Confrontation in the Bionian Model of the Analytic Field

ABSTRACT

On the basis of some clinical examples, we try in this article to show how confrontation should be subordinated to the principle of the patient’s emotional sustainability. Confrontation can also be carried out in an indirect way, by using the characters of the analytic dialogue, and certainly by responding to the signals coming from the emotional LEDs that light up continuously in the field. In fact, we argue that especially the restricted classical concept of confrontation seems to put too much emphasis on rational understanding. On the contrary, from a field perspective, what one is interested in is not a discussion of presumed truths, but an expansion of the degree of emotional unison and so the patient’s ability to give a personal meaning to experience.

Notes

¹ Translator’s note: For convenience, the masculine form is used for both sexes throughout this translation.

² The analyst is GC in the first five vignettes and AF in all the others.

³ Of course, these little icons between brackets are meant to represent in a playful and ironic way, as in cartoon speech bubbles, the intense turmoil the analyst experiences at this point in the session.

⁴ Translator’s note: A play on words in Italian: bulli means roughnecks and bulloni bolts.

⁵ Translator’s note: Legge is the Italian word for law – i.e. the pirates are outlaws – but it is also the third-person singular, present tense, of the verb leggere (to read).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonino Ferro

Antonino Ferro, M.D., is the President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society; and Member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, the European Psychoanalytical Federation, and the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Giuseppe Civitarese

Giuseppe Civitarese, M.D., Ph.D., is a Member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and the American Psychoanalytic Association.