Bion's Legacy: Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources of the Life, Work and Ideas of Wilfred Ruprecht Bion

"Having spent a considerable portion of my working life dealing with psychoanalytic literature, I started reading biographies and autobiographies of major figures in this sphere when I retired. It must be said that psychoanalysts' autobiographies are pretty thin on the ground. The names which stood out most were Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott and Melanie Klein.

It is well known that Bion wrote several volumes which may be broadly defined as autobiography, whereas we have to rely on Robert Rodman's and Brett Kahr's biographies in order to learn of Winnicott's life. There are, of course, many articles scattered through the literature of personal memories of him by Harry Guntrip, Margaret Little, Renata Gaddini, Masud Khan, etc.

There are at least two biographies of Klein and many instances of reference to her life in articles and parts of books. These will be the subject of a further book to be researched.

On trying to find what material actually existed, it struck me that there were vast amounts of material relevant to the lives, work and ideas of both men in the form of reviews, articles and books.

There did not, however appear to be compilations of such work other than limited lists appearing on various web pages via the Internet.

With considerable renewed interest in Bion's contribution to various disciplines beyond the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic, I hope that this work will be of use to practitioners, researchers and students.

The list of secondary sources is by no means exhaustive and it is unlikely that it ever will be due to the constantly growing interest in Bion's ideas and contributions to various fields." -- Harry Karnac from the Introduction