‘It used once to be said that a man had a nightmare because he had indigestion and that was why he woke up in a panic. My version is: the sleeping patient panicked; because he cannot have a nightmare, he cannot wake up or go to sleep; he has had mental indigestion since.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 8).

‘Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha-function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dream-thought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up (Bion, 1962, p. 6–7).

At first sight, these excerpts from Bion’s first book ‘Learning from Experience’ (1962) seem tantalising and somewhat opaque to the reader. What does he mean that someone cannot have a nightmare and therefore cannot fall asleep or wake up? Could these be serious statements about the nature of dreams and dreaming, or are they meant to be a riddle, or even a mischievous play on words a la Lewis Carroll, as for example in:

Chessur: It looks like you ran afoul of something with wicked claws.

Alice: But I'm still dreaming!

Yet, at second glance it seems that Bion is suggesting something more challenging about the nature and function of the psychoanalytic dream. Certainly, when he claims that dreaming is continuous, like digestion, he seems to be inverting the conventional wisdom that asserts that wakefulness and sleep states are discrete. Instead, he proposes a type of synergy between dream-thoughts and conscious waking thinking that to many may sound like a paradox. Moreover, if the distinction between waking states and sleep states falls away, does this mean that the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious become irrelevant? What is the baffled mainstream psychoanalyst supposed to think? If we were then to include the introduction of new terminologies, such as ‘alpha-function’ and other unfamiliar concepts, there would surely be little or nothing left for the psychoanalyst to recognize in the classical theory of dreams? What would be the point of that?

The point seems to be that Bion’s intention is to table a revision of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams. His assumption is that from paradoxes comes knowledge. A secondary assumption is that in spite of having a different ancestry the conscious mind and the unconscious have similarities of character and function. What those functions are will be set out in his theory of dreams.

Perhaps if we rephrase the quotation about the sleeping patient that panicked because he could not have a nightmare, we might get a little closer to the function Bion has in mind. Could it be something like this: ‘Being able to have a nightmare allows a person to process something controversial without panicking – so that when he/she wakes up they are not suffering from a spasm of mental indigestion.’ For Bion, dreams seem to have an important processing function in the same way thinking has a processing function – pre-eminently, the function of processing of emotional experience. ¹ Added to this Bion introduces the notion of an un-processing function, where conscious and unconscious psychological work such as dreaming or thinking function in reverse (hallucination).

In this discussion I will endeavour to set out as best I can Bion’s reasoning for the idea that the dream is a form of unconscious thinking that occurs whether we are awake or asleep. That is, that we dream by day and by night in order to fulfil a vital function of the mind which is to process mental experience. In waking conscious thought we repress ideas and emotions that don’t agree with us, but similarly, in dreams, emotional turbulence may be too perturbing to be dreamt. However, before I proceed to summarize the conceptual basis of the theory (that dreams are a form of unconscious thinking) it is necessary to place Bion’s ideas and his motivation in the context in which they were incubated.

Bion’s design was to subject the existing concepts of the conscious and the unconscious to closer scrutiny in the light of his experiences with treating patients on the psychotic spectrum, where disorders of thought and thinking were commonplace. In his experience, he witnessed how the great epistemological divide between conscious and the unconscious and between thinking and dreaming can vanish in the psychoses. To explain this he introduced a number of models with hypothetical potential as tools to test whether they might yield some new ways of talking about dreams. While on the one hand, these probings have stimulated considerable interest in various quarters of the analytic world they have also stirred up considerable doubt and alarm as to their utility or veracity. Yet Bion had few qualms about his methods of theorising because he accepted that his methods and outcomes were not definitive. ‘I have found myself in a similar position to the scientist who continues to employ a theory that he knows to be faulty because a better one has not yet been discovered to replace it.’ (Bion, 1962, Introduction.)

The concept of alpha function

Let us begin with Freud who pointed out that the eyes are the sense organs for receiving sense impressions of light, colour, movement and perception, while the ears are the sense organs for capturing sense impressions of sound, vibration, distance and so on. In addition, there were sense impressions associated with light and darkness and with hot and cold. But what, asked Freud, is the sense organ for the awareness of psychic reality? ‘Consciousness’, was his reply. Consciousness is originated by the perception of sensory qualities, or as Freud described it, consciousness comprises ‘the sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities’ (Freud, 1926)

Once elaborated, consciousness captures the sensory awareness of impulses, fantasies, thoughts, emotions, and of course dreams. Consciousness, therefore, is essentially turned inwards and begins with sense impressions that are formed from internal stimulation, hence the adage that the first ego is a body ego. However, Freud also theorised that with the increase in the significance of external reality the sense organs begin to be directed to the outside, and this increases the way consciousness becomes attached to sense impressions of the outer world.

