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Building on Bion: Roots
The International Library of Group Analysis
Edited by Malcolm Pines, Institute of Group Analysis, London
The aim of this series is to represent innovative work in group psychotherapy, particularly but
not exclusively, group analysis. Group analysis, taught and practised widely in Europe, derives
from the work of SH Foulkes.
other titles in the series
Building on Bion: Branches
Contemporary Developments and Applications of Bion’s Contributions
to Theory and Practice
Edited by Robert Lipgar and Malcolm Pines
ISBN 1 84310 711 2
International Library of Group Analysis 21
Dreams in Group Psychotherapy
Theory and Technique
Edited by Claudio Neri, Malcolm Pines and Robi Friedman
ISBN 1 85302 923 8
International Library of Group Analysis 18
Bion and Group Psychotherapy
Edited by Malcolm Pines
ISBN 1 85302 924 6
International Library of Group Analysis 15
Rediscovering Groups
A Psychoanalyst’s Journey Beyond Individual Psychology
Marshall Edelson and David N. Berg
ISBN 1 85302 726 X pb
ISBN 1 85302 725 1 hb
International Library of Group Analysis 9
Group
Claudio Neri
ISBN 1 85302 416 3
International Library of Group Analysis 8
Self Experiences in Group
Intersubjective and Self-Psychological Pathways to Human Understanding
Edited by Irene N.H. Harwood and Malcolm Pines
ISBN 1 85302 587 6 pb
ISBN 1 85302 596 8 hb
International Library of Group Analysis 4
Group Psychotherapy of the Psychoses
Concepts, Interventions and Contexts
Edited by Victor L. Schermer and Malcolm Pines
ISBN 1 85302 584 4 pb
ISBN 1 85302 583 6 hb
International Library of Group Analysis 2
Circular Reflections
Selected Papers on Group Analysis and Psychoanalysis
Malcolm Pines
ISBN 1 85302 492 9 pb
ISBN 1 85302 493 7 hb
International Library of Group Analysis 1
INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF GROUP ANALYSIS 20

Building on Bion: Roots

Origins and Context of Bion’s
Contributions to Theory and Practice
Edited by Robert M. Lipgar and Malcolm Pines

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

London and New York
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material
form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and
whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication)
without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms
of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London, England W1P 9HE. Applications for the copyright owner’s written
permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the
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Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may
result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in the United Kingdom in 2003

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd
116 Pentonville Road
London N1 9JB, England
and
29 West 35th Street, 10th fl.
New York, NY 10001-2299

www.jkp.com

Copyright ©2003 Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Building on Bion–roots : origins and context of Bion’s contributions to theory and
practice / edited by Robert M. Lipgar and Malcolm Pines.
p. cm. -- (International library of group analysis ; 20)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-84310-710-4 (pbk. :alk. paper)
1. Psychoanalysis. 2. Group psychoanalysis. 3. Bion, Wilfred R. (Wilfred Ruprecht),
1897-1979. I. Lipgar, Robert, M., 1928- II. Pines, Malcolm. III. Series.

BF173.B8775 2002
150.19’092--dc21 2002073972

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 84310 710 4

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by

Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
 Contents
PREFACE 7
Robert M. Lipgar, University of Chicago, and
Malcolm Pines, Group Analyst and Psychoanalyst
INTRODUCTION: EARLY BION 9
James S. Grotstein, School of Medicine, UCLA

Part I: Roots and Early Developments

1. Re-discovering Bion’s Experiences in Groups:
Notes and Commentary on Theory and Practice 29
Robert M. Lipgar, University of Chicago

2. Bion’s War Memoirs: A Psychoanalytical Commentary:

Living Experiences and Learning from them: Some
Early Roots of Bion’s Contributions to Psychoanalysis 59
Paulo Cesar Sandler, Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanálise
de Sao Paolo, Brazil

3. Gregariousness and the Mind: Wilfred Trotter

and Wilfred Bion 85
Nuno Torres, University of Essex

4. ‘Group Dynamics: A Re-view’ 118

Matias Sanfuentes, University of Essex

5. Anthropological Psychoanalysis: Bion’s Journeying in Italy 132

Claudio Neri, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
 Part II: Bion’s Context: Contemporaries
and Refinements
6. Pairing Bion and Foulkes: Towards a Metapsychosociology? 153
Dennis Brown, Institute of Group Analysis, London

