Introduction to the Second Panel on the Concept of the “Analytic Field”

This is the second of a two-part panel exploring the concept of the “analytic field” in psychoanalytic theory and practice. In Part 1, Donnel B. Stern offered a compelling introduction to a comparative theory of the field in his examination of the origins of this concept in the work of Harry Stack Sullivan and Madeleine and Willy Baranger. In this Part 2, Stern continues this exploration by addressing the centrality of the idea of the field in contemporary interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis and in contemporary Bionian field theory, highlighting the work of Antonino Ferro. Although Stern structures his paper by addressing similarities and differences between interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis (IRP) and Bionian field theory (BFT), he achieves something more significant. Please consider a passage from Stephen Mitchell's (1991) introductory editorial in the first issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues:

… [P]sychoanalysts have enormous difficulty listening and speaking meaningfully to each other. … [They] cluster in groups identified with a particular tradition, each with its own favorite words and phrases, each usually founded by a single charismatic leader. When analysts within one group speak with or read each other's work, there is a sense that they stand on familiar ground. The shared language, the key words … have meaning far greater than that of the referents of the terms themselves. The language creates a sense of familiarity, an experience of belonging to a community that shares a common sensibility, a consensually accepted vision of the complex and subtle workings of the psyche, a road map and repertoire of techniques for negotiating the storms and ambiguities of the psychoanalytic process. … [T]o outsiders, the same key words and phrases do not evoke a sense of familiarity and shared beliefs but, on the contrary, are often grating and off-putting. Each phrase carries with it many assumptions with which one may not agree. One has the feeling that the s