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This process is held as “enriching and transforming in itself” (Ferro and Civitarese, 2013). The theorists typically associated with prioritizing this clinical stance are those associated with the variety of field theories, Winnicottian-inflected orientations, and child play therapies. Here, the analyst maintains an uncritical attitude toward emerging experience with the analysand, especially in relation to those experiences that may not fit with past repetitious patterns or the analysand’s historical narrative. As examples of this analytic stance, Bion (1965) writes of listening to a married patient and appreciating that this patient was “talking in a way which is quite appropriate to his not being married at all” (p. 15). In another example, Winnicott states to his analysand, “I am listening to a girl. I know perfectly well that you are a man but I am listening to a girl, and I am talking to a girl. I am telling this girl: “You are talking about penis envy”“ (1971, p. 98). The North American writers associated with this type of sensibility include (but are not limited to) Arnold Modell (1989, 1990, 2001, 2005), Lawrence Brown (2011), Thomas Ogden (1994, 2005), Howard Levine (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013), and Donnel Stern (1997, 2010, 2015). One way in which this approach is put into practice is by viewing the session as a dream experience (Ferro, 2009, Cassorla, 2005, 2017a), comprising the lens through which every session is both understood and constructed. The session itself is held as a new experience created through unconscious mechanisms that use the entire setting as props or ‘characters in the field’ (Ferro, 2009; Cassorla (2005). Further exemplification of such an approach is Cassorla’s (2005, 2018) elaboration of his ‘theatre model’ of the analytic field: 1. Character; 2 Spectator; 3. Co-Author; 4. Director; 5. Critic; and 6. Light and Sound Technician. A diffuse attentional set engages a form of thinking associated with analogic, synthetic modes of cognition, a ‘this is like that’ type of cognitive process, globally receptive to affective shifts and emergent experience. Analogic thinking is metaphoric, poetic, and momentarily disregards differences. This form of cognition corresponds to the form of thinking governed by the nondominant (right) hemisphere (Watt 1990, 2019 ; Schore 2011). This is a receptive mode of attention, especially for visuo-spatial (pictorial) images and affect-laden forms of processing that may emerge in the analyst’s reveries as well. Donnel B. Stern (1990) might refer to this mode of the analyst as conduit, an active receptivity to unconscious communication, in line with Bion’s (1967) ‘negative capability’ or Laplanche’s (1999) conception of the ‘tub’, that is, re-opening of the enclosure of the psychoanalytic situation and re-opening of (feared) transference repercussion. This stance privileges the elaboration of the field so as to facilitate emergent growth processes. These may or may not involve the verbal expression of these processes. Projective identificatory processes may emerge and define functional roles for each member of the dyad, yet both are viewed as part of a single dynamic process that encompass the entire context (Baranger and Baranger, 2008). These processes are viewed as emergent properties of the joint internal fantasy of the couple or dream-field. This is an expansive view and privileges efforts toward growth and creative elements.
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