On the alpha-function, chaotic cats, and unconscious memory

Wilfred Bion, the noted psychoanalyst, introduced the term “alpha-function” to refer to mental operations that transform raw sense data into elements of experience that can be stored as unconscious memory. The paper weaves a theoretical thread between supposedly orthogonal fields of inquiry (Bion's psychoanalysis, chaotic systems, biology, Peircean semiotics) to (a) suggest that the alpha-function may be interpreted in terms of a chaotic transformation known as “Arnold's Cat Map” and (b) present a novel conception of unconscious memory.