IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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analyst at this level should refrain from being blinded by reasoning and the sensuous appearance of the patient.

III. POST-BIONIAN AND CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS

III. A. LATIN-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENTS AND CONTRIBUTION According to Elias Rocha Barros (2015, 2017), Latin American clinical practice is, on the one hand, firmly structured around foundational Freudian concepts but also more and more colored by Kleinian and Bionian theory in their broader and more general aspects. Thus, according to Barros (2015), while for Bion, Transformations was a very specific concept, in Latin America, it gradually gained a wider meaning and became a broad theory of psychic change. In his view, in Latin American psychoanalytic culture Transformations has been itself transformed, and defined by some as “… the series of changes experienced by a group of elements that vary from a previous to a subsequent stage, where the recognition of the identity of these elements that have changed, would depend on the existing invariants .” Lopez-Corvo (2003, p. 290). However, Barros (2018) stresses that he himself works with transformations, as it applies to the internal movement from the presymbolic to symbolic processes in “Bion’s sense and possibly amplifying it to signify a change in the structure of the mind and not in its content … a transmutation of the very structure (and structuring capacities) of the mind, which results in the expansion of the capacity to think one’s experience “ (p. 226). Brazil may be in a unique position, on one hand being a site of internationally valued scholarly research into ‘The Language of Bion’ by P.C. Sandler (2005), on the other hand a site of a substantive creative flourish and further development of the concept. Here, following the series of Brazilian lectures by Bion, his book has been intensively studied, much valued, and followed by many substantive original contributions. The Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of São Paulo (SBPSP) organized several meetings about Transformations, followed by book publications edited by Evelise (de Souza) Marra, Cecil Jose Reza, and Marta Petricciani (2018, 2020) with many original papers. Among examples of original creative extensions are the concept of autistic transformation and unintegrated transformations developed by Celia Fix Korbivcher and the developments on the theory of complexity through the ethical-aesthetic principles clarified by Arnaldo Chuster.

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