![]() In answer to the original question, we must consider what is the purpose of such a distinction? Many well-known psychoanalytic theorists and expert psychotherapists advocate working with clients in a fashion devoid from intellectual arguments and fixed theoretical leanings, in order to promote a greater naturalness, aliveness, and sense of reality in therapeutic sessions (Belger). Containment involves a discourse which looks to find expression for previously unspeakable feelings and experiences as they are projected into the psychotherapist. Nor does containment involve the provision of medical aid, money, or advice. It does not involve alleviating their anxiety via the provision of help or comfort. Thus containment does not involve responding to a client’s expressed needs. He argued that through the mother’s ability to contain those projected feelings, the infant is able to grow the capacity to think, to contain its own emotions and to use them as a source of reflection. Bion focused his writings on the method by which the infant copes with fury and frustration. As a result the infant is likely to develop an overall sense of wellbeing, and containment as a consequence of a wealth of similar experiences of having an uncomfortable emotion contained and returned. In Bion’s view, the infant itself is not contained – the Mother manages the difficult emotion projected into her and returns it in a more manageable state to the child.
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