7. Group Mentality and ‘Having a Mind’ 181

Robert Hinshelwood, University of Essex

8. Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification: The Fourth

Basic Assumption in the Unconscious Life of Groups
and Group-like Social Systems 198
Earl Hopper, Institute of Group Analysis, London

9. Building on ‘O’: Bion and Epistemology 226

Victor L. Schermer, Psychologist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

10. Bion and Foulkes on Empathy 254

Malcolm Pines, Institute of Group Analysis, London

THE CONTRIBUTORS 263

SUBJECT INDEX 265
AUTHOR INDEX 270
 Preface

In composing these two volumes, Building on Bion: Roots and Building on Bion:
Branches, we wanted to bring you, the reader, closer to the extraordinary depth
and breadth of Wilfred Bion’s thought and influence. Our interest in
advancing the exploration of the full range of human concerns that preoccu-
pied him was particularly stimulated in Turin, Italy, during the International
Centennial Conference on the Work and Life of Wilfred Bion, July 1997. We
were impressed there with the relevance and quality of new work being done
that extended and enlivened themes Bion had spent a lifetime developing. It
was clear that his life and work was having far-reaching influence. Since so
many contemporary analysts, theorists, and teachers in different disciplines
are working with his insights, we wanted to further the examination of the
roots of his genius as well as the many branches of his legacy.
Our plan was to bring together some of the best visions and re-visions
building on Bion’s writings. With the benefit of the Internet as well as our
ability to participate in a number of international gatherings of psychoana-
lysts, group analysts, psychologists and organizational consultants, we are
able now to present new work by authors from Italy, France, Argentina, Brazil,
the United States, as well as Great Britain. Collecting these papers seemed to
take on a life of its own, perhaps in Bion’s spirit, and these volumes found
their own shapes. Quite literally, Bion’s work was international, and
consistent with this we wanted to advance diverse dialogues international in
scope. In both volumes, readers will meet clinicians and theorists, individual
and group analysts, psychiatrists, psychologists and other social scientists
from different countries – men and women with different intellectual and pro-
fessional backgrounds sharing their encounters with Bion and his work,
offering us insights into Bion’s vision as well as their own discoveries and
re-visions. We believe you will find in these volumes Bion’s own passion for

7
8 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

learning and profound commitment to psychoanalysis and its pertinence to

human survival and development.
Volume I, Building on Bion: Roots, explores formative influences affecting
Bion’s emotional and intellectual development – the roots of his brilliance in
the spring of his career. Battlefield experiences in World War I, as well as
influences of Kant, Trotter, Freud and Klein are discussed. In these chapters,
there is a particular focus on his early work studying groups and how this
exploration relates to the work of other psychoanalysts, particularly Foulkes.
Bion’s experiences with groups are re-examined so that the spirit and shape of
his inquiry can be discovered by those not familiar with his writings and
revisited, perhaps rediscovered, by those who feel well acquainted with Bion.
In examining the context of Bion’s work and especially its relation to Foulkes’
theory and practice of group-analysis, we are given a deeper appreciation of
both pioneers and a much fuller understanding of both psychoanalysis and
group psychology.
The second volume, Building on Bion: Branches, as the title suggests,
explores the growing influence of Bion’s work as it is being applied well
beyond group psychology and individual psychoanalysis. These chapters
show the reach and further development of his theoretical and clinical explo-
rations. Specifically, there are applications in areas of leadership, organiza-
tional consultation, experiential learning as well as psychoanalysis. Also in
Volume II there are chapters relating Bion’s work to that of other geniuses
such as the pianist Glenn Gould and the psychologist/research methodologist
William Stephenson. The authors of these chapters bring us Bion’s originality
and passion as he sought the distinctive essence of psychoanalytic learning
and how such a pursuit and such learning can be shared and advanced. We
meet a spiritual Bion, a scientific Bion, and Bion apprehending Beauty. We
encounter Bion’s formative personal and intellectual journeys in Volume I; the
branches (and blossoms) of his insights and interests are in Volume II: Part 1
Working with Groups; Part 2 Application – Putting Bion’s Ideas to Work;
Part 3 Bion as Pioneer in Thinking, Learning and Transmitting Knowledge.

