Reflections on Attacks on Linking and the Thinking-Function in the Writings of W. R. Bion

This article revisits W. R. Bion's theory of thinking by highlighting how thinking and linking are attacked. The author's theoretical reflections and clinical vignettes draw attention to the fact that patients may attack the analyst's thinking-function in two particular states: when they experience the analyst as attacking them precisely when the analyst is able to create a link, but one that is too threatening, painful, unsettling and frustrating or in response to the analyst's failure to create the link the patient had been expecting. How the analyst deals with and reacts to the complexity of the analytic relationship and to these two kinds of attacks is what will be internalized. In turn, it will affect the methods of communication within the psyche and with the environment and the development of a patient's emotional thinking.