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transformations. In Ferro’s work with Roberto Basile (Ferro and Basile, 2008), the field is understood as a meeting point of the multiple characters of patient and analyst with a life of their own, as if on stage. Transformations of the characters in the session’s narratives are seen as representing the transformations in the analytic field . Ferro (2009) and Giuseppe Civitarese (Civitarese 2008; Ferro and Civitarese 2013a, b) stress the use of the analyst’s mind and body, held in reverie , as a guide to the unconscious processes in the patient and between analyst and analysand. In the context of classical psychoanalysis, when the patient speaks about people, they are considered usually as historical characters. In a Kleinian model of analysis, the characters that enter the session are understood as internal objects, inhabitants of the patient s inner world. From the standpoint of the field concept, there is an added complexity: the concept of people is replaced by the concept of characters, so if a patient speaks about his uncle Francis, his dog, his grandfather or his brother, these characters are considered to be co-constructed by the analyst and the patient and to constitute ongoing signals of the field’s life within the setting. Therefore, whatever the discourse may be, regardless of its latitudinal or longitudinal coordinates, or of how the narrative theme unfolds in the session, the characters brought into the scene constitute functions of the field, serving to construct and communicate whatever is occurring in the depths of the field’s psychic life. Ferro (2009, 2017a) also described an operation he refers to as “Field Zero Time” or mourning for reality: “Operation ‘Field Zero Time’ is mourning for Reality, That Reality which corresponds to Time ’Zero’, to ‘O’, to the Final (or First) Reality which will be worked out in the Black Hole of column two on Bion’s Grid (as Grotstein reminds us in an extraordinary way), which funnels out, sucking in ‘Reality’, transforming it into narrative, or using the various ways through it, we could say alphabetising it and rendering it into material suitable for the construction of dream” (2017a, p. 73). The analytic field, according to Ferro , has no limits apart from those of its perennial expansiveness . In the analytic field, there is ‘360 degrees listening’. In the ‘space-time’ of analysis – and this depends on the triad of a setting, an analyst and a patient – there are no extra-field phenomena or communications. Even the most real and realistic communication is to be considered relevant to the field even if it takes time for its relevance to be understood or expressed. Every communication will be eventually deconstructed, de-concretised, and re- dramatized with multiple possible scenarios. In this vein, Ferro lays emphasis on the development of the narrative capacity , which comes to life in the field through the operations of de-concretisation, de-saturation, de-construction leading to the possibility of co- constructing, co-narrating and co-playing. As he (Ferro 2019) noted later, reading, writing and play become the instruments and pillars of creativity . Starting with a saturated and concrete content, new emotional experiences are woven. Here, the analytic field is also the site of all the patient’s and analyst’s potential identities , which does not mean that all the potential identities must come to life or be integrated: sometimes it is appropriate for them to remain split off within the strata of the field itself for the whole of the time, when useful for the development of mental life and creativity.
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