Robert M. Lipgar and Malcolm Pines

 Introduction
1
Early Bion

James S. Grotstein

The remarkable double life of Bion

Wilfred R. Bion’s reputation as a profound thinker and analytic contributor
continues to grow posthumously. An autodidact and polymath extraordinaire,
one who spoke from so many points of view (or ‘vertices’, as he would idio-
syncratically say), such as mathematics, science, poetry (particularly Ovid and
Milton), art, philosophy, religion, mysticism, logic, history, etc., he has left us
with twin legacies that have never until now, in these two volumes, been
brought into a unified synthesis: that of his contributions to the theory of
groups and that of his contributions to psychoanalysis. I remember when he
first came to Los Angeles in the nineteen-sixties, many group therapists
consulted him unaware that he was a psychoanalyst, and psychoanalysts
approached him unaware that he had been connected with groups.
Bion, a general psychiatrist before he became a psychoanalyst, had been
deeply interested in groups since he was a medical student. His collegial rela-
tionship with his former analyst, John Rickman, proved to be foundational for
his ideas about groups; not least amongst such ideas was the hope of
extending the benefits of psychiatry and psychotherapy to the general public.
Thus, Bion was a ‘social psychiatrist’ prior to becoming a psychoanalyst.
Much has been written about his subsequent alleged ‘desertion’ of group
relations work for individual psychoanalysis because of Melanie Klein’s
urging. Whether or not that is true, we do not know, but we do know, as many
of the contributors to this volume attest, that his views of group relations were

9
10 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

fundamentally enhanced by his new-found understanding of Klein’s concep-

tions of splitting, projective identification, the activities of the para-
noid–schizoid and depressive positions, the function of unconscious
phantasy, the manic defenses, the death instinct, and the operations of greed
and envy. What was less well known, at least amongst psychoanalysts, was
that his interest in group psychology continued, albeit as a minor chord, in his
psychoanalytic thinking and resurfaced as a major chord in Attention and Inter-
pretation (1970).
Bion, who was so keen on studying lines of authority in his group
relations work, was himself quite a contrast in his professional life. He always
questioned authority – ever since his ambivalent relationship to ‘Arf Arfer’ (his
infantile name for God) and especially as a tank commander in World War I, in
which he felt so disappointed in the failure of his commanders back at head-
quarters to comprehend the battle situation (Bion, 1982. See Sandler, Chapter
2 in Volume 1 for an in-depth study of Bion’s war experiences.) In fact, when
Bion came to Los Angeles, he refused to supervise analysts who came to him
for that purpose. He stated that he did not believe in supervision and would
cite his experiences in the war. He agreed only to offer a ‘second opinion.’2
Actually he was treated badly by ‘command’ in World War II as well. Bion
apparently had the ‘Nelson touch’.3
His experiences in World War I were formative for his personality and for
his later ideas about group psychology and psychoanalysis. Dr Paulo Sandler
(this volume) discusses the impact of Bion’s war experiences on his later
thinking and makes many correlations between those experiences and
specific psychoanalytic ideas he espoused. One idea in particular is note-
worthy, the respect for truth. Truth was later to become part of his metatheory
for psychoanalysis as ‘Absolute Truth’ and the ‘truth instinct,’ concepts that
are arguably profounder than Freud’s in regard to unconscious mental life.
Bion had become interested in group psychology early on in medical
school largely because of the influence upon him of a surgeon, Wilfred
Trotter. Nuno Torres (Chapter 3 in Volume 1) presents an account of their
relationship and convincingly details how important Trotter’s ideas were in
Bion’s later thinking, particularly the notion of ‘gregariousness.’ Torres raises
interesting questions about why Bion may not have cited him more often.
Bion’s formal venture into group work seems really to have begun when he
worked on the problem of officer selection while he was attached to the
Scottish Command of the British Army.4’5 The backdrop of military duty is
very important in understanding Bion’s future work with groups, particularly
 INTRODUCTION 11

