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Wilfred Bion
Wilfred Bion
Born
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion 8 September 1897 Mathura, North-Western Provinces, India 28 August 1979 (aged81) Oxford
Died
Occupation psychoanalyst Knownfor Group Psychotherapy, Socio-Analysis, Object relations theory Betty Jardine Francesca Bion Parthenope Bion Talamo
Spouse(s)
Children
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (8 September 1897 8 November 1979) was an influential British psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Bion has been twinned with Jacques Lacan as "inspired bizarre analysts...who demand not that their patients get better but that they pursue Truth".[1] 'Bion's ideas are highly unique', so that he 'remained larger than life to almost all who encountered him'.[2] He has been considered by Neville Symington as possibly "the greatest psychoanalytic thinker...after Freud".[3]
Wilfred Bion
Military service
Psychoanalysis
Psychology portal
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Bion was born in Mathura, North-Western Provinces, India, and educated at Bishop's Stortford College in England.[5] After the outbreak of the First World War, he served in the Tank Corps as a tank commander in France, and was awarded both the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (on 18 February 1918, for his actions at the Battle of Cambrai), and the Croix de Chevalier of the Lgion d'honneur. He first entered the war zone on 26 June 1917,[6] and was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 10 June 1918, and to acting captain on 22 March 1918, when he took command of a tank section, he retained the rank when he became second-in-command of a tank company on 19 October 1918, and relinquished it on 7 January 1919. He was demobilised on 1 September 1921, and was granted the rank of captain. The full citation for his DSO reads:
Wilfred Bion Awarded the Distinguished Service Order. [...] T./2nd Lt, Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, Tank Corps. For conspicuous gallantry, and devotion to duty. When in command of his tank in an attack he engaged a large number of enemy machine guns in strong positions, thus assisting the infantry to advance. When his tank was put out of action by a direct hit he occupied a section of trench with his men and machine guns and opened fire on the enemy. He moved about in the open, giving directions to other tanks when they arrived, and at one period fired a Lewis gun with great effect from the top of his tank. He also got a captured machine gun into action against the enemy, and when reinforcements arrived he took command of a company of infantry whose commander was killed. He showed magnificent courage and initiative in a most difficult situation. "Bion's daughter, Parthenope ... raises the question of just how (and how far) her father was shaped as an analyst by his wartime experiences...under[p]inning Bion's later concern with the coexistence of regressed or primitive proto-mental states alongside more sophisticated one".[7]
Career
After World War I, Bion studied history at Queen's College, Oxford, earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1922, then studying medicine at University College London. Initially attracted to London by the "strange new subject called psychoanalysis", he met and was impressed by Wilfred Trotter, an outstanding brain surgeon who published the famous Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War in 1916, based on the horrors of the First World War. This was to prove an important influence on Bion's interest in group behavior. Having qualified in medicine by means of the Conjoint Diploma (MRCS England, LRCP London) in 1930[8] Bion spent seven years in psychotherapeutic training at the Tavistock Clinic, an experience he regarded, in retrospect, as having had some limitations. It did, however, bring him into fruitful contact with Samuel Beckett. He wanted to train in Psychoanalysis and in 1938 he began a training analysis with John Rickman, but this was brought to an end by the Second World War. He was recommissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant on 1 April 1940, and worked in a number of military hospitals including Northfield Military Hospital (Hollymoor Hospital, Birmingham) where he initiated the first Northfield Experiment. These ideas on the psychoanalysis of groups were then taken up and developed by others such as S. H. Foulkes, Rickman, Bridger, Main and Patrick De Mare. The entire group at Tavistock had in