Bion was similarly interested in consciousness and its origins. He asked a similar question – how do we theorise the coming into being of consciousness as a place where ‘psychic life’ resides? He too laid great emphasises on the idea of consciousness as the sense organ for attending to psychological states. In fact, he insisted that consciousness of what’s going on inside a person should be regarded as nothing less than a function of the personality – the psychoanalytic function of the personality! He claimed that it would be equally disastrous for a person who doesn’t eat, or drink, or breathe, or get rid of waste products to fail to know and to use mental and emotional experiences. ²

To tackle these questions of the dawn of psychic reality he sought to devise a theoretical model that could depict the very beginnings of psychic life, a model that necessarily had to possess enough powers of abstraction to distinguish one variable from another as well as one level of psychological reality from another.

The model is extrapolated in the paper ‘A theory of thinking’ where Bion lays down the basis for the concepts of alpha elements, alpha-function and beta-elements that would describe how the apparatus for thinking is activated in the mind. Bion notes that these concepts (alpha-function/beta elements) are purely ‘empty’ concepts – they are unproven and should not be prematurely used to convey impressive meaning. Their use and value depend entirely upon how they help illuminate any particular enquiry into the mind. This is precisely how models should work – they are useful in trying out new ideas based on intuition and not on certified facts. Bion’s theory of thinking, for example, is based on the model of digestion.

The theory of alpha function

What is alpha function? Alpha function is a hypothetical construct that attempts to describe the distinct process that consciousness must undertake to transform any raw sense-impression – internal (hunger pang) or external (mother’s voice) – into its mental equivalents. Therefore, as a transformational process alpha function produces alpha elements, that represent the outcome of the change from a sense impression into a mental equivalent.

If there is no transformation of normal sense impressions coming from within (and without) into their mental equivalent (alpha elements) then all the waking person experiences, as in infancy, is an exposure to a series of unrefined sense impressions. These impressions are designated by Bion as ‘beta elements, another hypothetical construct. Beta-elements are characteristic of experiences in the world that remain ‘objects of sense and sensation’ because they have not been subjected to alpha-function. Instead, they float about creating discomfort and pain that creates pressure resulting in their eventual expulsion from the mind. Typically, beta-elements are expelled by associating themselves with a bodily process and then deploying the body for the purposes of elimination. Similarly, a beta-element may become associated with ingestion in which case it would be expelled orally, or the beta-element may be associated with defecation and be eliminated anally.

In contrast, alpha-function creates a storage system for the by-products of alpha elements such as real thoughts, emotions and dream-thoughts. In this sense, the mind can acquire the tools to generate continuous thoughts and memory.

However, in some populations, the outcomes may be stark. A good example of the struggle to transform sense-impressions into their mental counterparts can be cited in certain forms of childhood autism. This illness has been described as an extreme example of living in a world of sense impressions or alternatively coined as a world of ‘auto-sensuousness’. There are many different theories about the causes of psychogenic autism but Frances Tustin’s (analysed by Bion) theorized that because of a particular type of early trauma the child essentially withdraws to a sensation-dominated, pre-thinking world to avoid over-stimulation. In this world there exists little or no mental acts as such – no thoughts, fantasies or dreams – merely a degree of permissiveness towards the sensory realm. Objects are objects of sense or sensation, they have qualities like hardness or softness or round-ness or square-ness, wet-ness and dry-ness – but in essence, these states comprise neurophysiological interactions with the world – even when these interactions are with other human beings.

Now, what about during sleep? Bion proposes that alpha functioning continues during sleep. He states:

‘An emotional experience occurring in sleep does not differ from the emotional experience occurring during waking life in that the perceptions of the emotional experience have both been worked upon by alpha-function before they can be used for dream-thoughts.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 6).

