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The direction of Bion’s influence in North America reflects these views in that he was adamant about not wanting to create a ‘Bionian’ school or even to teach people to analyze as he did. This view is characteristic of the ‘late Bion,’ with his emphasis on independence of thought and the search for and necessity of creativity and change, even in the face of the ‘catastrophic change’ that he believed was stirred up by growth. Ogden’s ‘ the analytic third ’ (Ogden, 1994), Bion’s ‘ reverie’ and ‘ waking dream thought ’ (Bion, 1962), as well as Grotstein’s (2005, 2008) ‘ projectve transidentification ’ can be seen as expansions of an unconscious conceived along the lines of the object relations theory and as descriptions of the analyst’s mental stance directly derived from such a view of the unconscious. Such expansions are cornerstones of an analytic encounter to be meant as a ‘two- way affair’ (Bion, 1978). In this regard, Grotstein’s (2005, 2008, 2014) ‘projective transidentification’ , which refers to the unconscious communicative aspect of ‘ mutual ‘induction’ , in relation to ‘binary’ unconscious functioning as the mutual counterbalancing of symmetrical primary and asymmetrical secondary processes can be seen as related to Latin American Matte-Blanco’s conceptualization of Unconscious Logic (below); whereas Bion’s and Ogden’s thinking of an expanded unconscious are further engaged and extended by notable Italian field theorists Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese. All of these extentions (Grotstein, Bion, Ogden, Ferro, Civitarese) are included in the synthetic Latin American thinking on Unconscious Communication (below). Ferro and Civitarese apply such expanded conceptualization of the unconsciou s also to deepening the separation with classical technique. For Ferro (2004, 2009, 2016), who conceptualizes the session as a field , Bion’s and Grotstein’s emphasis on development of capacity to think through unconscious communication is paramount: “[it] is not a matter of historical facts or the bringing of things from the past into the present; the emphasis is, instead, on the attempt to develop the patient’s – or rather, the field’s – capacity to think (to dream), by way also of ongoing transformation of the patient’s communications into a dream” (Ferro and Frangini, 2013, p. 371; the field aspect added in: Ferro and Civitarese, 2016). For his part, Civitarese (2014, 2015; Ferro and Civitarese 2016) has followed Bion’s and Ogden’s invitation to the analyst to forget the contradictions arising out of rational examination and to be in a state of hallucinosis . In this illustration of a “dramatic” point of view referred to above, to be able to see what the patient sees. Ferro and Civitarese, drawing on Ogden (2003, 2005), argue that the analyst must take seriously all impressions, sensations, and ideas, even if they seemingly conflict with aspects of external reality, because they may tell a more accurate a story (Ferro and Civitarese, 2016). In their view, the truth of the unconscious is richer than that which is perceived and communicated consciously. According to these authors, the ‘characters’ in the ‘text of analysis’ cast in their roles by the patient or analyst, within and between each of them, are seen to undergo constant transformation so as to allow the expression of what progressively becomes thinkable in the here and-now of the session (Civitarese & Ferro, 2013; Ferro & Civitarese, 2016).
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