at Northfield Hospital, where the task was to ‘re-moralize’ troops who had
become demoralized in combat.6 His experiences in the army served as a
backdrop for his later work with group relations. His Northfield experience
seems to have been unsuccessful (Harrison, 2000), however, and one of the
contributors to this present work, Dennis Brown (Chapter 6 in this volume),
in speculating on that issue, broadly discusses and compares Bion with
Foulkes, who also served at Northfield.
It was clear that his immersion in psychoanalytic training and his training
analysis with Klein was to become pivotal for his later thinking about groups.
Klein had conceived of a developmental state of mind in the infant that she
termed the ‘infantile psychosis,’7 included in which were such categories as
regression, projective identification, splitting, and the reversion to the use of
omnipotence, amongst others. Bion seems to have instantly grasped the appli-
cability of these ideas for understanding group psychology and revised his
earlier conceptions about groups in light of them, i.e., basic assumption
groups formed because of persecutory anxiety in the group and their
formation was due to splitting and projective identification. Soon enough
afterwards, thanks to his work with Klein and his analyses of psychotic
patients, he was able to conceive of deeper and more extensive parallels
between individual and group psychology and was able to redefine the group
as being basically an integral work group that includes members who are both
individuals and identified with the group. In fact, he began to conceive of the
individual self and the group self as being overlapping characteristics of
everyone. Individual psychology and group psychology thus became inter-
twined in his thinking, and eventually ‘basic assumptions’ sub-groups seemed
destined to emerge that would present unconscious resistances to the progress
of the work group. He called these basic assumption groups ‘pairing,’
‘fight–flight,’ and ‘dependency.’ They corresponded to resistances to progress
in individual analysis, e.g., pairing corresponds to the erotization of normal
dependency; fight–flight corresponds to the sado-masochistic, hostile, or
passive–aggressive stance; and dependency (pathological, not healthy)
suggests an omnipotent dependency that projects responsibility for growth
on others. It must be remembered, however, that these basic assumption des-
ignations, even when applied to the individual, retain their group character.
Sanfuentes (Chapter 4 in Volume 1) researches the differences between Bion’s
original publication of Group Dynamics: A Review (1952) and his altered
version of it (1955) and reveals how much the latter version reflects how
12 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

much Bion had come to respect Klein’s thinking and its applicability to
groups.
When one thinks about individual psychoanalysis, one thinks of
‘thinking,’ but when one thinks about groups, one often thinks of ‘group
processes’ as behaviour. Robert Hinshelwood (Chapter 7 in Volume 1)
addresses this issue frontally by suggesting that the group, the work-group in
particular, constitutes a group mind that thinks in order to achieve meaning.
He goes on to apply Bion’s elaborate psychoanalytic epistemology to group
thinking processes. Victor Schermer (Chapter 9 in Volume 1) also reviews
Bion’s psychoanalytic epistemology and applies it to group processes. Hanna
Biran (Volume 2) similarly discusses Bion’s concepts about thinking and
anti-thinking, i.e., alpha function and attacks on linking, and applies them to
group psychology.
Another feature of group work that was clarified by Bion was the nature
of anxiety in groups. Following Klein, he conceived of these primitive
anxieties as being psychotic in nature, and he also conceived that the
formation of the basic assumption sub-groups was due to ‘proto-mental states’
of anxiety, which became the forerunner of his now famous concept of ‘beta
elements’ (Bion, 1962). Lipgar (Volume 1, Chapter 1) cites two other subse-
quently conceived basic-assumption functions, (a) ‘oneness,’ as proposed by
Pierre Turquet (1974), and (b) “me-ness,” as proposed by W. Gordon
Lawrence, Alastair Bain, and Laurence Gould (1996). Hopper (Chapter 8 in
Volume 1) takes up a thread of an idea left by Bion that there may be yet
another basic-assumption process, one which he calls ‘incohesion: aggrega-
tion/massification,’ which occurs after the group has been subjected to
trauma.

The group identity of the individual and the individual

identity of the group: Bion’s ‘binocular vision’
What many analysts failed to realize was that Bion was far more invested in
the importance of the idea of the group or society than they had thought. In
fact, Bion makes society or culture at large, beginning with the infant and its
mother and the family as the first group, a basic dimension of normal mental
life. His discovery of the normal interpersonal role of projective identification
between infant and mother (Bion, 1959) and his notion of container/
contained (Bion, 1962) are prime expressions of this line of thought. ‘Man
always needs someone other than himself,’ he would say (personal communi-
cation). Bion goes farther, however, as he propounds the dialectic of
 INTRODUCTION 13

‘narcissism and socialism,’ which Gordon Lawrence discusses in Volume 2.

