Editing Wilfred Bion (section)

==Later career==
Returning to the Tavistock Clinic, Bion chaired the Planning Committee that reorganized the Tavistock into the new [[Tavistock Institute]] of Human Relations, alongside a new Tavistock Clinic which was part of the newly launched [[National Health Service]]. As his interest in psychoanalysis increased, he underwent training analysis, between 1946 and 1952, with [[Melanie Klein]]. He met his second wife, Francesca, at the Tavistock in 1951. He joined a research group of Klein's students (including [[Hanna Segal]] and Herbert Rosenfeld), who were developing Klein's theory of the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions, for use in the analysis of patients with psychotic disorders. He produced a series of highly original and influential papers (collected as "''Second Thoughts''", 1967) on the analysis of schizophrenia, and the specifically cognitive, perceptual, and identity problems of such patients. To this he added a valuable final section called Commentary, showing how some of his views on clinical and theoretical matters had changed.

Bion's theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, revealed both correspondences and expansions of core ideas from both Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein.<ref>Symington J. & Symington N.. ''The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion'' (London 1996) pp. 12–13</ref> At one point, he attempted to understand thoughts and thinking from an 'algebraic', 'geometric' and 'mathematised' point of view, believing there to be too little precision in the existing vocabulary, a process culminating in "The Grid".<ref>[http://www.psyche.com/psyche/mt/archives/000021.html Bion: Basic Assumptions & The Grid]</ref> Later he abandoned the complex, abstract applications of mathematics, and the Grid, and developed a more intuitive approach, epitomised in ''Attention and Interpretation'' (1970).

In 1968, Bion moved to [[Los Angeles]], [[California]],<ref>Bion W.R. (1985). All My Sins Remembered: Another Part of a Life and the Other Side of Genius ‐ Family Letters by Wilfred R. Bion. London : Karnac Books.</ref> where he remained until 1977. During those years he mentored a number of psychoanalysts interested in Kleinian approaches, including [[James Gooch (psychoanalyst)]] and other founding members of the [[Psychoanalytic Center of California]]. Shortly before his death, he returned to Oxfordshire.<ref>Culbert‐Koehn, J. (2011), An analysis with Bion: an interview with James Gooch. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 56: 76-91. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5922.2010.01891.x</ref>