During sleep, the mind is similarly bombarded with sensory impressions coming from within, but also without (sounds), based on sensory data accumulated from actual experiences whilst awake. The mental equivalent of a raw sense-impression occurring during sleep is the visual image, or the dream-thoughts, that appears in a dream – a snake, a distant mountain, a long-lost school friend.

Bion designates this visual image or dream-thought as an ‘alpha element’. If there is no transformation during sleep of sense impressions into a mental equivalent, such as a visual image or a dream thought, then all the person's experiences while asleep is a series of rudimentary sense impressions – defined as ‘beta elements’. According to Bion that person, therefore, cannot form dream-thoughts or visual images and when they describe a dream they may well be describing something occurring at a bodily level of experience (like a foreign body) with a very different function. They may be reporting a series of physical or neurophysiological sensations during sleep that they believe is a dream.

In summary, in Bion’s theory of functions alpha-function creates a psychological or mental plane where there previously only existed a sensory plane. This allows visual images, perceptions, fantasies, memory traces, unconscious phantasies, thoughts, and dream-thoughts to become capable of being internalised and stored in the mind. While we are awake alpha-function function allows the sense impressions, particularly of impinging emotional experience, to become available for conscious thought and unconscious waking thought.

While asleep, alpha-function permits the sense impressions of emotional experience to be available for dreaming and dream- thoughts. If a person in waking life cannot undergo the transformation of sense data into alpha elements he or she cannot generate the material necessary for thinking. Similarly, if a person who is asleep cannot subject sensory impressions during sleep to alpha-function they cannot dream or create dream-thoughts.

We could say that such a person cannot distinguish between being awake and being asleep since consciousness, such as it is, is unable to produce proper thoughts and unable to produce dream-thoughts. This, one could claim, resembles a form of psychotic thinking or excretory thinking. Re-establishing alpha functioning re-establishes the capacity to dream that leads to improvements in thinking.

Bion’s argument

How did Bion assemble his argument? I suggest the following: he began by positioning ‘thoughts’ on one side of the equation and ‘dreams’ on the other side. Then he created a central process by the name of alpha-function that could be applied to both equations in respect of the primary task of converting sense impressions into mental units. The outcome was represented by a parallel generation of ‘thoughts’ as well as ‘dreams’. Lastly, when the apparatus for originating ‘conscious thoughts’ as well as ‘dream-thoughts’ is underway, Bion suggests that this is a continuous activity, like breathing.

So, when Bion suggests that we are always dreaming, it is on the basis that dreaming is a form of thinking that occurs during sleep. Secondly, the idea of continuous dreaming refers to the activity of alpha-function that produces the conditions for both dreaming and conscious waking thinking. If we keep this ‘story’ in mind when reading Bion, or when we are trying to apply his theories in our work, we should be able to steer ourselves through some of his eliptical aphorisms. Consider these examples,

‘If a man has an emotional experience when asleep or awake and is able to convert it into alpha elements he can either remain unconscious of that emotional experience or become conscious of it. The sleeping man has an emotional experience, converts it into alpha-elements and so becomes capable of dream-thoughts. Thus he is free to become conscious (that is awake) and describe the experience by a narrative usually known as a dream.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 15).

‘Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha- function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dream-thought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up. (1962, p. 6–7)

This is Bion at his most elastic, revelling in the dichotomies of different states and their opposites – such as, asleep/awake, dream/non-dream, conscious/unconscious. One wonders whether his intention is to integrate paradoxes or to proliferate them. His circular style of discourse surely indicates that all options are open in the anticipation that from the disparate there may emerge something of a whole. However, his point is clear – without the operation of alpha-function dreams (or dreaming) are not possible. However, the reader is made aware of different uses and definitions of the terms ‘asleep’ and of ‘awake’. For instance, in the excerpts above Bion, (1962, p. 15) he seems to equate the term ‘unconscious’ with ‘unaware’, while in Bion (1962 p. 6–7), dreaming is described as a precondition of sleep! The problem seems to be that Bion sometimes ignores the differences between terms that are ‘adjectives’ from those that are ‘nouns’, with the result that certain concepts and levels of discourse are capable of being mingled in a fierce melange. This can either stimulate or intimidate the reader, or both.

