Back to Table of Contents
Among the existing contemporary North American psychoanalytic dictionaries, Salman Akhtar ‘s (2009) “Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis” carries an entry “Bipersonal Field”, defined as “the temporo-spatial space within which the psychoanalytic interaction takes place” (p. 37), originating in the work of Madeleine and Willy Baranger (1966), and elaborated upon by Robert Langs (1976, 1979). As defined here, “The field contains both participants and embodies interactional and intrapsychic mechanisms. Every event in the field receives contributions from both participants” (Akhtar 2009, p. 37). Langs’ elaboration is seen primarily in terms of ‘ground rules’ of the psychoanalytic situation delimiting and contributing to the field’s communicative properties, and his pertaining specification of three forms of the ‘interactional-communicative field’: Type A, where symbolic communication and realm of illusion is possible; type B with projective identification and action predominating; and type C where all communication is destroyed and the field is emptied of meaning (ibid, p. 37). In Elizabeth Auchincloss’ and Eslee Samberg’s (2012) “Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts”, the concept ‘field’ is referred to in the entries of “Intersubjectivity”, “Relational Psychoanalysis” and “Interpersonal Psychoanalysis”. Here, the phenomenological philosophy and contextualism derived ‘Intersubjective field’ of Robert D. Stolorow, Bernard Brandchaft and George E. Atwood (1987), located at the intersection of the two subjectivities, and generated by the interplay of the transference and countertransference, is at the center of the entire psychoanalytic framework and psychoanalytic exploration (Auchincloss, Samberg 2012, p 122). Rooted in Harry S. Sullivan, influenced by Erich Fromm and Sándor Ferenczi, among others, ‘Interpersonal Field’ of Donnel Stern (1997) is presented as related to the potential ‘unformulated experience’. The explicit form such an experience takes depends on the nature of the ‘interpersonal field’, within which the formulation of experience takes place. It is noted that in his later writings, Stern (2010) expands these ideas into the realm of enactments (Auchincloss and Samberg 2012, p. 119). The central theme of broadly based Relational Psychoanalysis (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983) is its description of two-person psychology in which “…patient and analyst together function in an interpersonal field, co-constructing a transference/countertransference matrix and co-creating an intersubjective space in which analytic work transpires” (Auchincloss and Samberg 2012, p. 222). The above heterogeneity of North American definition(s) reflects some of the complexity of how different key threads of ideas and traditions intersect while others traverse separate and parallel paths. In what follows, different sources and pathways of the concept will be traced as taken up by psychoanalysis and as they pertain to the evolution of the concept in Latin America, North America and Europe. The purpose is to facilitate understanding of the contemporary complexity, proliferation and cross-fertilization of psychoanalytic field theories and concepts in and across all IPA regions, as explicated in the subsequent sections of the entry.
567
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online