Cogitations

Wilfred R. Bion (1897 -1979) was born in India and first came to England at the age of eight 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 Honour. 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 analysis with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes. Abandoning his work in this field in favor of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis (1956-62) and President of the British Psychoanalytical Society (1962-65). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979. A pioneer in group dynamics, he was associated with the 'Tavistock group', the group of pioneering psychologists that founded the Tavistock Institute in 1946 on the basis of their shared wartime experiences. He later wrote the influential 'Experiences in Groups', an important guide for the group psychotherapy and encounter group movements beginning in the 1960s, and which quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields. Bion's training included an analysis with Melanie Klein following World War II. He was a leading member in the Kleinian school while in London, but his theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, eventually revealed radical departures from both Kleinian and Freudian theory. While Bion is most well known outside of the psychoanalytic community for his work on group dynamics, the psychoanalytic conversation that explores his work is concerned with his theory of thinking and his model of the development of a capacity for thought.

Cogitations, the last of the posthumous publications, is a collection of occasional writings representing Bion's attempts to clarify and evaluate both his own ideas and those of others by casting them in written form and frequently addressing them to an imaginary audience. Covering a period between February 1958 and April 1979, the Cogitations delve into a wide range of material - psychoanalysis and science, mathematics and logic, literature and semantics. Some form a background to Bion's theoretical development, showing the doubts and arguments leading to the ideas expressed in his books, others highlighting and detailing some of the more abstract points in them, and some exploring topics destined for books that were to remain unwritten.

• Foreword -- February 1958 -- 10 January 1959 -- 16 May 1959 -- 12 July 1959 -- 14 July 1959 -- 15 July 1959 (4.30 a.m. Blast it!) -- 18 July 1959 -- 24 July 1959 -- [Undated] -- 25 July 1959 -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- 27 July 1959 -- 28 July 1959 -- 1 August 1959 -- 2 August 1959 -- 3 August 1959 -- 4 August 1959 -- 5 August 1959 -- 6 August 1959 -- 8 August 1959 -- 9 August 1959 -- 10 August 1959 -- 11 August 1959 -- 21 August 1959 -- 8 September 1959 -- 12 September 1959 -- 13 September 1959 -- 19 September 1959 -- 26 September 1959 -- 27 September 1959 -- 29 September 1959 -- 2 October 1959 -- 4 October 1959 -- 6 October 1959 -- 7 October 1959 -- 11 October 1959 -- 16 October 1959 -- 17 October 1959 -- 25 October 1959 -- 30 October 1959 -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- January 1960 -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- 31 January/1 February 1960 -- 6 February 1960 -- 11 February 1960 -- 12 February 1960 -- 14 February 1960 -- 17 February 1960 -- 18 February 1960 -- 20 February 1960 -- February 1960 -- 22 February 1960 -- 24 February 1960 -- 27 February 1960 -- 28 February 1960 -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated—1960] -- 27 March 1960 -- [Undated—1960] -- [Undated—1960] -- [Undated—1960] -- [Undated] -- August 1960 -- [Undated—1960] -- [Undated—1960] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- [Undated] -- March 1967 -- [Undated] -- [Undated—1968] -- [Undated—1968] -- [Undated—1969] -- [Undated—1969] -- [Undated—1969] -- 2 March 1969 -- 21 March 1969 -- [Undated—1969] -- August 1969 -- March 1970 -- May 1970 -- February 1971 -- [1971] -- 10 July 1971 -- 14 July 1971 -- 15 July 1971 -- July 1971 -- [Undated] -- September 1971 -- 1971 -- 1971 -- [November/December 1973] -- [August 1975] -- [August 1975] -- [August 1975] -- August 1975 -- [August 1976] -- [August 1978] -- 8 August 1978 -- [April 1979] -- Notes on memory and desire