He seems to be stating that individual psychoanalysis (at least Kleinian) leaves
out the importance of the group dimension of the individual. As an individual
the person is one thing, but as a member of group (s)he is another. In other
words, each human being is defined by his/her personal individual identity
and by his/her group identity – in parallel with the fact that each group can
be thought of as a single whole and as a group composed of individuals. This
idea of reciprocity and balancing characterizes one of Bion’s most profound
8
ideas, that of binocular vision, an idea that seems to have emerged from his for-
mulation of ‘reversible perspectives’ (Bion, 1962), which he had originally
attributed to an aspect of resistance on the part of some psychotic patients but
later realized that it was also an important aspect of normal reflective
thinking.
Put another way, Bion created a paradigm change by adding this comple-
mentary dimension to the individual, one which can be summarized as
follows: the individual is both the responsible agent for the initiation of his
own will and at the same time is the unconscious medium through which the
will of others passes and unconsciously affects him so that his subsequent
behavior is comprehensible only by the consideration that he is behaving as if
his will is now identical to the will of the group or a division within the
group.9’10 Bion’s idea of groups was always balanced between the individual
and the group itself. Others, like Dalal (1998), emphasize the group over the
individual.
Bion (personal communication) often stated that man is born a dependent
creature and needs others for emotional support. The group idea was implicit
in these statements. The kind of dependency he had in mind was not just that
which Klein had propounded, i.e., the infant’s dependency on the breast.
What he clearly had in mind was what Joseph Lichtenberg (1989) terms the
need for ‘affiliation,’ i.e., a need to belong to a group.
Bion has often been compared and contrasted with another prominent
groupist, Michael Foulkes. Some of the contrasts seem to center around Bion’s
Spartan starkness, propriety, negativity, and discipline as opposed to the
allegedly more human and relating aspects of Foulkes. Dennis Brown
(Chapter 6 in Volume 1) undertakes the task of contrasting these men and
their ideas about groups and seeks to integrate them. Lipgar (Chapter 1 in
Volume 1) does something similar but takes another approach, that of decons-
tructing the myth of Bion’s starkness and remoteness. We begin to surmise
from both their contributions that Bion was more strictly ‘analytic’ and
14 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

Foulkes more ‘relational.’ It is almost as if Bion could be compared with Klein

and Foulkes with Winnicott.
Claudio Neri (Chapter 5 in Volume 1) takes a view similar to Brown’s, i.e.,
that Bion was too much into thought and not into affect-sharing as a function
of work groups. Yet Lipgar’s chapter (Chapter 1, this volume) leads us to
consider that these characterizations of Bion as too intellectual may be too
pat. He discusses Bion’s experiences in groups in detail and summarizes well
Bion’s attitude toward the importance of groups, and of relating within group
life in a subsection in his contribution: ‘Relationship to one’s group as
intrinsic to the full life of the individual.’

The mysterious ‘third’ in Bion’s theory of groups

Bion’s description of group phenomenology is vivid and is suggestive of what
might be called ESP (extrasensory perception) elements. He states that there is
such a thing as the psychology of the group but that the origins of this
psychology lie solely with the individuals comprising the group, but he also
seems to believe that the potential group-relating aspect within the individual
is activated by the group; i.e., the existence of the group evokes what we call
‘group psychology.’ How does this happen? Bion describes how individuals
become unconsciously caught up in different strands of the group process as if
they were puppets being controlled and manipulated by an invisible
puppeteer. Yet Bion did not believe that the group itself had an independent
agency. Agency in the group, consequently, became prime cause but remained
ineffable and inscrutable – as a mysterious, potentiating, synergistic
summation and transformation of the combined agencies of the individuals in
the group.
Recently, Ogden (1994, 1997) helped clarify the mystery of the
‘agency-at-large’ phenomenon in his formulation of the ‘analytic third
subject’ and particularly one aspect of it that he calls the ‘subjugating third
subject,’ the former of which designates the subjectivity of the relationship
between the analysand and the analyst, and the latter denoting a mysterious
‘virtual’ object that inhabits the potential space between the analysand and
analyst and represents a combination of the projective identifications of each.
This subjugating object thereafter seems to ‘subjugate’ the wills of the
analysand (as transference) and the analyst (as countertransference) and often
results in enactments.
My own version of this idea of a mysterious third designates the
‘dramaturge’ aspect of the ‘dreamer who dreams the dream,’ a subjective
 INTRODUCTION 15