Conclusion

For Bion, dreams are the guardians of assimilating and processing thoughts and emotions during sleep. This processing takes the form of unconscious ‘thinking’ (unconscious phantasy) and dream-thoughts, that have their counterparts in waking life in the apparatus for generating conscious ‘thoughts’ and a capacity for ‘thinking and symbolizing’. What we seem to encounter here is the novel idea of the dream as having a processing purpose, pre-eminently, a knowledge processing function for emotional experiences. Such an epistemic concept varies substantially from the theory that the dream is produced by the dream-work that translates the latent dream into the manifest dream. Freud was interested in the architecture of dreams and dreaming but Bion argued that the dream-work is only a small aspect of the dream, and hence he emphasised the knowledge function of the dream that doesn’t confine dreaming to constructing narratives with latent and manifest significance. However, when Bion proclaims that a dream can be too perturbing to be dreamt I believe he is utilizing the repression concept.

To summarise, Bion ’s writings on dreams claim our attention for the idea that dreaming is a variant of ‘thinking’. Therefore dreams are assigned a processing (or transformational) function in the same way that thinking has a processing function. But true to form Bion correspondingly inserts an un-processing function of the mind to which he gave the name ‘beta-elements’. These elements are characteristic of experiences in the world that remain ‘objects of sense and sensation’. In mental life, they could be described as ‘dream-thoughts’ operating in reverse, in the sense that their function is one of hallucination. This emphasizes that a ‘proper’ dream is at all times an achievement, or as Bion describes it, ‘a psychological work in progress’.

References

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: William Heinemann. Medical Books.

Carroll, L. (1865). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. eBookIt.com, 2013.

Modell, A. (2008). The Unconscious as a Knowledge Processing Centre. Division 39 lecture at the New York Society of Psychoanalysis.

Tustin, F. (1981). Autistic States in Children. London & Boston: Routledge & Keegan Paul.

Notes

1. This is of interest because many analysts believe that in his earlier years Freud subscribed to the idea of unconscious processing in dreaming (Modell 2008). But traditionally the Freudian ‘unconscious’ is rarely described as a processing centre.

2. This enabled Bion to follow Melanie Klein in claiming that there were three drives, not two – a libidinal drive, a destructive drive and the drive to know or understand – pre-eminently to know and understand the psychical qualities of the self of the object, whose companion would be the drive not to know.

‘It used once to be said that a man had a nightmare because he had indigestion and that was why he woke up in a panic. My version is: the sleeping patient panicked; because he cannot have a nightmare, he cannot wake up or go to sleep; he has had mental indigestion since.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 8).

‘Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha-function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dream-thought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up (Bion, 1962, p. 6–7).

At first sight, these excerpts from Bion’s first book ‘Learning from Experience’ (1962) seem tantalising and somewhat opaque to the reader. What does he mean that someone cannot have a nightmare and therefore cannot fall asleep or wake up? Could these be serious statements about the nature of dreams and dreaming, or are they meant to be a riddle, or even a mischievous play on words a la Lewis Carroll, as for example in:

Chessur: It looks like you ran afoul of something with wicked claws.

Alice: But I'm still dreaming!

Yet, at second glance it seems that Bion is suggesting something more challenging about the nature and function of the psychoanalytic dream. Certainly, when he claims that dreaming is continuous, like digestion, he seems to be inverting the conventional wisdom that asserts that wakefulness and sleep states are discrete. Instead, he proposes a type of synergy between dream-thoughts and conscious waking thinking that to many may sound like a paradox. Moreover, if the distinction between waking states and sleep states falls away, does this mean that the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious become irrelevant? What is the baffled mainstream psychoanalyst supposed to think? If we were then to include the introduction of new terminologies, such as ‘alpha-function’ and other unfamiliar concepts, there would surely be little or nothing left for the psychoanalyst to recognize in the classical theory of dreams? What would be the point of that?

The point seems to be that Bion’s intention is to table a revision of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams. His assumption is that from paradoxes comes knowledge. A secondary assumption is that in spite of having a different ancestry the conscious mind and the unconscious have similarities of character and function. What those functions are will be set out in his theory of dreams.

Perhaps if we rephrase the quotation about the sleeping patient that panicked because he could not have a nightmare, we might get a little closer to the function Bion has in mind. Could it be something like this: ‘Being able to have a nightmare allows a person to process something controversial without panicking – so that when he/she wakes up they are not suffering from a spasm of mental indigestion.’ For Bion, dreams seem to have an important processing function in the same way thinking has a processing function – pre-eminently, the function of processing of emotional experience. ¹ Added to this Bion introduces the notion of an un-processing function, where conscious and unconscious psychological work such as dreaming or thinking function in reverse (hallucination).

