Interview With: Antonino Ferro

Ana Belchior Melícias (ABM)

In 2003, I was lucky to be supervised by you as a candidate in our Society. It was an amazing experience, which I recall vividly, as it had such an enduring impact on me and on my work. I would like to start the interview from some of those memories, seeing as that supervision consistently reflected your innovative psychoanalytical conceptualization as well as your analytical function, i.e., your unique manner of relating with the group, activating our own analytical function. I had been asked to present my case in English, but you had requested that the session take place in French. This misunderstanding created an impasse. You sincerely and emotively discussed with the group your resistance towards the English language. This was rooted in anger about the innumerous under-read and consequently, poorly circulated works in the wider psychoanalytical community, due only to the fact that they were written in languages other than English. Having metabolized these β-elements, the field was open for a co-solution: seeing as my case was written in English and I felt more fluent in it than in French, I would present the case in English. You would supervise it in your preferred foreign language, French, which the whole group also understood. You could also comprehend some Portuguese due to your close contact with Brazil and finally, one colleague who was fluent in Italian, would help with the translation of any more difficult expressions. It was an enriching emotional experience that revealed your/our capability to contain (reverie) our different anxieties, finding a creative and generative solution through a four-language encounter.

ABM: In the twelve years since this encounter, English has cemented itself as the “Esperanto” of our current, globalized world. One of the greatly debated questions in contemporary psychoanalysis (the IPA Congress, Mexico ) is whether the difficulty in communicating among the “languages” of the various schools might lead to ruptures or might instead enrich psychoanalysis. Do you think there are risks associated with not speaking the same psychoanalytical language? Or, on the contrary, does the plurality of models demand a permanent engagement and “working through”, which is necessary precisely because of the wealth inherent to contradictions?

Antonino Ferro (AF): It is indeed a pleasure to answer your questions, even more so that they stem from that common experience that you mention above which somehow already contains the answer insofar as we have then found the way to communicate in English, French, Italian and Portuguese, as well as in the different psychoanalytical languages, taken not in a strict linguistic sense but as models of psychoanalysis. I'm convinced that we shouldn't employ just one single model since nowadays psychoanalysis has several models, which I'm not going to mention since everybody knows what I'm talking about, and that ought to be used in our daily practice. I strongly believe that each analyst should follow and handle his or her chosen model and confront it with others. In my opinion, it's precisely this diversity of models and, consequently, the confrontations it generates, that makes for the wealth of psychoanalysis today. Since this diversity of models is a particularly important point for me, I believe that I have found a rather simple and useful tool, or let's say a key, to understand at once what sort of model the person to whom we are talking to is employing. I believe this key consists in the way we listen and take into account how the analyst we are talking to describes the characters he/she is handling. If the characters are presented as real, flesh and blood characters, it means that we are dealing with the so-called traditional model. If the

AF: I do think that an emotive experience, as long as it is contained and eventually metabolized, is undoubtedly the cornerstone of each transformation, which implies the analyst's ability to create the atmosphere that will lead to the transformation of β-elements into α-elements, from sensory to images, from sensory to new creations. This process is indeed the core of the analytical working through. As I already mentioned, the analyst must be able to create the atmosphere that enables these transformations, but one must bear in mind that it isn't just the analyst who achieves transformations. I mean, if it's true that together analyst and patient do create an emotive field, then I must recognize that it is the field's function that operates transformations and not just the analyst's mind as pivotal figure of the whole process. In short, what operates transformations is not just the analyst's mind but indeed the field's mind. Ogden's words sound fairly adequate when he states that dreams which the patient had been unable to dream become and remain symptoms until the patient meets another mind with whom he will be able to dream, at last, the dreams he was unable to dream before. At this point do symptoms lose their meaning and function?

ABM: In that supervision, I showed you the first drawing (house and tree) of a nine-year-old girl, who appeared to have one very sophisticated level of experience linked to her musical training and another very primitive level of functioning (which you named “Stromboli” – proto-emotional magma) that she was unable to figure or represent. You immediately drew a subterranean monster, linking both drawings in a visual pictogram. Through this affective hologram of bipersonal functioning, you “alpha-betized” what we would face in the analytical process that was then just beginning. Is this creative and poetic ability of “drawing” or depicting the complexity of the mind in a playful manner, something that can be learned and developed in analytical training? How could our Institutes develop those unique and complex skills?

