Introduction. Clinical Seminars

In 1975 Wilfred Bion and I were invited by Professor Virginia Bicudo to spend the month of April in Brasilia. During that time Bion worked with individuals and groups, gave three lectures at the university, and took part in three panel discussions (entitled Brasilia, A New Experience) at the Buriti Palace to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the city. Panel members, representing the arts and sciences, dealt with aspects of the character of the city and the problems involved in forming and developing a new community. I have included his contributions to these discussions.

In April 1978 we spent two weeks in São Paulo – our third visit. Bion held fifty clinical seminars, daily consultations, and ten evening meetings (published in Bion in New York and São Paulo). Such a volume of work demonstrates his remarkable vigour and stamina at the age of eighty.

These clinical seminars, at which Bion preferred the number of analysts present not to exceed six, were all recorded. I am grateful to those responsible for having made possible this printed version.1

Owing to the variable quality of the recordings, I have been unable to piece together some of the clinical material, and after a lapse of so many years it has proved impossible to retrieve what has been lost. The necessity for translation (in both directions) significantly reduced the amount of ground that could be covered in each hour.

I have chosen to publish only those seminars that are sufficiently complete to form a coherent whole. The necessary editing in

transferring the spoken word to the printed page has not in any way altered the content of Bion's contributions or his style of expression. I have adopted the same methods as those I used in the past with his approval.

He had no prior view of the material presented; the patients under discussio