presence in the unconscious who ‘knows’ what is on the agenda of the

‘dailies’ of the analysis and mysteriously directs each participant to play out
his role so that the unconscious theme can become explicated (Grotstein,
1981). However, I believe that there is more to the idea of the ‘third,’ or, to be
more general, to the inescapable tendency for subgroups to form within a
group. Abelin (1980, 1981) conceives of an early triangulation in infant
development that occurs prior to the Oedipal triangulation during Mahler’s
stage of rapprochement. This particular triangulation involves infant–
sibling–mother, whether the sibling is actual or phantasied. My own
extension of Abelin’s idea is that this earlier triangulation forms the basis for a
‘sibling family’ within the parental family. One particularly observes this
phenomenon in large families and especially in dysfunctional families where
an older sister or brother is looked up to for guidance by the younger siblings
in lieu of the parents. Ultimately, this ‘sibling’ family becomes the model for
the ‘gang’ organizations where an older brother becomes the head of the
younger family. My point here is that Abelin may offer us yet another model
for the formation of a subgroup within a group, in this case, a sibling or peer
subgroup that is in dialectical opposition to the work group analogized to the
parental family.
Yet another model for thirdness comes from Stein Bråten (1993), the
Norwegian sociologist who believes that the infant is born with an inherent
expectation of interaction with the other. He states:
The infant is born with a virtual other in mind who invites and permits
fulfilment by actual others in felt immediacy. Thus, the normal developing
learning mind recreates and transforms itself as a self-organizing dyad (i) in
self-engagement with the virtual other, as well as (ii) in engagement with
actual others who fill and affect the companion space of the virtual other
and, hence, are directly felt in presentational immediacy. (Bråten 1993,
p.26)
I understand Bråten to be saying that the infant is born with a ‘group instinct’
whereby it is especially preconditioned to anticipate engagements with others
by having an inherent ‘reserved space’ dedicated to interactions with them
(before they happen). This idea would help to confirm Bion’s thesis about the
inherent tropisms of ‘narcissism and socialism.’
16 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

Oedipus and the sphinx

Another idea of Bion’s that has applicability to the psychologies of both the
individual and the group is his notions of the Oedipus complex and the
sphinx – in conjunction with the myths of the Garden of Eden and the Tower
of Babel. Bion’s version of the Oedipal story is that it involves Oedipus’ hubris
in trying to discover the truth that underlay the pollutions of Thebes. He then
calls attention to the riddle of the sphinx in which the sphinx kills those who
encounter her and fail to divine her riddle, but perishes when Oedipus suc-
cessfully answers it. In the Garden of Eden myth God forbids Adam and Eve
to taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge about good and evil (presumably
sexuality), and in the Tower of Babel myth man is punished for trying to
arrogate God’s language, by being scattered asunder speaking different
tongues. Bion assigns the god-like withholding of knowledge to the sphinx.
Oedipus’ ability to answer her riddle was tantamount to Prometheus’s stealing
fire (knowledge) from the gods.
What I believe links the above themes is Freud’s (1915) notion of primal
repression. It is as if the infant is born with the infant wealth of knowledge that
can only be known by the ‘godhead’ (the unconscious). This ‘knowledge’ is
not yet dangerous because the corpus callosum (the bridge in the brain
between the two cerebral hemispheres) does not myelinate (and therefore
function) until four to five months of age (when the depressive position comes
on line). The importance of this last factor is that the beginning integration of
the two hemispheres, along with the shortly later acquisition of verbal
language and symbolic function, initiates the onset of the function of signifi-
cance. Knowledge is harmless until the significance of the knowledge
becomes realized. Primal repression seems to place a massive barrier on the
‘godhead knowledge’ and the significance that could possibly be attached to
it. At the same time, however, the infant is early on dominated in a
pre-reflective state by right hemispheric imagery11 (Jaynes, 1976; Shlain,
1998). This image domination lends a sphinx-like atmosphere to the little
mind of the toddler in whom images may become animated into monsters
(like sphinxes). The onset of verbalization, which occurs along with the
capacity for significance, rings the death knell for the dominance of the
animated, pre-reflective imagistic world, which then goes underground (into
the unconscious). ‘Sexual knowledge’ is attributed by Klein to the newborn
infant. My thesis is, following Freud, that, if this is so, it enters into primal
repression in the first few months of life because the infant, though able to
tolerate the facts about it, allegedly cannot yet tolerate the significance of it –
 INTRODUCTION 17