fact been taken into the army, and were working on new methods of treatment for psychiatric casualties (those suffering post-traumatic stress, or "shell shock" as it was then known.) Out of this his pioneering work in group dynamics, associated with the "Tavistock group", Bion wrote the influential Experiences in Groups, London: Tavistock, 1961. Experiences in Groups was an important guide for the group psychotherapy and encounter group movements beginning in the 1960s, and quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields. During the war Bion's wife, Betty Jardine, gave birth to a daughter, but, tragically, she died soon afterwards in 1945. His daughter, Parthenope, became a highly regarded psychoanalyst. She herself died prematurely, in a car crash in Italy in 1998. Returning to the Tavistock Clinic Bion chaired the Planning Committee that reorganized the Tavistock into the new Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, alongside a new Tavistock Clinic which was part of the newly launched National Health Service. As his interest in psychoanalysis increased, he underwent training analysis, between 19461952, with Melanie Klein. He met his second wife, Francesca, at the Tavistock in 1951. He joined a research group of Klein's students (including Hanna Segal and Herbert Rosenfeld), who were developing Klein's theory of the paranoid-schizoid position, for use in the analysis of patients with psychotic disorders, and became a leading member of the Kleinian school. He produced a series of highly original and influential papers (collected as "Second Thoughts", 1967) on the analysis of schizophrenia, and the specifically cognitive, perceptual, and identity problems
Wilfred Bion of such patients. Bion's theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, eventually revealed radical departures from both Kleinian and Freudian theory.[9] At one point, he attempted to understand thoughts and thinking from a mathematical and scientific point of view, believing there to be too little precision in the existing vocabulary, a process culminating in "The Grid".[10] Later he abandoned the complex, abstract applications of mathematics, and the Grid, and developed a more intuitive approach, epitomised in the Memoir of the Future. He spent his later years in Los Angeles, California, before returning to the UK shortly before his death at Oxford. He left a reputation which has steadily grown both in Britain and internationally. Some commentators consider that his writings are often gnomic and irritating, but never fail to stimulate. He defies categorisation as a follower of Klein or of Freud. While Bion is most well known outside of the psychoanalytic community for his work on group dynamics, the psychoanalytic conversation that explores his work is mainly concerned with his theory of thinking, and his model of the development of a capacity for thought.
Wilfred Bion the main focus of Bion's interest after his second (Kleinian) analysis.
Bion on thinking
"During the 1950s and 1960s, Bion transformed Melanie Klein's theories of infantile phantasy...into an epistemological "theory of thinking" of his own."[18] Bion used as his starting point the phenomenology of the analytic hour, highlighting the two principles of "the emergence of truth and mental growth. The mind grows through exposure to truth."[19] The foundation for both mental development and truth are, for Bion, emotional experience.[20] The evolution of emotional experience into the capacity for thought, and the potential derailment of this process, are the primary phenomena described in Bion's model. Through his hypothesized alpha and beta elements, Bion provides a language to help one think about what is occurring during the analytic hour. These tools are intended for use outside the hour in the clinicians reflective process. To attempt to apply his models during the analytic session violates the basic principle whereby "Bion had advocated starting every session 'without memory, desire or understanding'his antidote to those intrusive influences that otherwise threaten to distort the analytic process."[21]
Wilfred Bion analyst has interpreted them. Failure of alpha-function means the patient cannot dream and therefore cannot sleep. As alpha-function makes the sense impressions of the emotional experience available for conscious and dreamthought the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up. (1962, pp. 6-7)
O: The ineffable
