IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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internal worlds. This big bang creates what might be called a function, which only comes to life in the field . Its features no longer pertain to either the analyst or the patient but are jointly generated in the analytic encounter when the couple’s diverse internal worlds merge to form a single entity. The analyst’s interpretative approach thus changes to accommodate these units, focusing on the movement within the field as a whole and no longer on its individual aspects. The attention that was previously devoted to interpretations turns instead to the process of transformation. Ferro’s concept of ‘bi-personal field’ (Ferro, 1999), a structure resulting from a convergence of the analyst’s and patient’s subjective fields, represents a radical way to conceive unconscious intersubjectivity. The entity engendered by the interaction of the two subjectivities is something new, more than the sum of the two individual fields, which are taken over by this new structure. Insofar as the bi-personal field belongs to the present ‘here-and- now’ brought into being by the two subjects engaged in the psychoanalytic journey, the temporal dimension of individuals is overlooked, outlining a sort of “horizontal modellings of intersubjectivity” (Bohleber 2013. p. 812), a kind of a horizontal conception of the unconscious. Ferro (2009) further expanded and clarified his field conceptualization at the Boston Bion Conference, where he blended field theory with a Bionian conceptual framework: “…after a long period of engagement, it was time to announce the marriage between Bion (or, better, many of his concepts) and the concept of Field” (Sabbadini and Ferro 2010, p. 424). The field now involves: “ 1. The explicit move from a bi-personal to a multipersonal field , where internal groupings of patient and analyst become engaged in complex interactions. 2. The introduction of the concept of character of the field as an ongoing hologram/manifestation of the pairing between internal groupings of analyst and patient; and, from a different perspective, understood as narrative derivatives of the waking dream thoughts. 3. The identification within the field of structures and forms of functioning belonging to the field, in terms of α function of the field, β turbulences in the field, and containing qualities of specific sites in the field (♀) and hypercontents (♂) in other sites. 4. The field, by now clearly three- dimensional, becomes the site of all possible histories. Little by little, all the tools for thinking introduced by Bion will be considered as belonging to the field, of which the current relationship is one of the loci, as is the History which continuously presses to be deconstructed, deconcretized, and redreamed. The same applies to the β elements waiting to be dreamed…” (Sabbadini and Ferro 2010, pp. 424-425; italics added). The main point is that what comes to life in the field is dreamlike, referring to Bion’s concept of alpha function - beta transformation into alpha and the development of tools for thinking - which thus becomes part of the field concept. The field is conceived as being essentially dreamlike, a field capable of producing transformations , and a field in which all that presents itself, and originates there, belongs only to the field. Nothing is outside the field and, in a way, nothing can exist outside of it, without necessarily being decoded and deconstructed. Deconstructing and interpreting are things that the analyst can do. Another possibility is to follow what the patient says, following the dreamlike thread and thus allow

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