On Bion's Technique1

In considering Bion's technique, we are fortunate to have his published writings on psychoanalysis, but also his personal notes — his “cogitations” — and the transcripts of the international talks and clinical seminars he gave in the late 1960s and '70s. In these writings, he is unusually forthright about what is involved in being a psychoanalyst. It is of note that, at the same time, he is also largely private about what is happening in his countertransference.

Bion was born in India and sent to a British boarding school at the age of 8. He was 17 at the outbreak of the First World War and fought in the tank regiment (tanks were chosen by him, he said, out of a curiosity for the “new weapon”). His writings on the war are said to be some of the finest written, in which he describes the trauma he endured that was to remain with him all his life. Bion was decorated for his bravery.

After the war, Bion studied history/philosophy at Oxford University. He went on to train as a doctor and work as a therapist at the Tavistock clinic, with Samuel Beckett being one of his patients. Bion found his way to the British Psychoanalytical Society and an analysis with John Rickman, which was soon interrupted by World War II.

After the war in 1945, he resumed his analytic training and entered an analysis with Melanie Klein. After his analysis ended in 1953, he joined a small group led by Klein, together with Hanna Segal, Betty Joseph, and Elliott Jaques. The 1950s were an innovative time as Bion, Segal, and Rosenfeld drew on Klein's work to analyze psychotic patients using a conventional analytic setting.

In this paper, we join Bion in 1958, five years after his analysis

with Klein ended, when he began to write the personal notes that would be published after his death by his widow, Francesca Bion, as his