Field, Process, and Metaphor

Abstract

The concepts of field and metaphor are necessarily related, first, because the very idea of the field is a metaphor; second, because metaphors generate a field in themselves, when considered as a form of mental activity. The mind works in terms of two logics and two processes: the secondary process, which is verbal, realistic, logical, and scientific; and the primary process, which is iconic, fantastic, metaphorical, and poetic. The logic of the secondary process is asymmetrical and that of the primary process is symmetrical; the confluence and articulation of both is bilogical. The analogical synthesis of both logics gives the fullest integration of the human mind.

At the unconscious level, there is no individuation and no differences, but rather a primeval fusion of subject, object, and environment; this is the psychological and logical basis of the bipersonal field and process, which include both patient and analyst in an evolving dynamic whole. There is necessary complementarity between psycho-analysis and group analysis, as there was between the Barangers’ (2008) concept of the dynamic field and their teacher Enrique Pichon-Rivière's (1971) concept of the spiral process. These ideas originated from the group-analytic experience and found their way into the theory of psychoanalytic technique.

Notes

Juan Tubert-Oklander is a psychoanalyst and group analyst, a full member of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association and Training and Supervising Analyst in its Institute, and a full Member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and the Group-Analytic Society.

¹“Psychology, too, is a natural science. What else can it be?” (Freud, 1940, p. 282).

²Here the unusual spelling of the word corresponds to the Kleinian usage (Isaacs, 1948), in which phantasy refers to the original unconscious mental processes and their iconic content, as something quite different from conscious fantasies, akin to daydreaming, and their repressed derivatives, as described by Freud (1908).