Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
Early life and military service
Bion was born in Mathura, North-Western Provinces, India, and educated at Bishop's Stortford College in England. 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 Légion d'honneur. He 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. He was demobilised on 1 September 1921, and was granted the rank of captain. The full citation for his DSO reads:
"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".
Education and early career
After World War I, Bion studied history at The Queen's College, Oxford, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1922, before 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 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 advent of the Second World War.
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 (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's papers describing his work of the 1940s were compiled much later and appeared together in 1961 in his influential book, Experiences in Groups and other papers. It was less a guide for the therapy of individuals within or by the group, than an exploration of the processes set off by the complex experience of being in a group. The book quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields.
In 1945, during the Second World War, Bion's wife Betty Jardine gave birth to a daughter, but Betty died a few days afterwards. His daughter, Parthenope, became a psychoanalyst in Italy, and often lectured and wrote about her father's work. Parthenope died, together with her 18-year-old daughter Patrizia, in a car crash in Italy in July 1998.