"...thoughts are the shadows of our feelings... When we think of those we love or hate.. thought processes are rarely cool and detached - neither should they be... Although we are still rational at such times there is no doubt that our thought processes are not following a machine-like logic... This elusive mental state has been explicitly addressed by Bion with his notion of 'alpha function' which renders barely conscious feelings into the more manageable medium of thoughts and ideas." --Simple Bilogic in the Poems of Louis MacNeice