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As a matter of style , the terminolgy ‘countertransference’ and ‘bi-personal field’ is used throughout in this way, unless stated differently within a particular conceptual framework or in direct quotations. The terminology of ‘psychoanalytic field’, ‘the field’ or the ‘Field’ are used according to a particular conceptual network or an author, unless specified otherwise.
II. HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF THE FIELD THEORIES AND CONCEPTS WORLDWIDE
II. A. INTERDISCIPLINARY ROOTS: PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL THEORY Starting in the mid-19th century in philosophy and the physical and social sciences there was a loosely grouped tradition of thought that was critical of the accretion of knowledge based on either classification or reduction to basic element connected through ‘mediums’. In 1873, Michael Faraday introduced the term “magnetic field,” and his “lines of force” were augmented by James Clerk Maxwell into a theory of the electromagnetic field. For example, unlike the earlier concept of ether, that held that there must be a ‘medium’ between different objects to account for “action at a distance,” field properties describe the inherent relationship of parts that constitute the whole without a magic medium. The interwoven network of relationships in the field thereby constitutes a system. It was the eminent physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach who saw this field description as applicable to perceptual phenomena. Mach (1896) noted that sensations organized into forms, into temporal and spatial patterns that were independent of the sensations themselves. A melody, for example, is recognizable from one key to another even though the notes of the melody played at different keys are not the same. It is the relationship between the notes rather than the notes themselves that constitutes the essence of the melody. Likewise, the form quality of objects persists even when the sensations of objects change. A coin will continue to look circular when seen from different angles, will retain the same features when seen in light of different intensity, and so on. Mach held that the complexity of perception cannot be reduced to its elements alone. Sensations by themselves can never have meaning; perception is not simply of ‘raw’ sensation, but also of relationships. Mach saw human awareness and indeed all natural phenomena in terms of dynamic processes rather than solely in terms of causal chains. He came to his ideas though his research in physics and physiology (Mach & McCormack, 1906), where he was known for a wide array of studies in dynamics. The Mach field, for example, postulates that the inertial dynamics of a given body are determined by its relationship to every other body in a system. During the same period, Franz Brentano (1874/1973), who counted Freud among his students, influenced a generation of thinkers with his Act Psychology, addressing the activity of consciousness rather than the contents toward which consciousness is directed. From his perspective, one distinguishes between the psychological activity of hearing a tone, for example, from the non-psychological content of the tone heard, focusing on the intentionality
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