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Antonino Ferro has struck a chord for many of us in the San Francisco psychoanalytic community. Through In the Analyst's Consulting Room, his earlier book The Bi-Personal Field, a recent series of articles in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and his well-received teaching visit to the Bay Area last winter, we have been exposed to Ferro's distinctive vision — a vision that integrates the two analytic approaches that have excited the most interest in our community in recent years: the relational/intersubjective and the contemporary Kleinian/Bionian. This is no easy task as these approaches often seem antithetical.
The Kleinian influence on Ferro and his many Italian colleagues with whom he has co-authored papers is clear. What I'm calling the “relational” side of Ferro, however, stems from sources other than the North American relational schools that we recognize. His foremost source is the field theory of the Argentinean analysts Madeline and Willi Baranger, who, drawing on Gestalt psychology, developed the concept of the analytic situation as a field constituted by (but greater than) the individual psychologies of patient and analyst. The Barangers developed their ideas apart from North American self-psychological, intersubjective, and relational theorists, and, although very influential in South American psychoanalysis, their work is relatively unknown in the United States.
The Barangers’ influence on Ferro's development is reflected in his emphasis on listening to his own contributions to the field. Using an approach significantly different from the familiar relational approaches, Ferro keeps to himself his awareness of his contributions to the field, using them to inform his interpretations rather than make the self-disclosures that are a hallmark of the North American relational schools. Ferro uses his own experience to monitor the field and listen to how his patient receives his