Bion in Buenos Aires: Seminars, Case Presentation and Supervision

These newly discovered clinical seminars of Wilfred Bion, which include supervisions, personal case presentations, and lectures on psychoanalytic theory, represent his initial foray into many years of work that have inspired South American analysts for nearly a half a century.The clinical and theoretical work of Bion arguably ranks rather high in the current psychoanalytic firmament-as national and international conferences convene regularly to continue discussing the contemporary relevance of his work. His work has served as a source of inspiration to contemporary psychoanalysts in all three regions of the International Psychoanalytical Assocation-Ronald Britton, Antonino Ferro, Giuseppe Civitarese, Thomas Ogden, James Grotstein, and Paolo Sandler, just to name a few. These newly discovered clinical seminars from work Bion conducted in Buenos Aires in 1968 help us to further fill out the picture of his versatile gifts. In these seminars, we find lectures on Bion's elaborations on his epistemological research-still on-going in the 1960s when he went to Buenos Aires; a lecture on the Grid and its clinical relevance.But most importantly for analysts, new or old to Bion studies, is a centrepiece two-seminar, continuous case supervision conducted by Bion on the analytic work of Horacio Etchegoyen, then a relatively new student of Kleinian studies after being re-analyzed in London by Donald Meltzer. This supervision alone represents the single, longest supervision ever recorded of Bion. Other highlights include Bion's own case presentation of a very difficult-to-treat borderline patient, something of a rarity in his published work, as Bion was generally disinclined to present his own case work. These clinical seminars are rounded out by other supervisions, Q and As with the audience of over 300 analysts who came from all parts of South America to hear this premier analyst in Buenos Aires.