Biography

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Biography
Name Wilfred Ruprecht Bion(1897-1979)
Bio Born in India in 1897, W. R. Bion first came to England at the age of 8 to receive his schooling. During the First World War he served in France as a tank commander and was awarded the DSO and the Legion of Honor. After reading history at Queen's College, Oxford, he studied medicine at University College, London, before a growing interest in psychoanalysis led him to undergo training analyses with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes, his researches culminating in the publication of a series of influential papers later produced in book-form as Experiences in Groups. Abandoning his work in this field in favor of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of Psycho-Analysis (1956-1962) and President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society (1962-1965). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979.
Main works Over 40 published books, the mainly group related works are as follows A Memoir of the Future Experiences in Groups (1961) http//hum.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/1/3/314?cknck
Book to explain WRB Dictionary of the Work of W. R. Bion (http//books.google.com/books?idFW1q_UcdX_UCpgPA1lpgPR9dqDictionaryoftheWorkofW.R.Bionpsp9sigHQ2YLQBSxIiHsmF_i5zEZuOym8Q)
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Biography
Main works (1961)Experiences in Groups. Tavistock. (1962) Learning from Experience. Heinemann reprinted Karnac. (1963), Elements of Psycho-analysis. Heinemann reprinted Karnac. (1965)Transformations. Heinemann reprinted Karnac, 1984. (1967) Attention and Interpretation. Tavistock reprinted Karnac, 1984. (1967) Second Thoughts. Heinemann reprinted Karnac, 1984. (1973, 1974) Brazilian Lectures, 2 vols. Rio de Janeiro Imago Editora reprinted in one volume Karnac, 1990. (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 A Key Karnac,1991. (1977). 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 A Key Karnac,1991. (1979). A Memoir of the Future, Book 3 The Dawn of Oblivion. Rio de Janeiro Imago Editora reprinted in one volume with Books 1 and 2 and A Key Karnac,1991. (1981). A Key to A Memoir of the Future. Strath Tay Clunie reprinted in one volume with Books 1, 2 and 3 and A Key Karnac,1991. (1982).). The Long Weekend 1897-1919. Part of a Life. Abingdon Fleetwood Press reprinted Free Association Books, 1986. (1985). All My Sins Remembered Another Part of a Life and The Other Side of Genius Family Letters. Abingdon Fleetwood Press. (1992) Cogitations. Karnac.
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Main Theory About Group
By participating in groups, the human has
different ways of reacting. Two kinds of tendency
appear one is directed toward the
accomplishment of the task and the other seems to
oppose it. Work is obstructed by a more primary,
regressive activity, characteristic of the
id-function. Three Main Concepts Basic
Assumptions refers to the existence of a common,
unanimous and anonymous opinion at any given
moment tells us something about the content of
this opinion, allowing greater insight into the
emotional phenomena expressed in groups. Basic
assumptions are shaped by intense emotions of
primitive origin and are powerful examples of the
workings of unconscious phantasy. Their existence
helps to determine the organization that the
group will adopt and also the way in which it
will approach its tasks. Therefore, the group
culture will always show evidence of the
underlying basic assumptions active a any given
time. The underlying emotional impulses in a
group expresses a shared phantasy of an
omnipotent or magic type as to how to achieve its
goals. These are often irrational, working in
unconscious ways, often opposed to the conscious
rational opinions of the group members. Group
Mentality Group mentality is the container of
all the contributions made by the members of the
group Work Group
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Comments

• Bion's noticeable influence on experiential and
  empirical studies of group dynamics, leadership,
  and group relations
• devised a way of working with groups of them that
  gave them back their self-esteem and willingness
  to fight
• he elaborated a whole theory of mental
  functioning around the concepts of the container
  and the contained

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BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M.
Younghttp//human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap14
8h.html
Some content cited from the book

• This view does not go far enough... I think that
  the central position in group dynamics is
  occupied by the more primitive mechanisms which
  Melanie Klein has described as peculiar to the
  paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. In
  other words, I feel... that it is not simply a
  matter of the incompleteness of the illumination
  provided by Freud's discovery of the family group
  as the prototype of all groups, but the fact that
  this incompleteness leaves out the source of the
  main emotional drives of the group (ibid.). 
• Further investigation shows that each basic
  assumption contains features that correspond so
  closely with extremely primitive part objects
  that sooner or later psychotic anxiety,
  appertaining to these primitive relationships, is
  released. These anxieties, and the mechanisms
  peculiar to them, have already been displayed in
  psychoanalysis by Melanie Klein, and her
  descriptions tally well with the emotional
  states 
• far different either from the overt task of the
  group or even from the tasks that would appear to
  be appropriate to Freud's view of the group as
  based on the family group. But approached from
  the angle of psychotic anxiety, associated with
  phantasies of primitive part object
  relationships... the basic assumption phenomena
  appear far more to have the characteristics of
  defensive reactions to psychotic anxiety, and to
  be not so much at variance with Freud's views as
  supplementary to them. In my view, it is
  necessary to work through both the stresses that
  appertain to family patterns and the still more
  primitive anxieties of part object relationships.
  In fact I consider the latter to contain the
  ultimate sources of all group behavior (p. 476). 

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BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M.
Younghttp//human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap14
8h.html

• In Bion's view, then, what matters in individual
  and group behavior is more primitive than the
  Freudian level of explanation. The ultimate
  sources of our distress are psychotic anxieties,
  and much of what happens in individuals and
  groups is a result of defenses erected against
  psychotic anxieties, so that we do not have to
  endure them consciously. Bion says of the group, 
• My impression is that the group approximates too
  closely, in the minds of the individuals
  composing it, to very primitive phantasies about
  the contents of the mother's body. The attempt to
  make a rational investigation of the dynamics of
  the group is therefore perturbed by fears, and
  mechanisms for dealing with them, which are
  characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position.
  The investigation cannot be carried out without
  the stimulation and activation of those levels...
  the elements of the emotional situation are so
  closely allied to phantasies of the earliest
  anxieties that the group is compelled, whenever
  the pressure of anxiety becomes too great, to
  take defensive action (Bion, 1955, p. 456). 
• The psychotic anxieties in question involve
  splitting and projective identification and are
  characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid and
  depressive positions, now as group processes (p.
  457). According to Bion, the move from the
  individual to the group does not raise new issues
  about explanation. He says a little further on,
  'The apparent difference between group psychology
  and individual psychology is an illusion produced
  by the fact that the group brings into prominence
  phenomena which appear alien to an observer
  unaccustomed to using the group' (p. 461).

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BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M.
Younghttp//human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap14
8h.html

• At the heart of his ideas about groups is the
  observation that although groups are normally set
  up to pursue sensible and realistic goals -- he
  calls this the work group -- they inevitably
  from time to time fall into madness, which he
  calls basic assumption functioning. Bion
  specified three types of basic assumption
  functioning - dependency, pairing and
  fight-flight. You can read about these in the
  book, and you can ponder others bids for being a
  highly-regarded disciple in the writings of those
  who profess to have discovered a fourth (Hopper,
  1997, 2003) basic assumption and a fifth
  (Lawrence et al., 1996). I am rather regretful
  that these forms of psychotic functioning have
  been spelled out and enumerated. In conferences
  and discussions about group functioning there is
  a tendency to become giddy about noticing which
  of these modes the group is in. I think this can
  too easily occur at the expense of pondering the
  texture and meaning of the group process without
  too quick a resort to Aha! and labels. Each
  group, in my opinion, is entitled to its own
  narrative, vocabulary and rhetoric.