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This issue is dedicated to exploring the current use of metaphoric processes and fields in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. A previous issue, Metaphoric Process: The Common Ground for Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Volume 31, number 2, 2011), led directly to the ideas developed in this issue. The richness and flexibility of psychoanalytic concepts of metaphoric process that run through the diverse psychoanalytic perspectives today was demonstrated in the previous issue. The contents of that issue also pointed to what was missing in an account of the possibility of a psychoanalytic foundation that can encompass all perspectives. This is the concept of psychoanalytic fields.
As is shown in the pages of this issue, field theory has emerged as an international psychoanalytic concept that may bring not only a coherent underlying vessel for the disparate psychoanalytic perspectives but also a way of fostering interactive exploration of the various uses of psychoanalytic concepts and techniques.
This issue unites psychoanalytic work on metaphoric processes with the use of fields. An objective is to show how the use of metaphoric processes combined with field conceptions can help forge clearer theoretical and clinical understanding across psychoanalytic perspectives, as well as in interdisciplinary discourse. Most of the articles were written for this issue; two derived from presentations at the International Psychoanalytic Association Congress in 2011. Many of the articles were posted online and there was an extended period for online discussion amongst the authors and some commentators.
All of the authors from the previous issue on metaphoric processes were invited to participate in the online discussion along with other psychoanalysts working in this area. The authors for this issue are Elsa Rappoport de Aisemberg, Antoine Corel, Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro, Montana Katz, Beatriz de Leon di Bernardi, Claudio Neri, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, and Juan Tubert-Okla