AF: I must thank you very much for this example. I totally agree that one should develop not only the creativity of the analyst but also, I would say foremost, his ability to play. This drawing, starting at the tree's bottom and going further down as one and the same piece, was a kind of a play somehow in line with Winnicott's squiggles. I believe we shouldn't indoctrinate our young analysts with our overpowering and always excessive knowledge, but try instead to stimulate their creativity within the session, hence considering it a most valuable personal asset that should also been taken into account for the global evaluation

AF: This question gives me the opportunity to go back to your first question. I had the great chance to have had, first in analysis and later in supervision, analysts who had and employed different models. This diversity in interpretations always puzzled me since I couldn't understand why the same sort of material would be interpreted in one way by one analyst and in a different way by another. It was only at this point that I started to realize and understand the fact that each one of the analysts I was dealing with was using a different explicit model which sometimes was only implicit in the analyst's own mind. From this moment on it became paramount to me to research and fully understand this diversity of models. So I started to realize that a model I first didn't even know was Bionian was followed by the experience of a radical Kleinian model. Next I had to deal with a Winnicottian model that in turn was followed by a glimpse of the Freudian one. Eventually I found my own model, which could be described as a sort of a blend between many Bionian theories and the developments that some colleagues and I achieved in the field's concept.

ABM: How did Madeleine and Willie Baranger's theory of the field become interwoven with developments and the narratology concept of character, in the creation of your distinctive “Ferronian” approach? When and in what way did you first encounter those concepts during your training?

AF: To start with, allow me to quote Bion, who says “there shouldn't be any Bionians since everyone should be oneself.” Therefore I wish for no Ferronians since everybody should be oneself. But if one understands by being a Ferronian someone interested in one of the field's theories organized on it's own terms with some of Bion's concepts, then it's not only acceptable but indeed auspicious. During my training I dealt only with Bion's theories and, except tangentially encounters, I never got in touch with the field's concepts. But once I got familiar with the field concept these two concepts became increasingly closer and intermingled. I remember the Bion congress in Boston, James Grotstein's remarkable work, and, as result of the congress itself, the official announcement of the “betrothal” between Bion's and the field's concepts. So for some years now the two concepts have developed and intermingled further on producing interesting new perspectives. Another significant aspect provided by this congress was the opportunity it gave us to hear about the concept of narratology. Even though it has nothing to do with psychoanalysis (narratology being something else) it proved to be a source of inspiration for a better and tridimensional understanding of the character concept. With a long history behind it the concept of character evolved from the classical definition of character as persona, to character as being the motor of action/story, up to the present concept that sees characters as co-constructions by both the reader and the author.

ABM: Do you consider that your theoretical-clinical conceptualization resonates with that of Ferenczi? If so, in what ways?

AF: Also quite interesting is this question regarding Ferenczi. But to be very sincere, I don't know enough about Ferenczi's theories, so I don't feel able to find the possible connections or hints that may exist. Great authors often have the same intuitions, only with different given names. Winnicott, for instance, in his squiggle book, was the first to conceptualize, yet not theorize, the concept of field. Ferenczi himself must have signaled important things. So even if I don't know much about his theories, I do think particularly about two of his notions: reciprocity and reciprocal responsibility between analyst and patient.

ABM: Do you think it's necessary to keep returning to Freud after first having studied him (as well as Klein, Bion, Meltzer), in addition to reading contemporary authors and studying the evolutions of psychoanalysis? Or is it perhaps more fruitful to enact a symbolic parricide in order to develop one's own identity and theoretical-clinical creativity?

AF: Well, to this kind of question I can give you two answers: one political the other sincere. My political answer will confirm that Freud remains a must, that we cannot move forward if we don't go back to the roots of his thought and method. My sincere answer makes me first take a look at modern science to see what's happening there. A molecular biologist, for instance, wouldn't dream of reading Darwin, just as no infectologist would spend his time reading all about Pasteur's findings and methods, simply because they have more modern and important authors to read and keep up with. I have no doubts in saying that our Training Institutes should be dealing with psychoanalysis as it is today, what psychoanalysis today should be and do, and what other sciences have been doing. What I mean is that every known science, be it medicine, biology or psychoanalysis, has its own historical figures, so I would leave Freud in the good company of other historical figures of psychoanalysis.

ABM: There is a Brazilian saying that claims, “the best dish is ‘angu’ with hunger.” In English there is a similar saying which is: “hunger is the best sauce.” Taking up your metaphor of the mind of the analyst as divided between kitchen and restaurant, could you speak about the modulation of interpretation and of the signs (narrative derivatives of α-elements) given by the analysand in the session?

