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Freedman, Lasky and Webster (2009) present a complex combination of Freudian, Lacanian, and Winnicottian concepts of symbolization and triangulation, within the intersubjective matrix , while distinguishing between so-called ordinary and extraordinary countertransferences : ordinary countertransferences are transitory disruptions, and extraordinary countertransferences are impasses, intolerable to the analyst to such an extent that they have to be kept out of his/her awareness. The Lacanian theory of countertransference as seen through the ‘lens of desire’ (Lacan, 1977) here meets the Winnicottian frame of ‘good enough analytic process’ and its ‘potential breakdown’ (Winnicott 1972; 1974). III. B. Field Theory and Related Perspectives Clinically anticipated by Ferenczi and Sullivan (1953, 1964), and influenced by evolving Object Relations theories, the concept of the ‘ field ’ prominently entered the discussion on countertransference. Rooted in phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) and in the European-North American neo-gestalt social-psychological dynamic field theory of Kurt Lewin (1947), psychoanalysts (particularly in Latin America and Italy, and to a lesser degree also in the US) drew upon this perspective to see the analytic setting or situation as an integrated whole with any aspect of the situation intimately implicated in all others. In this system, countertransference is an inevitable aspect of the web of experience in a psychoanalytic treatment. Among major exponents of these views of countertransference are the Argentinian analysts Willy and Madeleine Baranger. They picture the analytic process as an evolving bi-personal field , delimited by the setting, but comprising two inter-actors influencing each other in an inevitable, but subtle, way. The psychoanalytic process is a ‘joint creation’ , starting out from transference and countertransference alike. This notion that transference-countertransference arises out of the dynamic field that can create a ‘ bastion ’ (Baranger and Baranger 2008; orig. 1961) implicates analyst and analysand in an impasse and in a new creation . The structure of the field “is constituted by the interplay of the processes of projective and introjective identification and of the counter-identifications that act with their different limits, functions and characteristics in the patient and the analyst” (ibid, p. 809). In Brazil, Roosevelt Cassorla (2013) developed the contemporary notion of acute and chronic enactments , which arise as mutual behavioral discharges between the analytic pair, which invade the analytic field , reflecting back to situations when the verbal symbolization was impaired . Such recent Latin American views of countertransference have been rooted in the work and the tradition of the Barangers and Bleger (1967), which evolved alongside and in reciprocal interactions with Racker (1968) and Grinberg (1968), often with Lacanian accents (de Bernardi 2000; Cassorla 2013). The analytic field theory has been further developed both in Europe and North America. Stern (1997), in the US, has presented an original elaboration of the field theory within the interpersonal perspective . One of the field theory’s major representatives in Europe is Ferro who has blended the field theory with a Bionian view . In Ferro’s work with Basile (Ferro and Basile, 2008) the field today is understood as a meeting point of the multiple characters of patient and analyst with a life of their own, as if on stage. These authors focus entirely on the
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