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against the alpha function – if not against the whole of the psychic apparatus warranting the contact with internal and external reality – generate such confusions and distortions that this linear model is revealed as irrelevant to the clinical material. Relevant to such primitive modes of mental functioning, Bion (1965) introduces the notion of ‘projective transformations’ to account for corresponding forms of transference marked by states of confusion, undifferentiation, and even derealisation. In such forms splitting and destructiveness directed at psychic contents and containers prevail; arrogance replaces the search for truth; and bizarre objects, reduced to their concrete dimension, including fragments of the Ego, Superego and non-transformed beta elements, refer to the pathological projective identification and the attacks on linking. In his later writings, Bion notes that any theorization, including the theorization of the transference, is a response to the fear of the unknown and involves the risk of crippling creativity and psychic growth. Bion returns to the etymology of the term transference which suggests a passage, a transitory element in the history of the analytic encounter (Bion, 2005a, p. 5). The analyst’s interpretations “hide [his] nakedness” (Bion, 2005b, p. 42); the transferential relationship as well as the analyst’s position should be elucidated so that one may be released from it. Bion’s influence was strongly felt in an important strand of Italian psychoanalysis, which theorized a blend of the Bionian (1962a,1962b) conceptual framework with those of the Latin American Field theories of Willy and Madeleine Baranger (2008). One of the main proponents has been Antonino Ferro whose extended field concept included analyst’s ‘alpha function’ in the metabolic and elaborative capacity and ‘narrative function’ which made it possible to facilitate transformation of emotions into narrations, and vice versa, narrations into emotions. With the regard to transference, Ferro (2005) writes: “The analyst must not limit the tools he or she utilizes to interpretations of the transference of content only. I believe that, in addition to such traditional methods, it is essential that interpretations be made from within the transference ” (p. 481, original italics). The analysis proceeds via continuous alternations between the transference as repetition or fantasy and a novel ‘relation’, which is the original and transformative component of the patient's psyche that has grown out of traumatic experiences, and that gradually becomes organized into emotions and thoughts. Ferro introduced the concept of character of the field as an ongoing manifestation of the pairing between internal groupings of analyst and patient. Understood as narrative derivatives of the waking dream thoughts, the characters who come to life during sessions, may reflect real people in the patient's family narrative, or internal object in his or her fantasy world; or they may grow out of intrapsychic knots formed in the here and now.
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