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The first volume of Wilfred Bion's autobiography, The Long Week-End, covered the period up to 1919 when he was demobilized from the army and for the first time had to face civilian life as an adult, unqualified for any profession, or indeed for any occupation by which he might earn his living. Although incomplete and only in first draft, I wanted to publish the remainder of what he wrote; but it leaves us with a thirty-year blank and, even more unfortunately, an abiding impression of unrelieved gloom and profound dislike of himself.
This sad, self-searching testimony would on its own present a false picture of the life of a man who came to derive great happiness and reward from his marriage, family and work. The clearest evidence of this is provided by his letters to us, written with no audience in mind and no need to lay stress on his sins of omission, confident of our love and understanding. Almost all his creative thinking and writing were done during these years when he was at last released from the confines of war, bereavement and a sense of hopelessness.
We make public some of these private communications because they tell the reader so much – not about us, his wife and children, but about him, the husband and father. We are proud to have been his family and the recipients of his love.
Francesca Bion
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
1984