As his thought continued to develop, Bion came to use "reversible perspective as an analytic tool for examining psychoanalytic phenomena from both sides to get a stereoscopic (binocular) perspective"[37]something which may be linked to his increasing concern with what he termed "O"the unknowable, or ultimate Truth. "In aesthetics, Bion is a neo-Kantian for whom reality, or the thing-in-itself (O), can only be known through its sensory perception."[38] In terms of individual experience, Bion would speak of "an intense catastrophic emotional explosion O"[39] which could only be known through its aftereffects. Where before he had valorised knowledge (+K), now he would speak as well of "resistance to the shift from transformations involving K (knowledge) to transformations involving O...of resistance to the unknowable".[40] Hence his injunctions to the analyst to eschew memory and desire, to "bring to bear a diminution of the 'light'a penetrating beam of darkness; a reciprocal of the searchlight. If any object existed, however faint, it would show up very clearly".[41]
Wilfred Bion
Reverie
Bion's concept of maternal "reverie" as the capacity to sense (and make sense of) what is going on inside the infant[42] has been an important element in post-Kleinian thought: "reverie is an act of faith in unconscious process...essential to alpha-function'"[43] It is considered the equivalent of Stern's attunement, or Winnicott's maternal preoccupation. In therapy, the analyst's use of "reverie" is an important tool in his/her response to the patient's material: "it is this capacity for playing with a patient's images that Bion encouraged".[44]
Late Bion
"For the later Bion, the psychoanalytic encounter was itself a site of turbulence, 'a mental space for further ideas which may yet be developed'."[45] In his unorthodox quest to maintain such "mental space", Bion "spent the final years of his long and distinguished professional life...[writing] a futuristic trilogy in which he is answerable to no one but himself. A Memoir of the Future." If we accept that "Bion introduced a new form of pedagogy in his writings...[via] the density and non-linearity of his prose",[46] it comes perhaps to a peak here in what he himself termed "a fictitious account of psychoanalysis including an artificially constructed dream...science fiction".[47] We may conclude at least that he achieved his stated goal therein: "To prevent someone who KNOWS from filling the empty space".[48]
Further reading
Bleandonu, Gerard, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works. Free Association Books, London, 1994 Grinberg, Leon. New Introduction to the Work of Bion. Karnac Books, London, 1977 Symington, Neville and Joan The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion. Routledge, London, 1996 Michael Eigen, The Electrified Tightrope (London 2004) Michael Eigen, "Contact With the Depths", London, 2011. Lpez-Corvo, Rafael, The Dictionary of the Work of W.R. Bion, Karnac Books, London, 2003 Donald Meltzer, Dream-Life: A Re-Examination of the Psycho-Analytical Theory and Technique Publisher: Karnac Books, 1983, ISBN 0-902965-17-4 Donald Meltzer, Studies in Extended Metapsychology: Clinical Applications of Bion's Ideas. Perthshire: Clunie Press, 1986 Paulo Cesar Sandler, The Language of Bion: A Dictionary of Concepts (London 2005) Meg Harris Williams,Bion's Dream: A Reading of the Autobiographies London: Karnac, 2010
References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (London 1994) p. 136 James T. Grotstein, A Beam of Intense Darkness (London 2007). pp. 9-10. Neville Symington, Narcissism: A New Theory (London 2003). p. 97. http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Psychoanalysis& action=edit Malcolm Pines, 'Bion, Wilfred Ruprecht (18971979)' (http:/ / www. oxforddnb. com/ view/ article/ 51057), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2007. . Retrieved 2008-09-10. [6] Medal card for Bion, Wilfred Ruprecht (http:/ / www. nationalarchives. gov. uk/ documentsonline/ details-result. asp?Edoc_Id=1455108), Documents Online, The National Archives (fee may be required to view full original medal card). Retrieved 2008-09-10. [7] Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis (Oxford 2005) p. 193 and n [8] The Medical Directory, 125th edition, 1969 [9] Symington J. & Symington N.. The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion (London 1996) pp. 12-13 [10] Bion: Basic Assumptions & The Grid (http:/ / www. psyche. com/ psyche/ mt/ archives/ 000021. html) [11] W. R. Bion, Experiences in Groups (London 1980) p. 66 [12] Margaret J. Rioch, "The Work of Wilfred Bion on Groups", 1970.
