ABSTRACT
Wilfred Trotter makes observations which remind one strongly of Wilfred Bion’s ’s later views. Trotter was small and neatly but powerfully built. His strong hands had a beauty which could not by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as the product of a manicurist’s cosmetic skill. After demobilisation at the end of 1918, bion went up to Oxford to read History at The Queen’s College. Compared with undergraduates entering university from school, he and others were “old” war veterans and must have been in disturbed states of mind. The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War was first published in 1916 when the horrors of the First World War had already exposed the crass stupidity of leaders of nations and armies alike. In 1938 he began a training analysis with John Rickman, but this was brought to an end by the Second World War.
