By 1941 in World War 2 the Army were having trouble finding officers. Until then officer selection was done by small interview boards of older officers, who knew the ‘right type’ from public schools and university[1]. Unfortunately, there were not enough of this ‘type’ and the Army found itself hopelessly at sea when faced with recruits from other backgrounds. As well as this the Army faced a crisis of morale following Dunkirk and was struggling to shake off the image of being class riddled and ‘Blimpish’.
However, in spite of their pressing need the senior officers of the Army had a profound hostility to psychiatrists[2], and nicknamed them ‘trick cyclists’[3],[4]. It was not easy to get the officers to accept the new innovations.
JR Rees and Ronald Hargreaves had already had considerable success with introducing basic intelligence testing for selection among the ranks. General Adams commissioned a small group of officers to work with Rees’s men to come up with a solution for officer selection[5].
HV Dicks through his connections with Military Intelligence obtained a document on the methods that the Nazis had introduced for officer selection[6],[7]. Rees and Hargreaves initiated their own experiments, which eventually resulted in War Office Selection Boards, which chose men based on personality and character[8]. However, the most celebrated innovation was the ‘leaderless group’ developed by Wilfred Bion[9].
By 1941 Bion was already becoming discontented and was questioning how things were done in the army. In January 1941, while visiting John Rickman at Wharncliffe Hospital he found ‘a balance of insecurity which was maintained by the doctors as much as the patients’[10]. Before long Bion joined Rickman at Wharncliffe as Command Psychiatrist[11]. The two of them then drafted a report that became known as the Wharncliffe Memorandum, which outlined to colleagues some of their ideas for treating neurosis through group therapy. This was what they were later to put into practice at Northfield[12].
Not long after this Bion was visited by his ‘old friend’ JR Rees[13]. It was already clear at this stage of the war that the Command Psychiatrists could not keep up with the demands of the work. There was to be a restructuring, where the Command Psychiatrists were to be relocated at general headquarters to co-ordinate the work of regional psychiatrists[14]. Bion thought that he would be one of those to be based at headquarters.
Bion was ‘surprised’, ‘angry and hurt’ when he found himself ‘removed to a lesser post’ at York assisting with officer selection[15]. In fact he was so disappointed and embittered that in his autobiography he does not even mention his hugely important input into officer selection[16].
Most foreign armies were already using psychological testing to help select officers. The British Army was behind the curve and had been relying on ‘old boy’s networks’ to find officers. The trouble was there were no longer enough ‘old boys’ and the Army found itself hopelessly at sea when faced with recruits from other backgrounds.
Although the British army began to use psychological testing the tests were slow to administer and tended to be unreliable[17]. The army needed a great many officers, but did not employ enough psychiatrists and psychologists to administer the tests[18].
General Sir Ronald Adam, Adjutant General of the British Army got together with Major General Andrew Thorne, Ronald Hargreaves and Jock Sutherland to discuss the problem. The decision was taken to set up an experimental War Officer Selection Board (WOSB) in Edinburgh[19].
The core of the first WOSB included psychoanalysts: Jock Sutherland, Wilfred Bion, Eric Trist, and Eric Wittkower and a group of officers from the army, which included Harold Bridger (who later became a psychoanalyst) [20]. They set to work to find new methods selecting officers using a board that would synthesise information from military and psychoanalytic panels[21].
The key problems they faced were how to produce a selection method that was more reliable, quicker to administer and used less resources, in terms of the psychoanalysts and officers needed. The radical solution put forward by Wilfred Bion was the ‘Leaderless Group Project’. This replaced lengthy individual tests with one two and a half hour exercise that included several candidates simultaneously[22].
The leaderless group involved candidates being given a task such as building a bridge over a river or escaping a POW camp. No leader was appointed by the testing officer nor was any help given, the situation places the candidates in a situation where they can only operate through the medium of others[23]. This task would then be observed and each candidate would be evaluated on their ability to relate to the tensions produced in themselves and others by the desire for personal and group success as well as the fear of failure[24].