because the infant needs for a long while, I suggest, to believe in its own
omnipotent, autochthonous birth from itself in order to establish its own
sense of agency before being able to acknowledge the significance of the fact
that its birth was due to parental (Adam’s and Eve’s) sexual intercourse
(Grotstein, 2000).
The application of the above ideas to the group would be that the
members of the group project their ‘godhead’ font of unconscious knowledge
into the group leader, who thereupon becomes the ‘sphinx who knows but
will not tell – but who will, in his omniscience, omnipotently care for them
and their welfare. Yet another factor in the attribution of omniscience to the
sphinx is that primitive thinking is pre-reflective in nature. That is, it is
concrete, absolute, Cyclopean (‘monocular’).

Splitting and projective identification in groups

An important aspect in the formation of this mysterious third subject and
agent in groups is the employment of the mechanisms of splitting and projective
identification. Bion’s whole concept of basic assumption groups predicated
splitting on a fundamental level, but it was the projective identification that
followed in the wake of splitting that was to become so meaningful in under-
standing group transformations. Interestingly, Freud (1921) himself
understood this mechanism, although he never used it by name, when he
suggested that in the formation of groups each group member projects his ego
ideal into the group leader. Later, Bion (1959, 1961) was to make funda-
mental revisions and extensions of the Kleinian theory of projective identifi-
cation, but in the meantime he was able to apply it to the psychology of the
group in many ways. First of all, each member of the group is subject to
projective identifications from virtually every other member; second, the
group leader or director becomes the focus of countless projections from all
the members. Whereas Freud mentioned only the projection of each member’s
ego ideal onto the leader, Bion was able to detect the projective identification
12
of the members’ expectations and anxieties.
Although Bion did not stipulate further about the contents of the
members’ projective identification in one another and into the leader or
director, one can now speculate that the contents include: (a) unprocessed
anxiety, i.e., beta elements, (b) agency and role expectations, i.e., love,
salvation, aggression towards the ‘enemy,’ sanctuary, etc., (c) omnipotence,
and (d) omniscience. While Bion’s ideas about groups certainly apply to
individual psychology as well, there is no significant literature to support this.
18 BUILDING ON BION: ROOTS

My own view is that his three basic-assumption groups, when combined with
the three others posited by his followers (mentioned above), all apply to the
structure of the pathological organizations (psychic retreats – Steiner, 1993)
or endopsychic structure (Fairbairn, 1944) of the individual.

Second thoughts: Bion’s experiences treating psychotics

Note: I have decided to choose select portions of Bion’s works throughout
these two Introductions in order to give a representative idea of his thinking. I
shall add my annotations of them as I do so.
Bion launched his psychoanalytic career with a series of works on the
results and findings in treating psychotic and borderline patients. Most of
these experiences were collected and published in his now famous Second
Thoughts (Bion, 1967). The papers were presented between 1950 and 1962,
and he presented a retrospective reflection about them in 1967. They collec-
tively represent Bion as he was acquiring his stride as one of the sec-
ond-generation leaders of Kleinian psychoanalysis and in close colleagueship
with Herbert Rosenfeld and Hanna Segal, who were also psychoanalysing
psychotics.
The first paper in the collection was ‘The imaginary twin,’ in which the
psychotic analysand could not tolerate separation or the experience of objects
which differed from him, thus, he conjured up ‘twins’ who were like him. This
observation was to be one of many that was to create such a unique contribu-
tion to the understanding of psychotics. In ‘Notes on the theory of schizo-
phrenia’ Bion observed the uniqueness of their language and their object
relations and stated that the most important aspects of their thinking could
only be adduced from the analyst’s countertransference. He states: ‘It must
mean that without phantasies and without dreams you have not the means
with which to think out your problem’ (Bion 1967, p.25) – and
The severe splitting in the schizophrenic makes it difficult for him to achieve
the use of symbols and subsequently of substantives and verbs... The
capacity to form symbols is dependent on: (1) the ability to grasp whole
objects (2) the abandonment of the paranoid–schizoid position with its
attendant splitting (3) the bringing together of splits and the ushering in of
the depressive position. (Bion 1967, p.26)
With these formulations Bion was establishing the groundwork for his
ultimate theory of thinking. One could apply some of these ideas to the
understanding of groups in the following way: the group must have its own
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