ABSTRACT
Born in 1897 into a middle-class family living in British Colonial India, young Bion was more often heard than seen by his parents. An incessant questioner, he parsed meaning at an early age, provoking his father with such impieties as pronouncing the Our Father prayer as the ‘Arf Arfer,’ making God sound like a barking dog. Sent off to public school in distant England at the age of 8, he was socialized along with other boys to become one of the future leaders of the British Empire.
He enlisted quickly and became a tank commander at age 17 in World War I. The physically strapping Bion gained distinction on the field of battle and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order at Buckingham Palace. Upon demobilization in 1918, he studied history at Oxford, then switched to medical studies at University College London, becoming interested in psychiatry by the late 1920s. He landed at the Tavistock Clinic, where he psychotherapeutically treated other future notables, such as the playwright Samuel Beckett in 1934/35. He enlisted as an army psychiatrist in World War II and evolved distinctive innovative group methods of rehabilitating war veterans. He married and was left to raise his daughter, Parthenope, after his wife, Betty Jardine, died whilst giving birth.