Wilfred Bion
[13] Page 194 to 196, Irvin D. Yalom, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, third edition, Basic Books (1985), hardback, ISBN 0-465-08447-8 [14] Bion, Experiences p. 74 [15] Bion, Experiences p. 62 [16] Bion, Experiences p. 161 [17] Bion, Experiences p. 164-5 [18] Jacobus, p. 174 [19] Symington & Symington, 1996, pp. 2-3 [20] Bion, 1962, Intro & pp 5-6. [21] Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (London 1990) p. 10 [22] Grotstein, in Richard Morgan-Jones, The Body of the Organisation and its Health (London 2010) p. 26 [23] Jacobus, p. 206-7 [24] Michael Parsons, The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (London 2000) p. 198 [25] Jacobus, p. 193 [26] Jacobus, p. 192 [27] Jacobus, p. 233 [28] Jacobus, p. 240 [29] Parsons, p. 67 and p. 48 [30] Parsons, p. 48 [31] Jacobus, p. 222 [32] Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis (London 2005) p. 43 [33] Jacobus, p. 261 [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] Jacobus, p. 243 F. Horacio Etchegoyen, The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique (London 2005) p. 770-2 Ruth R. Malcolm, "As if", in Robin Anderson ed., Clinical Lectures on Klein and Bion (London 1982) p. 116 and p. 118 James S. Grotstein, But at the Same Time and on Another Level (London 2009) p. 337 Jacobus, p. 227 Quoted in Jacobus, p. 251n Jacobus, p. 251-2 Bion quoted in Patrick Casement, On Learning from the Patient (London 1990) p. 223 Jacobus, p. 160n Michael Parsons, p. 200-1 Patrick Casement, On Learning from the Patient (London 1990) p. 37 Jacobus, p. 258 Grotstein, Beam p. 17 Bion, quoted in Jacobus, p. 261 Bion, quoted in Jacobus, p. 259
Bibliography
Works by Bion
Bion, W.R. (1940). The war of nerves. In Miller and Crichton-Miller (Eds.), The Neuroses in War (pp.180 200). London: Macmillan, 1940. Bion, W.R. (1943). Intra-group tensions in therapy, Lancet 2: 678/781 Nov.27, 1943, in Experiences in Groups (1961). Bion, W. R.(1946). Leaderless group project, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 10: 77-81. Bion, W.R. (1973). Bion's Brazilian Lectures 1. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora. [Reprinted in one volume London: Karnac Books 1990]. Bion, W. R. (1974). Bion's Brazilian Lectures 2. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora. [Reprinted in one volume London: Karnac Books 1990]. Bion, W.R. (1975). A Memoir of the Future, Book 1 The Dream. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora. [Reprinted in one volume with Books 2 and 3 and The Key London: Karnac Books 1991]. Bion, W. R. (1976a). Evidence. Bulletin British Psycho-Analytical Society N 8, 1976. Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Four Papers (1987).
Bion, W. R. (1948a). Psychiatry in a time of crisis, British Journal of Medical Psychology, vol.XXI.
Wilfred Bion
Bion, W. R. (1948b). Experiences in groups, Human Relations, vols. I-IV, 19481951, Reprinted in Experiences in Groups (1961). Bion, W. R. (1950). The imaginary twin, read to the British Psychoanalytical Society, Nov.1,1950. In Second Thoughts (1967). Bion, W.R. (1976b). Interview, with A.G.Banet jr., Group and Organisation Studies, vol.1 No.3 (pp.268 285). September 1976. Bion, W.R. (1977a). A Memoir of the Future, Book 2 The Past Presented. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora. [Reprinted in one volume with Books 1 and 3 and The Key London: Karnac Books 1991]. Bion, W.R. (1977b). Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora. [Reprinted London: Karnac Books 1989].
Bion, W. R. (1952). Group dynamics: a review. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol.33:, Reprinted in M. Klein, P. Heimann & R. Money-Kyrle (editors). New Directions in Psychoanalysis (pp.440477). Tavistock Publications, London, 1955. Reprinted in Experiences in Groups (1961). Bion, W. R. (1954). Notes on the theory of schizophrenia. Read in the Symposium "The Psychology of Schizophrenia" at the 18th International psycho-analytical congress, London, 1953 International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol.35: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967). Bion, W. R. (1955a). The Development of Schizophrenic Thought, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol.37: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967).
