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The author explores the relationship between the capacity to think and reflect and Bion’s notions of maternal containment and the K link. The notion of containment designates the mother’s capacity to receive her small child’s projective identifications, to use them as communication and to return them in a modified form. In the small child, this function helps to develop a contact barrier, a structure that is permeable but also separates consciousness from the unconscious, allowing a selective movement of elements from one to the other. It is on this foundation that a capacity for thinking and reflecting is established. Attacks on the K link can lead to –K (minus K) states of mind, in which the activity of thinking about the self and curiosity with regard to it are replaced by attacks on thinking activity and the evacuation of bêta elements. The author suggests that this can also lead the patient to be shattered by sensory experiences. These ideas are illustrated with aclinical example.