The leaderless group was one of a battery of nine tests conducted over three days. These included: three intelligence tests, three personality tests and three military tests[25]. The personality tests included Carl Jung’s word association test and a ‘thematic apperception test’, where candidates had to invent three minute stories based on pictures that they were show[26].
The leaderless group was a radical departure from traditional methods of testing and selection. The principle presented to the army was that the test reproduced the kinds of interpersonal conflicts and stress that an officer would be expected to deal with in wartime conditions[27]. The radical side of it was the way that it prioritised the examination of the quality of interpersonal relationships rather than individual qualities. In a letter to John Rickman Bion says, ‘we have been responsible for instigating reforms which I am sure are of quite fundamental importance’[28].
During the experimental phase the Edinburgh Selection Board hit another snag – they didn’t have enough candidates for examination[29]. Bion came up with another radical solution, rather than just taking candidates chosen by regimental commanders, every ‘good’ regiment could chose candidates by secret ballot[30]. Although this experiment was also successful, it proved to be a step too far for the top brass, it was debated at the highest level by an Army Council and opposed by majority[31].
The experiments in Edinburgh were deemed a success and more selection boards were set up along the lines of the No 1 Board in Edinburgh[32]. These were to be managed by a Research and Training Centre in London. The Edinburgh Team expected Bion to become head of this, but he was passed over[33]. Bion refused the post of deputy assistant and asked to be transferred to Northfield, a dismal mental hospital just outside Birmingham, because that was where John Rickman was based[34].
The effectiveness of the War Office Selection Boards was evaluated by John Bowlby, who demonstrated the superiority of this method in the long term, showing that statistically it reduced the failure rate of officers from 45% to 15%[35].
Author: Glenn Gossling 2019
[1] JR Rees, Reflections, p50, The United States Committee of the World Mental health Federation, 1966
[2] N Rose, Governing the Soul, p46, Routledge, 1991 [1989]
[3] JR Rees, Reflections, p45, The United States Committee of the World Mental health Federation, 1966
[4] ‘Obituary, John Rawling Rees’, The Lancet, volume 1, p844, 19 April 1969
[5] B. Shephard, War of Nerves, p191, Jonathan Cape, 2000
[6] JR Rees, Reflections, p50, The United States Committee of the World Mental health Federation, 1966
[7] HV Dicks, 50 Years of the Tavistock Clinic, p110, Routledge, 1970
[8] JR Rees, Reflections, p50, The United States Committee of the World Mental health Federation, 1966
[9] B. Shephard, War of Nerves, p192, Jonathan Cape, 2000
[10] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p54, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[11] P King, No Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman, p36, Karnac, 2003
[12] P King, No Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman, p36, Karnac, 2003
[13] WR Bion, All My Sins Remembered, p51, Routledge, 1985
[14] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p55, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[15] WR Bion, All My Sins Remembered, p51, Routledge, 1985
[16] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p55, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[17] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p55, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[18] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p56, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[19] P King, No Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman, p38, Karnac, 2003
[20] P King, No Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman, p38, Karnac, 2003
[21] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p56, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[22] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p56, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[23] JR Rees, The Shaping of Psychiatry by War, p69, Chapman and Hall, 1945
[24] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p56-57, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[25] B. Shephard, War of Nerves, p192, Jonathan Cape, 2000
[26] B. Shephard, War of Nerves, p193, Jonathan Cape, 2000
[27] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p57, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[28] P King, No Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman, p39, Karnac, 2003
[29] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p58, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[30] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p59, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[31] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p59, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[32] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p59, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[33] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p57, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[34] G Bléandonu, Wilfred Bion: His Life and Works 1897-1979, p58, Free Association Books, 1999 [1994]
[35] HV Dicks, 50 Years of the Tavistock Clinic, p108, Routledge, 1970