Field Theory as a Metaphor and Metaphors in the Analytic Field and Process

Abstract

This article deals with field theory issues in the frame of Latin American thought, linking it to the subject of metaphor in psychoanalysis.

In the first part of this article, some general developments about the theme of metaphor and about metaphor in psychoanalysis are exposed. I present the concept of dynamic field theory in the vision of Madeleine and Willy Baranger; the metaphoric processes implicit in this theory, and interpretations formulated over different basic concepts.

In the second part, I develop a personal perspective of the field theory, supporting myself on examples of my clinical practice. I describe the characteristics of moments of intense communication between patient and analyst and the metaphoric processes implicit in interpretations. These metaphoric processes enable the integration of different levels of the intersubjective experience created between patient and analyst. I postulate a dialectic point of view that allows the articulation of a situational perspective that studies the specific intersubjective moments of change in the analysis, with a vision that considers the process of analysis through time.

Conclusions are formulated regarding the role of metaphor in analysis and the future of the field theory in the context of theoretical and technical pluralism of current psychoanalysis.

Notes

Beatriz de León de Bernardi is a Master in Psychoanalysis and a Member of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association.

¹Madeleine and Willy Baranger, members of the Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina (Argentinian Psychoanalytic Association), lived in Uruguay between 1954 and 1965, helping to form the Group of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association and they were founders of the Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanálisis (Uruguayan Journal of Psychoanalysis).

²For example, the XXI Congress of FEPAL in Mexico 1995: Problems of the transference and countertransference field.

³The reflection about the analytic situation appeared in different thinkers of the time, as Enrique Pichon Rivière, Heinrich Racker, Luisa Alvarez de Toledo, Jorge Mom among others, but we owe to M. & W. Baranger the more exhaustive study of the subject.

⁴It is interesting to confirm proximities between this approach and different current experiences in working groups formed by analysts from different regions, who with different methodologies attempt to observe and investigate specific aspects of psychoanalysis based on the study of clinical materials presented by analysts (IPA Berlin Congress and Chicago Congress, FEPAL Congress).

⁵“The analytic situation should be formulated by an indefinite and neutral personage—in effect of a person confronted by his or her own—but a situation between who remain unavoidably connected and complementary as long as the situation obtains and is involved in a single dynamic process. In this situation neither member of the couple can be understood without the other.” [M. Baranger and W. Baranger, 2008, p. 796]

⁶‘‘La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers / Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; / L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles / Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent / Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, / Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, / Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent’’ (Baudelaire, Correspondances, cited in Álvarez de Toledo, 1954, p. 299).

⁷This polarity between situation and process is present in the psychoanalytic reflection of different schools, which stress one of these aspects or the other. Joseph (1985) for example, from a Kleinian perspective, defined essential aspects of transference understood as total situation. From another theoretical posture, Stern (2004), analyzed the characteristics of present moments of the analytic relationship that show meaningful changes in the relating patterns. The already mentioned perspective of Haideé Faimberg (2006), although it studies specific moments of analysis, it will also study its effects in the process development. Thoma and Kachele (1989) referred in their interactive model of the analytic process to thematic nodal issues or interactive foci that happen one after the other along the analysis.

⁸Different authors have stated that the analyst's mind operates with similar mechanisms to those described by Freud in relation to the dream work, as shown by Ferro and Cevitarese in this número. W. Bucci (1997), in his theory of multiple codes has shown how the interpretative activity allows to integrate the analogic subsymbolic, emotional and bodily levels with the discrete, symbolic elements of image and word. The image or sequences of those which are characteristic of dreams and the expressions of the analyst or patient appear as intermediate nexus which allow integrating emotional and bodily experiences, several times split in the process of symbolization achieved by the access to the word.

⁹ Sandler (1983) differentiated the public, official, or explicit theories, exposed in the scientific exchange with colleagues, from the theories used in the individual clinical practice, to which he called private theories or implicit theories. This perspective has given origin to different contributions (Canestri Bohleber, Denis, and Fonagy, 2006). Latin American thinkers also marked differences between the way in which theory works in the psychoanalytic session and in the field of scientific discussion with colleagues, such as Pichon Rivière (1998), Liberman (1970), and Bleger (1969). Bleger (1969) was one of the first who in the Río de la Plata talked about implicit theory, noted that the “theory developed and made explicit does not always coincide with the implicit theory in practice” (p. 288). He also noted, “the divergencies between psychoanalytic theory and implicit theory [in practice], not completely formulated nor assimilated—this last one—in the theoretical body of psychoanalysis” (p. 289).