ABSTRACT
Perhaps I ought to start with a very brief introductory note on my use of language: one of my friends noticed, quite a few years ago, that when speaking in public about W. R. Bion I tend to oscillate (rather disconcertingly, I gather) between referring to him as “Bion” and referring to him as “my father”. At the time we rather laughed it off and went on to more serious matters. But I have done a little thinking about it since then, and have come to the conclusion that this is not so much an indication of a serious, pathological, “split” as a natural outcrop from whichever field of thought it is that I am engaged on at the time. By this I mean that if I am thinking of him as I remember him personally—and when I was a child, he was just “Daddy”, and in fact was not yet a psychoanalyst anyway—I tend to use a more familiar term, but if I am thinking about his theoretical or clinical writings, then I tend to refer to him as “Bion”, which seems to me to be normal in a scientific paper. Since today I do intend to speak about his theoretical work, but approaching it via memories from a long time ago, I will no doubt move from one usage to another. You have been warned!
