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“Free Associations/Associative Links”
This issue of the Italian journal Rivista di Psicoanalisi is devoted to the general subject of free association. In discussing various meanings and aspects of free association, many of this issue's authors refer to the psychoanalytic field, a concept that has been developed and widely used by Italian psychoanalytic writers. The field concept is reminiscent of Kurt Lewin's field theory, a cornerstone of American social psychology. However, the psychoanalytic field differs from the Lewinian concept in its emphasis upon the interpersonal, the intrapsychic, and the interplay among interpersonal and intrapsychic forces. Among Italian psychoanalytic writers, the concept of the psychoanalytic field influences the view of psychoanalytic process. Thus, for them, other therapies, including group therapy and certain types of family therapy, are readily included under the psychoanalytic rubric.
Bion's theories occupy a special place in Italian psychoanalysis and easily dovetail with the concept of the psychoanalytic field. As Grotstein notes in an article written for this issue of the Rivista (see p. 626 of these abstracts), Bion approached the subject of free association from the standpoints of both the analyst and the analysand; thus, both these viewpoints are part of the psychoanalytic field.
As Editor of this issue of the Rivista, Claudio Neri has written an introduction defining the issue's aim of proposing a view of