Bion in Buenos Aires

BION IN BUENOS AIRES BION IN BUENOS AIRES Seminars, Case Presentation, and Supervision Edited by Joseph Aguayo, Lia Pistiner de Cortinas, and Agnes Regeczkey First published in 2018 by Karnac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road London NW3 5HT Copyright © 2018 to Joseph Aguayo, Lia Pistiner de Cortinas, and Agnes Regeczkey. The rights of Joseph Aguayo, Lia Pistiner de Cortinas, and Agnes Regeczkey to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-520-3 Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India Printed in Great Britain www.karnacbooks.com CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix ABOUT THE EDITORS xiii FOREWORD xvii by R. D. Hinshelwood INTRODUCTION xxi by Joseph Aguayo and Lia Pistiner de Cortinas Part I: BION’S CLINICAL SEMINARS FIRST SEMINAR A case vignette—countertransference—the analyst’s subjectivity as a factor in clinical technique—abandonment of memory and desire—audience questions 3 v vi CONTENTS SECOND SEMINAR The nature of internal and external objects—the psychoanalytical model of Melanie Klein—projective identification—theory of container/ contained—the mystic and the Establishment— Science and Christianity—audience questions 17 THIRD SEMINAR The Grid as an instrument to assess deterioration as well as evolution of thinking—how the Grid is used—the Grid’s use as a tool for discovering latent content—the analyst’s own Grid—doubts and scepticisms about the Grid— audience questions 29 FOURTH SEMINAR Questions regarding normal development, civilised and primitive urges within a cultural container—the patient’s self-definition vis-à-vis the analyst’s definition of the problem—the survival of psychoanalysis—audience questions 47 PART II: BION’S OWN ANALYTIC CASE PRESEntatiON FIFTH SEMINAR Borderline patient with paranoid hysteria—negative therapeutic reaction—the question of transformations—role of interpretation—a victim of envy 67 PART III: HORACIO ETCHEGOYEN’S SUPERVISION WITH BION SIXTH SEMINAR The initial phase of Mr B’s psychoanalytic treatment The patient’s background history—initial phase of the analysis—first dreams—the patient’s internal anal universe—Bion’s assessment of the patient’s current state of mind—audience questions 85 SEVENTH SEMINAR Mr B’s psychoanalytic treatment in the following year The problem of excessive projective identification—further dream analysis— the difference between the patient’s own model of mind vis-à-vis the analyst’s model of the patient’s mind—Mr B’s difficulties in paying for his analysis—audience questions 99 CONTENTS vii PART IV: BION’S FUrthER SUPERVISORY WORK WITH OTHER ARGENTINIAN ANALYSTS EIGHTH SEMINAR An “in-the-moment” presentation of an adult analysand, all with no orienting background history—audience questions 115 NINTH SEMINAR The continuation of the case presentation—audience questions 131 TENTH SEMINAR Bion’s Analytical Supervision: Jorge, an adolescent analysand— audience questions 137 ELEVENTH SEMINAR The continuation of an adolescent case presentation— audience questions 145 PART V: BION’S DIALOGUE WITH THE AUDIENCE ON QUESTIONS ABOUT SUPERVISION TWELFTH SEMINAR Dr Bion’s supervisory comments—on the analyst’s capacities for observation, formulation, and interpretation—audience questions 155 THIRTEENTH SEMINAR Dr Bion’s supervisory comments—on questions regarding the patient’s repetition compulsion—symbiotic relationships—the analytic contract—audience questions 161 INDEX 165 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The rescue of lost but valuable manuscripts that illuminate the history of our field is a communal endeavour. In this effort, it was occasioned by Agnes Regeczkey’s Christmas holiday visit to Buenos Aires in December 2015, one that led to a meeting with Lia Pistiner de Cortinas. She had in hand a small surprise, namely the manuscript of Wilfred Bion’s 1968 Clinical Seminars in Buenos Aires. Originally recorded in English, these Clinical Seminars were in turn faithfully translated into Spanish by Lia’s colleague and dear friend, Elizabeth Tabak de Bianchedi. While these seminars had not been in wide circulation among Argentinian analysts, upon Agnes Regeczkey’s return to Los Angeles, we immediately sought out help from Karnac Books in London. We owe Oliver Rathbone a debt of gratitude in so far as he saw the value of these recovered seminars, and through his intercession we procured the rights to publish them courtesy of Nicola Bion and the Marsh Agency. He was also instru- mental in having the Spanish text capably translated in its entirety into English by Beatrice Sadovy. To my cousin, Dr Luis Arevalo, we also owe a profound debt for his generosity in re-reading and translating difficult passages of this Bion manuscript. I would also like to thank ix x acKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sira Dermen, Robert Hinshelwood, and the late Jim Grotstein for many years of spirited clinical and historical discussions about Bion’s work. I would also like