In this discussion I will endeavour to set out as best I can Bion’s reasoning for the idea that the dream is a form of unconscious thinking that occurs whether we are awake or asleep. That is, that we dream by day and by night in order to fulfil a vital function of the mind which is to process mental experience. In waking conscious thought we repress ideas and emotions that don’t agree with us, but similarly, in dreams, emotional turbulence may be too perturbing to be dreamt. However, before I proceed to summarize the conceptual basis of the theory (that dreams are a form of unconscious thinking) it is necessary to place Bion’s ideas and his motivation in the context in which they were incubated.

Bion’s design was to subject the existing concepts of the conscious and the unconscious to closer scrutiny in the light of his experiences with treating patients on the psychotic spectrum, where disorders of thought and thinking were commonplace. In his experience, he witnessed how the great epistemological divide between conscious and the unconscious and between thinking and dreaming can vanish in the psychoses. To explain this he introduced a number of models with hypothetical potential as tools to test whether they might yield some new ways of talking about dreams. While on the one hand, these probings have stimulated considerable interest in various quarters of the analytic world they have also stirred up considerable doubt and alarm as to their utility or veracity. Yet Bion had few qualms about his methods of theorising because he accepted that his methods and outcomes were not definitive. ‘I have found myself in a similar position to the scientist who continues to employ a theory that he knows to be faulty because a better one has not yet been discovered to replace it.’ (Bion, 1962, Introduction.)

The concept of alpha function

Let us begin with Freud who pointed out that the eyes are the sense organs for receiving sense impressions of light, colour, movement and perception, while the ears are the sense organs for capturing sense impressions of sound, vibration, distance and so on. In addition, there were sense impressions associated with light and darkness and with hot and cold. But what, asked Freud, is the sense organ for the awareness of psychic reality? ‘Consciousness’, was his reply. Consciousness is originated by the perception of sensory qualities, or as Freud described it, consciousness comprises ‘the sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities’ (Freud, 1926)

Once elaborated, consciousness captures the sensory awareness of impulses, fantasies, thoughts, emotions, and of course dreams. Consciousness, therefore, is essentially turned inwards and begins with sense impressions that are formed from internal stimulation, hence the adage that the first ego is a body ego. However, Freud also theorised that with the increase in the significance of external reality the sense organs begin to be directed to the outside, and this increases the way consciousness becomes attached to sense impressions of the outer world.

Bion was similarly interested in consciousness and its origins. He asked a similar question – how do we theorise the coming into being of consciousness as a place where ‘psychic life’ resides? He too laid great emphasises on the idea of consciousness as the sense organ for attending to psychological states. In fact, he insisted that consciousness of what’s going on inside a person should be regarded as nothing less than a function of the personality – the psychoanalytic function of the personality! He claimed that it would be equally disastrous for a person who doesn’t eat, or drink, or breathe, or get rid of waste products to fail to know and to use mental and emotional experiences. ²

To tackle these questions of the dawn of psychic reality he sought to devise a theoretical model that could depict the very beginnings of psychic life, a model that necessarily had to possess enough powers of abstraction to distinguish one variable from another as well as one level of psychological reality from another.

The model is extrapolated in the paper ‘A theory of thinking’ where Bion lays down the basis for the concepts of alpha elements, alpha-function and beta-elements that would describe how the apparatus for thinking is activated in the mind. Bion notes that these concepts (alpha-function/beta elements) are purely ‘empty’ concepts – they are unproven and should not be prematurely used to convey impressive meaning. Their use and value depend entirely upon how they help illuminate any particular enquiry into the mind. This is precisely how models should work – they are useful in trying out new ideas based on intuition and not on certified facts. Bion’s theory of thinking, for example, is based on the model of digestion.

The theory of alpha function

What is alpha function? Alpha function is a hypothetical construct that attempts to describe the distinct process that consciousness must undertake to transform any raw sense-impression – internal (hunger pang) or external (mother’s voice) – into its mental equivalents. Therefore, as a transformational process alpha function produces alpha elements, that represent the outcome of the change from a sense impression into a mental equivalent.

