The Analytic Field and its Transformations

The Analytic Field and its Transformations presents a collection of articles, written jointly by the authors in recent years, all revolving around the post-Bionian model of the analytic field - Bionian Field Theory (BFT). Going hand-in-hand with the ever-growing interest in Bion in general, analytic field theory is emerging as a new paradigm in psychoanalysis. Bion mounted a systematic deconstruction of the principles of classical psychoanalysis. His aim, however, was not to destroy it, but rather to bring out its untapped potential and to develop ideas that have remained on its margins. BFT is a field of inquiry that refuses a priori, at least from its own specific perspective, to immobilize the facts of the analysis within a rigid historical or intrapsychic framework. Its intention is rather to bring out the historicity of the present, the way in which the relationship is formed instant-by-instant from a subtle interplay of identity and differentiation, proximity and distance, embracing both Bion's rigorous, and his radical, spirit.

Table of Contents:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS PREFACE CHAPTER ONE The meaning and use of metaphor in analytic field theory CHAPTER TWO Stone got eyes: on Bion's seminar in Paris CHAPTER THREE Mourning and the empty couch: a conversation between analysts CHAPTER FOUR The secret of faces CHAPTER FIVE Spacings CHAPTER SIX Analysts in search of an author: Voltaire or Artemisia Gentileschi? CHAPTER SEVEN Confrontation in the Bionian model of the analytic field CHAPTER EIGHT A Beam of Intense Darkness: a discussion of the book by James Grotstein CHAPTER NINE Between 'other' and 'other': Merleau-Ponty as a precursor of the analytic field CHAPTER TEN Carla's panic attacks: insight and transformation REFERENCESINDEX

About the Author :
Giuseppe Civitarese

Review :
"In this compelling new volume, Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese present the cutting edge of contemporary psychoanalytic field theory. In so doing, they do an extraordinary job of integrating the ideas of many thinkers from diverse corners of the intellectual universe into a radically new, but clinically useful way of thinking about the patient-analyst discourse. It is one of the most impressive psychoanalytic contributions I have read in the last two decades and has the potential to transform the day-in, day-out work of the analyst into new depths of understanding. The journey into the unconscious will never be the same. I highly recommend it to all analysts and psychoanalytic therapists."--Glen O. Gabbard, MD, author of Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting "Psychoanalysis has currently become enriched by renewed conceptions of long-developing models, such as drive, part object, ego psychology, social psychology, relationism, and intersubjectivity, to name just a few, but now comes along yet another new and exciting joining together of many of these models with one borrowed from the field of grammatology, specifically metaphor - and field theory, a distillation of Kleinian and relation-intersubjectivity, and other earlier works by Bion, especially his contributions on groups and container/contained. The authors epigrammatise this new trend as "BFT," ("post-Bion Field Theory"). There are many noteworthy features in this work. It presents itself as a compendium and resource book that spells out the fundamental structure of this new analytic super-model by an extensive deconstruction of other psychoanalytic models, followed by thoughtful integrations of them with the field theory model. I found the painstaking distinctions the authors make between "interpersonal," "intersubjective," "group," and "field" to be valuable. I was also happy to see how they spelled out the mystery of "field operations" - as the anonymous voice of the group totally as well as individually, the collective will (author) being the product of the subgroups and their members. The analyst now has a voice with which he can be effectively spoken as well as speak. This work promises to become a standard."--James S. Grotstein, MD, author of A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bion's Legacy to Psychoanalysis and Professor of Psychiatry