Bion in Brazil

Wilfred R. Bion (1897 -1979) was born in India and first came to England at the age of eight to receive his schooling. During the First World War he served in France as a tank commander and was awarded the DSO and the Legion of Honour. After reading history at Queen's College, Oxford, he studied medicine at University College London, before a growing interest in psychoanalysis led him to undergo training analysis with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes. Abandoning his work in this field in favor of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis (1956-62) and President of the British Psychoanalytical Society (1962-65). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979. A pioneer in group dynamics, he was associated with the 'Tavistock group', the group of pioneering psychologists that founded the Tavistock Institute in 1946 on the basis of their shared wartime experiences. He later wrote the influential 'Experiences in Groups', an important guide for the group psychotherapy and encounter group movements beginning in the 1960s, and which quickly became a touchstone work for applications of group theory in a wide variety of fields. Bion's training included an analysis with Melanie Klein following World War II. He was a leading member in the Kleinian school while in London, but his theories, which were always based in the phenomena of the analytic encounter, eventually revealed radical departures from both Kleinian and Freudian theory. While Bion is most well known outside of the psychoanalytic community for his work on group dynamics, the psychoanalytic conversation that explores his work is concerned with his theory of thinking and his model of the development of a capacity for thought. Gisele de Mattos Brito is a full member of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of Sao Paulo, and also a full member and Training Analyst with the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Minas Gerais. Jose Americo Junqueira de Mattos graduated from the Institute of Psychoanalysis of the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of Sao Paulo. He was one of the five founding member of the Psychoanalysis Group that later became the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of Ribeirao Preto, and has been a Training Analyst in both Societies. He has published several papers published both in Brazil and abroad. Since the beginning of his career he has been interested in the ideas of Bion, who was his analyst. Howard B. Levine is a member of the faculty at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East, a member of the faculty and supervising analyst at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and is in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is a founding member of the Group for the Study of Psychoanalytic Process and the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc.

'This wonderfully creative book is an opportunity to witness Bion in action as he gives life to new concepts and thoughts using his pioneering instruments such as reverie, negative capability, and the pre-selected fact, which have since become firmly ensconced in today's psychoanalytic practice. The book contains an inspiring collection of Bion's supervisions held in Brazil, each of which is followed by an in-depth commentary by one of the book's eminent contributors. I found it outstanding for many reasons. Bion left us his theoretical writings which are undoubtedly highly complex and challenging on many levels. In my view, however, it is through his supervisions and seminars that we gain direct access to his thinking, and experience his full vitality and talent as a clinician. Appraising the rich contributions made by patients, analysts, supervisor, and commentators, made me feel as though I were witnessing a boundless and unique work in progress that gestures towards the future. Bion in Brazil will be a source of huge fascination and benefit to all psychoanalysts. - Antonino Ferro, president of the Italian Psychoanalytical Association'The detailed accounts of seminar discussion and the rich, complex and appreciative writing in the commentaries on these seminars make this book a valuable addition to the existing published seminar material. Bion's clinical thinking, as Joao Carlos Braga states in the book, opens "beyond the dimensions of knowing/not knowing, for what is not yet born to the "mind." It is this aspect - Bion's receptivity to bringing out in any situation what is mentally nascent and capable of growth - that emerges most strongly in this book.'- Chris Mawson, training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and editor of The Complete Works of W. R. Bion

• Foreword , Introduction , Supervision A1 , Supervision S12 , Supervision A25 , Supervision A30 , Supervision A10 , Supervision A3 , Supervision A45 , Supervision S28 , Supervision D17 , Supervision A36 , Supervision D1 , Supervision A2 , Supervision D8 , A journey's notes