Bion's grid: a tool for transformation

The author explicates the principles underlying Bion's "Grid" in a way that makes them useful for the clinician. The grid represents an attempt to provide a tool by which we might better understand the abstract rules and principles that facilitate understanding in the analytic process. Bion believed that content often obscures meaning unless we can move beyond the ostensible meaning in our attempts to understand the complexity of a statement and the uses to which it is being put. For Bion, the grid itself was not so important as the attempt to increase one's powers of observation, intuition, interpretation, and transformation. A clinical illustration is provided in which the grid provides a useful means for facilitating these endeavours.