If there is no transformation of normal sense impressions coming from within (and without) into their mental equivalent (alpha elements) then all the waking person experiences, as in infancy, is an exposure to a series of unrefined sense impressions. These impressions are designated by Bion as ‘beta elements, another hypothetical construct. Beta-elements are characteristic of experiences in the world that remain ‘objects of sense and sensation’ because they have not been subjected to alpha-function. Instead, they float about creating discomfort and pain that creates pressure resulting in their eventual expulsion from the mind. Typically, beta-elements are expelled by associating themselves with a bodily process and then deploying the body for the purposes of elimination. Similarly, a beta-element may become associated with ingestion in which case it would be expelled orally, or the beta-element may be associated with defecation and be eliminated anally.

In contrast, alpha-function creates a storage system for the by-products of alpha elements such as real thoughts, emotions and dream-thoughts. In this sense, the mind can acquire the tools to generate continuous thoughts and memory.

However, in some populations, the outcomes may be stark. A good example of the struggle to transform sense-impressions into their mental counterparts can be cited in certain forms of childhood autism. This illness has been described as an extreme example of living in a world of sense impressions or alternatively coined as a world of ‘auto-sensuousness’. There are many different theories about the causes of psychogenic autism but Frances Tustin’s (analysed by Bion) theorized that because of a particular type of early trauma the child essentially withdraws to a sensation-dominated, pre-thinking world to avoid over-stimulation. In this world there exists little or no mental acts as such – no thoughts, fantasies or dreams – merely a degree of permissiveness towards the sensory realm. Objects are objects of sense or sensation, they have qualities like hardness or softness or round-ness or square-ness, wet-ness and dry-ness – but in essence, these states comprise neurophysiological interactions with the world – even when these interactions are with other human beings.

Now, what about during sleep? Bion proposes that alpha functioning continues during sleep. He states:

‘An emotional experience occurring in sleep does not differ from the emotional experience occurring during waking life in that the perceptions of the emotional experience have both been worked upon by alpha-function before they can be used for dream-thoughts.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 6).

During sleep, the mind is similarly bombarded with sensory impressions coming from within, but also without (sounds), based on sensory data accumulated from actual experiences whilst awake. The mental equivalent of a raw sense-impression occurring during sleep is the visual image, or the dream-thoughts, that appears in a dream – a snake, a distant mountain, a long-lost school friend.

Bion designates this visual image or dream-thought as an ‘alpha element’. If there is no transformation during sleep of sense impressions into a mental equivalent, such as a visual image or a dream thought, then all the person's experiences while asleep is a series of rudimentary sense impressions – defined as ‘beta elements’. According to Bion that person, therefore, cannot form dream-thoughts or visual images and when they describe a dream they may well be describing something occurring at a bodily level of experience (like a foreign body) with a very different function. They may be reporting a series of physical or neurophysiological sensations during sleep that they believe is a dream.

In summary, in Bion’s theory of functions alpha-function creates a psychological or mental plane where there previously only existed a sensory plane. This allows visual images, perceptions, fantasies, memory traces, unconscious phantasies, thoughts, and dream-thoughts to become capable of being internalised and stored in the mind. While we are awake alpha-function function allows the sense impressions, particularly of impinging emotional experience, to become available for conscious thought and unconscious waking thought.

While asleep, alpha-function permits the sense impressions of emotional experience to be available for dreaming and dream- thoughts. If a person in waking life cannot undergo the transformation of sense data into alpha elements he or she cannot generate the material necessary for thinking. Similarly, if a person who is asleep cannot subject sensory impressions during sleep to alpha-function they cannot dream or create dream-thoughts.

We could say that such a person cannot distinguish between being awake and being asleep since consciousness, such as it is, is unable to produce proper thoughts and unable to produce dream-thoughts. This, one could claim, resembles a form of psychotic thinking or excretory thinking. Re-establishing alpha functioning re-establishes the capacity to dream that leads to improvements in thinking.

Bion’s argument

How did Bion assemble his argument? I suggest the following: he began by positioning ‘thoughts’ on one side of the equation and ‘dreams’ on the other side. Then he created a central process by the name of alpha-function that could be applied to both equations in respect of the primary task of converting sense impressions into mental units. The outcome was represented by a parallel generation of ‘thoughts’ as well as ‘dreams’. Lastly, when the apparatus for originating ‘conscious thoughts’ as well as ‘dream-thoughts’ is underway, Bion suggests that this is a continuous activity, like breathing.