Bion, W. R. (1977c). On a Quotation from Freud, in Borderline Personality Disorders, New York: International University Press. Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Four Papers(1987). [Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Other Works. London: Karnac Books, 1994]. Bion, W. R. (1977d). Emotional Turbulence, in Borderline Personality Disorders, New York: International University Press. Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Four Papers(1987). [Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Other Works. London: Karnac Books, 1994]. Bion, W. R. (1977e). Seven Servants. New York: Jason Aronson inc. (includes Elements of Psychoanalysis, Learning from Experience, Transformations, Attention and Interpretation). Bion, W.R. (1978). Four Discussions with W.R. Bion. Perthshire: Clunie Press. [Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Other Works. London: Karnac Books, 1994]. Bion, W.R. (1979a). Making the best of a Bad Job. Bulletin British Psycho-Analytical Society, February 1979. Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Four Papers (1987). [Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Other Works. London: Karnac Books, 1994]. Bion, W.R. (1979b). A Memoir of the Future, Book 3 The Dawn of Oblivion. Perthshire: Clunie Press. [Reprinted in one volume with Books 1 and 2 and The Key London: Karnac Books 1991]. Bion, W.R. (1980). Bion in New York and So Paolo. (Edited by F.Bion). Perthshire: Clunie Press. Bion, W.R. (1981). A Key to A Memoir of the Future. (Edited by F.Bion). Perthshire: Clunie Press. [Reprinted in one volume London: Karnac Books 1991]. Bion, W.R. (1982). The Long Weekend: 1897-1919 (Part of a Life). (Edited by F.Bion). Abingdon: The Fleetwood Press. Bion, W.R. (1985). All My Sins Remembered (Another part of a Life) and The Other Side of Genius: Family Letters. (Edited by F.Bion). Abingdon: The Fleetwood Press. Bion, W.R. (1985). Seminari Italiani. (Edited by F.Bion). Roma: Borla. Bion, W.R. (1987). Clinical Seminars and Four Papers, (Edited by F.Bion). Abingdon: Fleetwood Press. [Reprinted in Clinical Seminars and Other Works. London: Karnac Books, 1994]. Bion, W.R. (1992). Cogitations. (Edited by F.Bion). London: Karnac Books.
Bion, W. R. (1955b ). Language and the schizophrenic, in M. Klein, P. Heimann and R. Money-Kyrle (editors). New Directions in Psychoanalysis (pp.220 239).Tavistock Publications, London, 1955. Bion, W. R. (1957a). The differentiation of the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities, International Journal of Psycho Analysis, vol.38: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967). Bion, W. R. (1957b). On Arrogance, 20th International Congress of Psycho-Analysis, Paris, in Second Thoughts (1967).
Bion, W. R. (1958). On Hallucination, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,vol.39, part 5: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967).
Bion, W. R. (1959). Attacks on linking, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol.40: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967). Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups, London: Tavistock.
Bion, W. R. (1962a). A theory of thinking, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol.43: . Reprinted in Second Thoughts (1967). Bion, W. R. (1962b). Learning from Experience London: William Heinemann. [Reprinted London: Karnac Books,]. Reprinted in Seven Servants (1977e). Bion, W. R. (1963). Elements of Psycho-Analysis, London: William Heinemann. [Reprinted London: Karnac Books]. Reprinted in Seven Servants (1977e). Bion, W. R. (1965). Transformations. London: William Heinemann [Reprinted London: Karnac Books 1984]. Reprinted in Seven Servants (1977e). Bion, W. R. (1966). Catastrophic change, Bulletin of The British Psychoanalytical Society, 1966, N5.
Wilfred Bion
Bion, W. R. (1967a). Second Thoughts, London: William Heinemann. [Reprinted London: Karnac Books 1984]. Bion, W. R. (1967b). Notes on memory and desire, Psycho-analytic Forum, vol. II n 3 (pp.271 280). [reprinted in E. Bott Spillius (Ed.). Melanie Klein Today Vol. 2 Mainly Practice (pp.1721) London: Routledge 1988]. Bion, W.R. (1997a). Taming Wild Thoughts. (Edited by F.Bion). London: Karnac Books. Bion, W.R. (1997b). War Memoirs 1917 - 1919. (Edited by F.Bion). London: Karnac Books.
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Bion, W. R.(1970). Attention and Interpretation. London: Tavistock Publications. [Reprinted London: Karnac Books 1984]. Reprinted in Seven Servants (1977e).
Bion, Wilfred R (1999). Seminar held in Paris, 10 July 1978. Transcribed by Francesca Bion Sept
External links
"The Days of our Lives" by Francesca Bion (http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/days.htm) "A Seminar Held in Paris" by Bion, online in full (http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/bion78.htm) Useful summary of Bion - Robert Young book (http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap148h.html) Bion: Basic Assumptions & The Grid (http://www.psyche.com/psyche/mt/archives/000021.html) Hanna Segal, "Beta-Elements" (http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/beta-elements)
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