Wilfred Bion worked clinically with psychotic patients and made many significant contributions in this area, viewing schizophrenic thinking as a difficulty in the "linking" of thoughts and objects. His concept of the "container" and the "contained" emphasizes the role of empathy in the infant-mother dyad. He used the term "alpha function" to conceptualize how the data of emotional experience is processed and digested, and he developed the "grid" to locate the development and transformation of psychic elements. Wilfred Bion died in 1979.

In this book Bion describes his use of the term 'alpha-function' to conceptualize how the data of emotional experience is processed and digested. This includes his thinking on 'contact barriers' and the bearing of 'projective identification' on the genesis of thought.