So, when Bion suggests that we are always dreaming, it is on the basis that dreaming is a form of thinking that occurs during sleep. Secondly, the idea of continuous dreaming refers to the activity of alpha-function that produces the conditions for both dreaming and conscious waking thinking. If we keep this ‘story’ in mind when reading Bion, or when we are trying to apply his theories in our work, we should be able to steer ourselves through some of his eliptical aphorisms. Consider these examples,

‘If a man has an emotional experience when asleep or awake and is able to convert it into alpha elements he can either remain unconscious of that emotional experience or become conscious of it. The sleeping man has an emotional experience, converts it into alpha-elements and so becomes capable of dream-thoughts. Thus he is free to become conscious (that is awake) and describe the experience by a narrative usually known as a dream.’ (Bion, 1962, p. 15).

‘Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha- function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dream-thought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up. (1962, p. 6–7)

This is Bion at his most elastic, revelling in the dichotomies of different states and their opposites – such as, asleep/awake, dream/non-dream, conscious/unconscious. One wonders whether his intention is to integrate paradoxes or to proliferate them. His circular style of discourse surely indicates that all options are open in the anticipation that from the disparate there may emerge something of a whole. However, his point is clear – without the operation of alpha-function dreams (or dreaming) are not possible. However, the reader is made aware of different uses and definitions of the terms ‘asleep’ and of ‘awake’. For instance, in the excerpts above Bion, (1962, p. 15) he seems to equate the term ‘unconscious’ with ‘unaware’, while in Bion (1962 p. 6–7), dreaming is described as a precondition of sleep! The problem seems to be that Bion sometimes ignores the differences between terms that are ‘adjectives’ from those that are ‘nouns’, with the result that certain concepts and levels of discourse are capable of being mingled in a fierce melange. This can either stimulate or intimidate the reader, or both.

Conclusion

For Bion, dreams are the guardians of assimilating and processing thoughts and emotions during sleep. This processing takes the form of unconscious ‘thinking’ (unconscious phantasy) and dream-thoughts, that have their counterparts in waking life in the apparatus for generating conscious ‘thoughts’ and a capacity for ‘thinking and symbolizing’. What we seem to encounter here is the novel idea of the dream as having a processing purpose, pre-eminently, a knowledge processing function for emotional experiences. Such an epistemic concept varies substantially from the theory that the dream is produced by the dream-work that translates the latent dream into the manifest dream. Freud was interested in the architecture of dreams and dreaming but Bion argued that the dream-work is only a small aspect of the dream, and hence he emphasised the knowledge function of the dream that doesn’t confine dreaming to constructing narratives with latent and manifest significance. However, when Bion proclaims that a dream can be too perturbing to be dreamt I believe he is utilizing the repression concept.

To summarise, Bion ’s writings on dreams claim our attention for the idea that dreaming is a variant of ‘thinking’. Therefore dreams are assigned a processing (or transformational) function in the same way that thinking has a processing function. But true to form Bion correspondingly inserts an un-processing function of the mind to which he gave the name ‘beta-elements’. These elements are characteristic of experiences in the world that remain ‘objects of sense and sensation’. In mental life, they could be described as ‘dream-thoughts’ operating in reverse, in the sense that their function is one of hallucination. This emphasizes that a ‘proper’ dream is at all times an achievement, or as Bion describes it, ‘a psychological work in progress’.

References

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: William Heinemann. Medical Books.

Carroll, L. (1865). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. eBookIt.com, 2013.

Modell, A. (2008). The Unconscious as a Knowledge Processing Centre. Division 39 lecture at the New York Society of Psychoanalysis.

Tustin, F. (1981). Autistic States in Children. London & Boston: Routledge & Keegan Paul.

Notes

1. This is of interest because many analysts believe that in his earlier years Freud subscribed to the idea of unconscious processing in dreaming (Modell 2008). But traditionally the Freudian ‘unconscious’ is rarely described as a processing centre.

2. This enabled Bion to follow Melanie Klein in claiming that there were three drives, not two – a libidinal drive, a destructive drive and the drive to know or understand – pre-eminently to know and understand the psychical qualities of the self of the object, whose companion would be the drive not to know.