Field Conditions: Discussion of Donnel B. Stern's Field Theory in Psychoanalysis

In this discussion we applaud Donnel B. Stern for undertaking his rigorous comparison of the “field” concept in interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis (IRP) and Bionian field theory (BFT). Stern offers a balanced presentation of similarities and differences between these two conceptual models, but we focus primarily on certain differences, starting with what we perceive as differing notions of the nature, purpose, and clinical function of the field itself. We distinguish the interactional view of an essentially relational model of the field in IRP (where the clinical aim is to enlarge the domain of the interpersonal dialogue and the capacity for mutual recognition) from the BFT model of a field viewed in terms of emergent phenomena, realized in multiple modalities of experience (here the clinical aim is to expand the scope of contact with unconscious life and to facilitate the capacity to transform emotional, psycho-sensory and proto-emotional experience). We also take up the differing relationships to external reality and authority within these two models, with special reference to the role of the frame in the function of the field.