Containers
There is an important psychodynamic factor that is key to building enduring and constructive interpersonal relationships. This fact concerns the container of anxiety and the process of metabolism which transpires in constructive relationships. Beginning with the work of Donald Winnicott (1971) in his study of the interaction between mothers and children, there has been growing awareness (especially among the object relations theorists) that effective mothering is based in large part on the establishment of a “holding environment” for the child (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983). A safe setting is created for the child that enables them to experiment, reach out and often fail without major consequences. Wilfred Bion (1961, 1995) went even further in considering the “holding environment” provided by the mother as serving the function of “containing” the child’s anxiety. For Bion, this containment could also be found in the supportive interpersonal dynamics that exist in effectively functioning groups (such as he provided in therapeutic settings).
A Psychodynamic Perspective
The container that Bion identifies as operating in group therapy sessions (and in individual therapy sessions) is also to be found in interpersonal relationships where one person is being helpful to another person. Containment is critical to all challenging autotelic and transactional relationships. Furthermore, Introverts are more likely to venture out in search of assistance when an adequate container is available. For Bion, the work of therapy moves beyond just containment. He describes the process of Metabolism that can convert anxiety from a state of unregulated, stressful and debilitating emotions to a state of personal insight and potential action.
The term “metabolism” was borrowed by Bion and other psychoanalytic theorist from the field of biology. In the case of biological metabolism, we find a process concerned with chemical reactions in the body of all mammals (and many other living organisms). Through metabolism we convert food to energy that is needed for many cellular operations (creation of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and carbohydrates as well as the elimination of waste). A similar process is described by Bion – though metabolism now involves the conversion and redirection of psychic rather than physiological elements from an “unhealthy” (maladaptive) to a “healthy” (adaptive) state.
Two fundamental elements exist, according to Bion, in human consciousness and thinking. One of these elements is labeled beta. These elements are the unmetabolized thoughts, emotions and bodily states that we always experience—whether they come from the outside world or from inside our individual and collective psyches. Among the inside collective elements are the three widely acknowledged basic assumptions that underlie group functioning: dependency, fight-flight and pairing (Bion, 1961). The basic assumptions themselves are likely to dominate group functioning if the elements of anxiety are not metabolized. These basic assumption elements along with many other beta elements (such as dreams and collective myths and fantasies) are associated with anxiety. They represent some very important and often maladaptive elements in the human psyche that need to be transformed.