to acknowledge the analyst/members of the private Bion study group that has been meeting in the United States for some years now. For some months prior to the publication of the Bion in Buenos Aires Clinical Seminars, this group discussed various seminars from the manuscript; and I have felt bolstered by our group in seeing these seminars into print by virtue of the spirited exchanges we have had in our meetings. So many thanks to: Caron Harrang, Dana Blue, Maxine Nelson (Seattle); Deborah Sandy, David Brooks, Agnes Regec- zkey (Los Angeles); and finally, Susan Finkelstein and Marilyn Rifkin (New York City), and Marie Murphy (Washington, DC). Last and not least, to my wife Marina, who had the grace to tolerate her husband’s late-night preoccupations with archival manuscripts. Joseph Aguayo I want to express my gratitude to Darío Sor, who was my analyst and by whom I was later supervised and with whom I studied Freud, Melanie Klein, and Bion. And also to Elizabeth T. de Bianchedi, by whom I was also supervised and studied Freud, Melanie Klein, and Bion, and who was also a very dear friend. Both Darío Sor and Elizabeth T. de Bianchedi were very generous people and stimulated my own development as a psychoanalyst and later on as an author of books related to Bion’s ideas. With both of them, we organised the first Bion Conference in Buenos Aires in 1999, and these conferences became a tradition that now take place every two years in South America, North America, and Europe. Lia Pistiner de Cortinas I would like to express my gratitude to Hector, my husband, for his enormous support and encouragement to stay true to my heart and pur- sue my dreams; to my mother, father, and grandparents for endlessly loving me as a child; to Joseph Aguayo for his guidance and passion for the clinical history of our field; to Lia Pistiner de Cortinas for her sincere dedication throughout this project; Luis Arevalo for his wonderful con- tribution in the translation of the material; to my analytic family, teach- ers, colleagues, and candidates at the New Center for Psychoanalysis acKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi for the gift of psychoanalytic experience and education; to Allen Bishop and the faculty at Reiss Davis for their inspiration in my research; to my past, present, and future students and patients who have faith that dreams come true; to Donald Marcus for his contagious love and com- passion while roaming the uncharted terrains of the unconscious. Agnes Regeczkey ABOUT THE EDITORS Joseph Aguayo is a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoana- lytic Center of California and is in private practice in West Los Angeles. He is also a guest member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. He holds doctorates in both clinical psychology and European history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been awarded a number of research fellowships from the International Psy- choanalytical Association’s Research Advisory Board, and has merged his clinical and research interests through numerous publications over the last twenty years in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis on the clinical history of Kleinian and Bionian psychoanalysis. He conducts private teleconferences on many aspects of Wilfred Bion’s work, for example, the psychosis papers and many of Bion’s clinical seminars. He also serves as the main Chair for the Regional Bion Symposium, a yearly conference that gathers American analytic colleagues interested in furthering their understanding of Bion’s work. Aguayo’s last book was a co-edited project with Barnet Malin, Bion’s Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision (Karnac, 2013). He has published a full-length book review of Wilfred Bion’s sixteen-volume Com- plete Works for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (Feb., 2017). His previous International Journal of Psychoanalysis publication was xiii xiv ABOUT THE EDITORS in 2014: “Bion’s “Notes on memory and desire”: its initial clinical recep- tion in the United States—a note on archival material”. Lia Pistiner de Cortinas is a training analyst, full member of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association (SAP), and fellow of the Inter- national Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She has a specialisation in child and adolescent psychoanalysis. She is professor of post- graduate seminars at the Faculty of Psychology of the Buenos Aires University, and on Bion’s ideas that transform clinical practice and on psychosomatic pathologies. These courses are taught at the University Institute of Mental Health of Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association. Her publications include: her books The Aesthetic Dimension of the Mind: Variations on a Theme of Bion (Karnac, 2009) and On Mental Growth: Bion’s Ideas that Transform the Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice (Buenos Aires: Ed.

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