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The name Wilfred Bion has begun to appear with considerable frequency in the world of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. When I first entered analysis with him the late 60s, he was either unknown among American therapists or known by a few as a “group therapist.” Once he had been brought to Los Angeles from London by a small group of enthusiastic followers, he opened an office and almost did not survive, so small was his case load for quite some time. His reputation, already growing in England and especially in South America by that time, had not penetrated the American psychoanalytic scene, which was then dominated by what Lacan has called “the New York School” of ego psychology. American psychoanalysis was very loyal then to Anna Freud, who did her best to keep Klein out of this country (Ralph Greenson, personal communication). Time has passed, and now Bion has begun to emerge as one of the most significant analysts of our time. Many consider that his works equal or even surpass those of Freud and certainly of his analyst, Melanie Klein.
The question was often asked of him as to why he left London for Los Angeles. He would often answer, “In London I was so loaded down with honours that I nearly sank without a trace.” Behind this modest circumspection there may lie a poignantly tragic truth, one that the Symingtons explicate in their outstanding work on Bion. His leaving London may have had to do with the growing disenchantment with his post-Kleinian work, by which I mean his post-Kleinian intuitionistic work. Bion, who began his psychiatric career studying groups after World War II, had begun psychoanalytic training, was analyzed by Melanie Klein, and began to write a series of works on the analysis of psychotics that was to earn the respect of his fellow Kleinians and of the psychoanalytic world outside London (except for the United States).