Wilfred Bion
| Wilfred Bion | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion 8 September 1897 Mathura, North-Western Provinces, India |
| Died | 28 August 1979 (aged 81) Oxford, England |
| Occupation | psychoanalyst |
| Known for |
Psychoanalysis of Group Process The Psychoanalysis of Thinking and Learning from Experience Object relations theory Containment theory |
| Spouse(s) | Betty Jardine Francesca Bion |
| Children | Parthenope Bion Talamo, Nicola Bion, Julian Bion |
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (/biːˈɒn/; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential British psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
Wilfred Bion was a potent and original contributor to psychoanalysis. He was one of the first to analyze patients in psychotic states using an unmodified analytic technique; he extended existing theories of projective processes and developed new conceptual tools. The degree of collaboration between Hanna Segal, Wilfred Bion and Herbert Rosenfeld in their work with psychotic patients during the late 1950s, and their discussions with Melanie Klein at the time, means that it is not always possible to distinguish their exact individual contributions to the developing theory of splitting, projective identification, unconscious phantasy and the use of countertransference. As Donald Meltzer (1979, 1981), Denis Carpy (1989, p. 287), and Michael Feldman (2009, pp. 33, 42) have pointed out, these three pioneering analysts not only sustained Klein’s clinical and theoretical approach, but through an extension of the concept of projective identification and countertransference they deepened and expanded it. In Bion’s clinical work and supervision the goal remains insightful understanding of psychic reality through a disciplined experiencing of the transference–countertransference, in a way that promotes the growth of the whole personality.
'Bion's ideas are highly unique', so that he 'remained larger than life to almost all who encountered him'. He has been considered by Neville Symington as possibly "the greatest psychoanalytic thinker...after Freud".
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:
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