Back to Table of Contents
The Barangers believe the analytic process to be a dialectical movement where process and non-process coexist. When the analytic process stops it is the analyst who should find out what the obstacle to it might be. Therefore, they suggest that a ‘second glance’ including both the analyst and the patient should be used, thus constituting a dynamic field. This obstacle not only involves the analysand’s transference, but also the analyst’s countertransference. Each analyst turns his attention to the ‘second glance’ as soon as he has given up the ‘evenly suspended attention’ and this moment of the process is marked by the appearance of bodily experiences, imagined movements or certain images turning up, among other things. All this constitutes an indication that new structures – unconscious fantasies that are shared by both and which, in addition, are the result of interplay of reciprocal identifications – have emerged within the analytic setting. The dynamics of the field are thought to be given by the transformations of these fantasies, which, in turn, are the ones that give the analytic field the hallmarks of time and space ambiguity and its ‘as if’ quality. The Barangers were influenced by the ideas of Merleau Ponty and K Lewin when developing their field theory. The subject and the object behave as a field and define each other. That is to say, we are not dealing with two different bodies, or with two different people, but with two divided subjects, whose division is the result of an initial triangulation. The analytic couple constitutes a triad, where one of its members is absent in body but present as an experience. Hence the Barangers substitute the notion of dynamic field with that of inter- subjective field. They privilege the bodily and emotional aspects of the analytic communication and, in addition, establish a distinction between the concepts of setting and of process. As a product of these dynamics, a neo-formation, a stagnant, crystallised structure that hinders the process and which they call ‘bastion’ is created. This structure is formed around a ‘fantasmatic’ organisation, involves important aspects of the personal history of both participants, and assigns to each a stereotyped, imaginary role. The patient has a tendency to avoid referring to this role, which could be connected to his ideology, his idealized love object, aristocratic fantasies, or the state of his finances. To the analysand the bastion is an unconscious refuge for omnipotent fantasies. He is not willing to give it up because that would mean getting into a state of vulnerability, helplessness and hopelessness. The rupture of the bastion means re-distributing aspects of the participants involved (analyst and analysand). It therefore constitutes a de-symbiotization. The most extreme form of this symbiosis indicates a state of parasitism (the analyst feels as if he were ‘inhabited’ by the analysand, as it were, and grows concerned about him beyond the sessions), which might end up in a violent rupture of the analytic situation or, in contrast, in the continuance of the process only if the patient’s projective identifications are returned to him. Therefore, the analytic process seems to be constituted by the production of resistances and bastions. The dissolution of these by means of interpretation creates insight and the indications of insight open up, in turn, a vision for the future, marked by the appearance of new projects and feelings of hope.
889
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online