IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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From a relational perspective , the analyst’s mental functioning in the session is an operation which is found and taken up in a certain way by the patient’s associations. This is somewhat complicated by field theory, in as much as what comes to life in the session refers to and describes the very functioning of the field, without it being possible to determine what comes from the patient and what comes from the analyst. The field must be able to change from a beta field to an alpha field. Overall, Antonino Ferro (2017b) enriched the concept of the field in multiple ways by incorporating some of Bion’s later ideas about Transformations in O and his many ideas of the development of thinking. He introduced the “ extended field concept” by associating the field concept with the ideas of “alpha function” in the metabolic and elaborative capacity and “narrative function” which makes it possible to transform emotions into narrations, and vice versa, narrations into emotions. To add further complexity, the Field concept is not only restricted to the dyad alone, considering Bion’s binocular view of the individual-in-the-group- as-a whole. II. Db. Developments in France In France, in 1983, in preparation for the IPA congress in Madrid, Luisa de Urtubey translated one of the Barangers’ most significant paper: “The analytic situation as a dynamic field” (1961-62). In de Urtubey’ s introduction (1985), she underlined the importance of this article as a reference for South American psychoanalysis. Luisa de Urtubey and Haydée Faimberg (1987), both South American analysts and members of the Psychoanalytical Society of Paris, have greatly contributed to raising the awareness among the French Psychoanalytic community about Latin American thinking. Faimberg (1987) developed the concept of listening to listening based on the work of the Barangers and Jose Bleger. Faimberg’s ‘Listening to listening’ is about listening to ‘how’ the patient hears and interprets or reinterprets the analyst’s interpretation, intervention or even silence, in order to promote awareness of the intense psychic work going on in the process. Based on the theories of Klein and Bion, the Barangers underscore the centrality of the transferential relationship and the new transference object that this relationship, which becomes a new formation in its own right, constitutes. Overall, in this and many other ways, the concept of the ‘field’ makes it possible to understand certain aspects and dimensions of the analytical situation more completely. At the same time, it differs from other concepts that are similar, but do not coincide , such as atmosphere, framework, relationship , or the analytic third . It was by emphasizing the understanding of non-neurotic states , as André Green (2002) calls them, that the Barangers found a receptive audience in French psychoanalysis, especially because they remained as close as possible to the unconscious without falling into a purely phenomenological intersubjective dimension that would cause the unconscious dimension of the analytical process to lose all its strength.

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