36 Facts About Wilfred Bion

Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.

Wilfred Bion first entered the war zone on 26 June 1917, 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.

Wilfred Bion was demobilised on 1 September 1921, and was granted the rank of captain.

Wilfred Bion 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.

Wilfred Bion 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.

Wilfred Bion showed magnificent courage and initiative in a most difficult situation.

Wilfred Bion 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 advent of the Second World War.

Wilfred Bion 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 where he initiated the first Northfield Experiment.

Wilfred Bion met his second wife, Francesca, at the Tavistock in 1951.

Wilfred Bion joined a research group of Klein's students, who were developing Klein's theory of the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions, for use in the analysis of patients with psychotic disorders.

Wilfred Bion produced a series of highly original and influential papers on the analysis of schizophrenia, and the specifically cognitive, perceptual, and identity problems of such patients.

In 1968, Wilfred Bion moved to Los Angeles, California, where he remained until 1977.

Wilfred Bion left a reputation which has grown steadily both in Britain and internationally.

Wilfred Bion defies categorisation as a follower of Klein or of Freud.

Wilfred Bion was a potent and original contributor to psychoanalysis.

Wilfred Bion was one of the first to analyse patients in psychotic states using an unmodified analytic technique; he extended existing theories of projective processes and developed new conceptual tools.

Wilfred Bion's work has left a strong impression on a number of contemporary psychoanalytic thinkers, including Antonino Ferro, Thomas Ogden, or Elias Mallet da Rocha Barros.

Jung: Wilfred Bion attended Jung's 1935 lectures at the Tavistock Clinic, in which Wilfred Bion was an active participant.

Wilfred Bion performed a lot of group experiments when he was put in charge of the training wing of a military hospital.

Wilfred Bion posited the presence of "anonymous" contributions to a group as the foundations for "a successful system of evasion and denial".

In Experiences in Groups, Wilfred Bion asserted that whenever a group is formed, it seeks a leader to follow.

Wilfred Bion argues that in every group, two groups are actually present: the work group, and the basic assumption group.

Wilfred Bion specifically identified three basic assumptions: dependency, fight-flight, and pairing.

Wilfred Bion believed that interpretation by the therapist of this aspect of group dynamics would, whilst being resisted, result in potential insight regarding effective, co-operative group work.

Wilfred Bion considered that "the three basic-assumption groups seem each in turn to be aggregates of individuals sharing out between them the characteristics of one character in the Oedipal situation".

Behind the Oedipal level Wilfred Bion postulated the existence of still more primitive, part-object phantasies; and "the more disturbed the group, the more easily discernible are these primitive phantasies and mechanisms".

Wilfred Bion created a theory of thinking based on changing beta elements into alpha elements.

Wilfred Bion took for granted that the infant requires a mind to help it tolerate and organize experience.

For Wilfred Bion, thoughts exist prior to the development of an apparatus for thinking.

Bizarre objects, according to Wilfred Bion, are impressions of external objects which, by way of projective identification, form a "screen" that's imbued with characteristics of the subject's own personality; they form part of his interpretation of object relations theory.

Wilfred Bion believed such moments to feel both ominous and turbulent, threatening a loss of anchorage in everyday 'narrative' security.

Wilfred Bion would speak of "an intense catastrophic emotional explosion O," which could only be known through its aftereffects.

Wilfred Bion was making links with the apophatic method used by contemplative thinkers such as St John of the Cross, a writer quoted many times by Bion.

Wilfred Bion was well aware that our perception and our attention often blind us to what genuinely and strikingly is new in every moment.

Wilfred Bion proposed that the mother serves as a psychological "container" for the infant's primitive anxieties and unprocessed emotional experiences.

Wilfred Bion emphasized that this process requires the analyst to maintain a state of mind free from "memory and desire" to fully receive the patient's projections.