Wilfred Bion and Samuel Beckett by Gerard Beandonu

The autobiography is discretely silent on the two years Bion spent working with the man who was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Towards the end of 1933 Samuel Beckett, who had been suffering from recurrent health problems, had been persuaded by a doctor friend that his problems might be of psychosomatic origin. He managed to leave Ireland, and his mother, to live in London. He decided to leave both because of his physical symptoms and the anxiety they caused him, sapping his strength, and because the literary world had discovered psychoanalysis, partly through the  Surrealist poets. On his friend’s advice, Beckett went to the Tavistock  Clinic early in 1934. As chance would have it, he began psychotherapy with a trainee who was to become one of the leading lights of psychoanalysis: Wilfred Bion. The experience was of great importance to both men, even though neither mentioned it in his publications. Each probably provide the other with the image of an ‘imaginary twin’, as Didier Anzieu (1986) suggested, on discovering a plausible series of analogies between the lives and problems of the two men. Their ancestors were French Huguenots who fled to Britain to escape religious persecution. They both had narcissistic and schizoid characteristics, and both had turned to culture to contain this psychotic part of themselves. Furthermore, Anzieu suggests that Beckett transposed the structure and experience of psychotherapy into his literature, although the writer himself considered that this suggestion was ‘psychoanalytic fantasies.’

The therapy enabled Beckett to understand himself differently; it pushed him to reveal more of himself in his writings of that period, although he was one of the most reserved writers of his time. He even acknowledged that his night-time panic attacks were caused by his ‘neurosis.’ His therapist soon had his work cut out, as he found himself faced with a negative therapeutic reaction. Beckett could not progress until he could acknowledge his ‘addictive’ relationship to his mother. Nine years older than Beckett, Bion, who was still in therapy with Hadfield, became, in the transference, the writer’s older brother Frank ( it was in his bed that ‘Sam’ sought refuge from his nocturnal panic before coming to London). The two men shared many intellectual interests, especially literature. At times they discussed, even argued about, the nature of the creative process. According to Beckett, the ‘analysis’ was limping along. The patient suggested to his therapist that the cost-effect ration was leaning towards termination, and that whatever his intellectual interests might be, he could not make a choice between Bion and his mother. His body somatized, producing boils, tremors and an anal abscess. Beckett announced his intention of stopping at the end of 1935.

Bion suggested to Beckett That he should go to the Tavistock Clinic to hear a lecture by Jung ( the third in a series of five lectures). The clinic had a policy of building a public profile by inviting famous lecturers to speak. Beckett remained very impressed by Jung’s ideas – he soon saw their relevance to his own work in progress. His therapy ended at Christmas. Bion had expressed reservations, as he doubted that the relationship to his mother would improve in the way his patient wished to believe. He was proved right in the long run. Nevertheless, Beckett finished his first novel, Murphy, not long afterwards.

Beckett was critical of his therapy in much the same way as Bion was to be critical of his analysis with Melanie Klein. Nevertheless, the writer maintained a lasting interest in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In 1960 he questioned his nephew, a psychiatrist, on the difference between Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis. It is not impossible that he was aware of Bion’s resounding success in his work. Bion, for his part, certainly remembered the person he treated at the Tavistock who was nominated for a Nobel Prize each successive year from 1964, and he was awarded in 1969. It was in the late 1970s that the inspirational flow was reversed. Bion, in the last period of his lifework, was oscillating between literature and psychoanalysis. He too wanted to transcend the literary style of James Joyce, in order to create a language in which to describe the reality of intrauterine life. Had he been asked ‘Why are you writing? He would no doubt have replied, like Beckett: ‘Bon qu’a ca!’ [loosely: ‘The only thing I can do!’].

Bion’s apprenticeship ended with an encounter with another memorable man: John Rickman .  .  .  .

Wilfred Bion; His Life and Works 1897-1979 by Gerard Bleandonu

Unfortunately Didier Anzieu's 'Beckett' is only available in French and Turkish.