. This is better understood by Bion's clinical metaphors of "container-contained" relationship and the capacity for reverie Bion, conti nuing and expanding Klein's concept of projective identification, has trans posed this from what happens to an infant to what happens in the link betwe en mother and infant; until now he laid emphasis on the mother's (or therap ist's) ability to contain the primitive anxieties which the infant (or the patient) experiences. He described three types of link-love, hate, and know ledge-and proposed two metaphors which laid the foundation of a new and eff icient frame of reference of the analytic process and technique, namely, th e container-contained relationship and the reverie. Two clinical vignettes will illustrate the pivotal function of the therapis t's reverie within the therapist patient interaction. In the first case, a dead (internal) object of the patient was contained in the context of the s ession, enabling the patient to contain and sustain the psychic pain and he r self-destructive tendencies; the second case stresses how the therapist's reverie, during a silence, revealed a bad part of the patient's self, whic h was lost through projective identification.