Field Theory in Psychoanalysis,Part 2: Bionian Field Theory and Contemporary Interpersonal/Relational Psychoanalysis

This article is the second part of an examination of field theory in psychoanalysis. In this article, contemporary Bionian field theory, primarily the work of Antonino Ferro, is compared with contemporary interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis.     

Field Theory and the Dream Sense: Continuing the Comparison of Interpersonal/Relational Theory and Bionian Field Theory

This paper is a continuation of the comparison of interpersonal/relational theory and Bionian field theory that I began in two articles that appeared in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2013. The paper has two sections. In the first, I discuss differences between Bionian field theory and interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. In the second, I turn to what the two schools of field theory share.     

Psychosomatic breast and alexithymic breast: A Bionian psychosomatic perspective

The author develops the concept of ‘psychosomatic breast’ in both clinical and theoretical terms, a concept developed by Bion (1962b) to account for a breast in charge of primary symbolization and of the psychosomatic integration of the infant's raw physiological, emotional and sensory experiences. As such, the psychosomatic breast is a prototype, a core in the mother endowed with the capacity for reverie insofar as the transformative function of the latter not only pertains to the primary symbolization of emotional life, but also to its secondary symbolization. The author contends that a primal failure in the transformation of such raw emotional and sensory experiences through the reverie of primary objects results in the incorporation of an ‘alexithymic breast’ – a kind of obstructive object that has become impervious to communication via projective identification and has been internalized as a source of psychic and physical breakdown. This early deficiency in parental reverie is experienced by the infant as a primitive disaster that establishes a point of fixation, a fault line in psychosomatic organization which the individual is likely to regress to, at a later stage, by developing physical illness. The author illustrates the dynamics and the economy of the conflict between psychosomatic and alexithymic breasts thanks to fragments from the analysis of a woman who developed cancer in the course of her psychoanalysis and was eventually cured.     

Learning from experience in case conference: A Bionian approach to teaching and consulting

In case conferences as well as didactic seminars, the power of the group can bring psychoanalytic education to life. However, primitive anxieties activated by group dynamics may also interfere with teaching and learning. The authors offer the example of a stalemated private practice case conference that had unconsciously organized against learning as the members began to read Bion's work. The case conference leader, an analyst, presented her case conference, which was mired in basic assumption dependency dynamics, to our peer consultation group. Drawing upon Bion's early contributions on groups, as well as his later ideas about thinking and mental growth, the peer group facilitated the case conference's return to work-group functioning and learning from experience. Activated in the peer group, commensal container↔contained processes gradually spread throughout the entire relational system of peer group, case-conference leader, case-conference members, and patients. This example underscores the importance of promoting within our institutes a culture in which faculty view themselves as part of an evolving intersubjective matrix that works to foster the containing capacities of candidates, patients, and faculty alike.     

A Discussion of “Field Theory and the Dream Sense: Continuing the Comparison of Interpersonal/Relational Theory and Bionian Field Theory”

My discussion of Dr. Stern’s comparative paper (this issue) of Relational and Bionian perspectives focuses primarily on the difficulties in comparing two psychoanalytic clinical approaches. Each theory has its underlying assumptions, vocabulary, and sometimes idiosyncratic usages of the same term. Furthermore, when one individual trained in a particular perspective attempts to compare two theories, one of which he or she is steeped in, the comparison is always challenging. It is nearly impossible to ignore our own psychoanalytic training history which surely affects one’s views since we are often speaking different languages.     

Elements of the Oedipus complex: A Kleinian account1

The author discusses and illustrates the place in current Kleinian practice of the analysis of the Oedipus complex. He outlines the development of the concept of the Oedipus complex by Freud and by Klein and later writers in the Kleinian tradition. Because the child's exclusion from his parents' sexual relationship represents such a fundamental aspect of reality for the child, analysis of the patient's responses to the oedipal situation constitutes the central task of analysis. Despite the Oedipus complex being in this way central, it is sometimes hard to discern because what is most visible are the patient's defensive responses to the oedipal situation. The emergence of meaning in analysis is often understood unconsciously as the product of the parental intercourse, represented by the work of the patient with the analyst, or of the analyst's or the patient's mind. The analysis of the patient's characteristic reactions to moments of meaningfulness in analysis is therefore an especially fruitful focus for the analysis of the Oedipus complex. The author illustrates these ideas by three clinical examples, from a 3½‐year‐old child, a borderline psychotic patient and a more neurotic patient.     

Transformation and invariance in creative translations and analytic interpretations: A Bionian reading of Borges and Cervantes

Bion's basic theory of transformations includes the concept of invariances: those aspects that are kept unchanged in the transformation. Translations are considered transformations that include invariances that allow for the recognition of the transformation. Psychoanalytic interpretations are seen by the author of this paper as a special case of such transformations. From Borges's radically open perspective on translation, psychoanalytic interpretations can be characterized as pertaining to one of three categories: (1) interpretations that change the unfamiliar to the familiar, (2) rigid motion transformations, or (3) interpretations that are transformations towards O. These ideas are dramatized in the reading of two of Borges's fictional stories that present two different approaches to translation, Averroes' search and Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote. These stories exemplify transformations in –K and + K. Finally, Cervantes' intuition of a hybrid language that approaches O and allows for a peaceful and multilayered interpretation of reality (transformation towards O) is discussed.     

Symposium: On the Interface of Kleinian and Intersubjectivist Approaches to a Clinical Case

This symposium is the first of what we hope will be a series on the interface between Kleinian and intersubjective/relational approaches to psychoanalysis. There are some commonalities between these approaches that may not be entirely obvious. The Kleinian clinical approach organizes the internal world in terms of internal object relationships, and relies on attention to certain aspects of the countertransference as the central data source for analytic work. Both of these qualities provide an immediate link to the two-person model so central to the relational turn. At the same time, the Kleinians' radical insistence on the primacy of the internal world and in particular, the world of the primitive phantasies, runs counter to the relational interest in the equally important role of actual, social reality. This contrast is perhaps most acute in their approaches to the analyst's participation in the analytic dyad, which is meant to be limited to particular analytic functions in the Kleinian approach, but acknowledged and used as a part of an interpersonal relationship in the relational model. As the Kleinian perspectives gain currency in the United States and international interest in the relational approach grows, an exploration of these complex conceptual and clinical differences and similarities seems quite timely.     

Whose Who in the Psychoanalytic Situation: Subject,Object, and Enactment in the Relational and Contemporary Kleinian Traditions

The concept of enactment, although it has probably has become an overused term in the Relational literature, is a relatively new one for the Contemporary Kleinians of London. In explicating and synthesizing these different theoretical perspectives (Relational and Contemporary Kleinians), the author's primary focus is to tackle the notion of subject and object, in the context of enactment. The author first delineates the relationship between reality and fantasy, and each theory's notion of enactment. In doing so, the author shows how these differing theories and their related notion of therapeutic action inform the kind of object the analyst sees himself or herself as. The author also addresses the technical implications related to the consequences that arise for the analyst as an object of the patient's transferences and projections, including how the analyst extricates himself or herself from the enactment. Two previously published vignettes are used for the purpose of comparison. The author argues for a complementary technical stance comprising two analytic modes: analyst as subject and analyst as object.