AF: Nowadays I think more in terms of what could be globally called the field, i.e., those functions per-formed on and by the field by both analyst and patient, and less by two different entities at work. In any case, one of the field's functions is precisely the modulation of interpretation, even if I cannot always call them interpretations since some of my interpretations aren't exactly interpretative, but apparently only comments, descriptions or, let's put it this way, an opportunity to open certain ways and so on. Moreover, I always consider another kind of function, sometimes called GPS, which continually signals the answer/reaction, let's say, of the patient or, better said, of the field that signals the reaction to my intervention. I recall that not long ago in Washington, in the car of a colleague, I noticed that he was using two GPS, in other words, besides using the car's GPS, he was holding his IPhone and using it also as a GPS. To my bewildered question as to why he was doing so, he answered that with just one GPS he had got lost in a dangerous suburb of Washington. This episode made me think that one should understand that we also have several GPS on the field which constantly send us signals regarding the different function levels, and that it's precisely this interaction which we must take into account.

ABM: Your investigation revolves around what happens in the “in-between” space of the analysand's mind and the analyst's mental life. This potential/transitional Winnicottian space belongs to neither mother nor infant, neither analyst nor analysand. In your opinion, how important is the waking dream thought to the analytical process?

AF: Well, I believe what happens is what occurs within what I would nowadays call the psychoanalytical field, i.e., that space where analyst and patient meet and interact, plus everything else generated by their coming together/interaction. As for your question regarding the waking dream thought, I think we should develop it further so as to ask what is the importance of the oneiric in the session. Here I would say that it has acquired a central place, since the constant construction of pictograms has become the main function at work within the analytical space. At the same time, we have other oneiric levels, starting with reverie and the first concept of what I've called the magic filter, which is the way of listening to the patient's communication as if it stemmed from an oneiric reality. Eventually the transformations in dreams and play will imply that all contents will take on the dimension of dream, play and transformation, which somehow brings us back to your first question.

ABM: Returning once again to my memories, I recall directly inheriting from you, a text analysing the film Jumanji . In the game of analysis, do we have to be metaphorically drawn into the deepest and most primitive internal “jungle” to allow the free transit of ß-elements? In order for real transformation to occur, should the “field ‘fall ill’ with the analysand's illness”?

AF: I do remember very well indeed the film “Jumanji”, but nowadays I would also see it as a simplification of a transformation in hallucinosis. Back then, it allowed me to make a metaphor regarding the deepest levels of mental functioning. Nowadays, I also think that the field should certainly yet transitorily fall ill with the same illness as the patient. I'll even push this concept further by adding that usually, the field falls ill from what results from the combined illness of both patient and analyst, since it's not only the patient's mind which contaminates the field, making it function in a certain way, since the illness results from the interaction of both patient and analyst. In other words, it's precisely the combination of these two mental dysfunctions that causes the field's illness. Having reached this point, one must start searching for the adequate transformations which will render the field free and creative once again.

AF: I do believe that stories should somehow manage to bring life and meaning to something that somehow remains unclear and undistinguished in the field. Of course that doesn't mean telling one or two or three stories, what I mean is that stories should be used/told only to allow the figurations and representations of what is “boiling” in the field, which cannot be expressed in any other way, to eventually emerge. Bearing in mind that psychoanalysis today pays particular attention, and gives particular care, to the pre-verbal, to the pre-symbolic, this kind of approach allows these deep levels of mental functioning to reach a narrative one, which means that needs, fears and anxieties that first were, like the fish in the drawing, lying underneath, unable to surface and be named, become reachable and therefore perceptible. In short, stories themselves aren't healers, but they may eventually end up as such if and when they allow us to catch the fish, bring it to the light and cook it.

ABM: The negative capability and the ability to endure uncertainty seem to be the most sophisticated instruments of the analyst's mind, albeit perhaps the most difficult ones to develop. To what extent do you connect this to the analyst's capacity to dream an analysand's communication?

AF: The analyst's negative capacity, the field's negative capacity, is fundamental since it gives us time to allow things to emerge and take shape. It's as if Picasso was painting a canvas, so it seems logical to me that the work in progress will take the time it needs to take shape, which means that we shouldn't interfere with the ongoing process except for an occasional remark that wouldn't and shouldn't interfere with Picasso's work. The negative capacity is then somehow related to the analyst's and the field's capacity to dream within the session.

ABM: André Green argued that whilst the 1st topography is the place of representation and the 2nd topography is the place of instinctual drives, the current psychoanalysis is witnessing the construction of the 3rd topography: the place of the object. Your innovative clinical vignettes privilege the vertex of the bipersonal analytical couple functioning in the here and now. How is this intertwined with the real historical references of the analysand and the fantasmatic objects of his inner world?

AF: I have always appreciated and admired André Green, there was a mutual sympathy between us. His outstanding article “The dead mother”, which I consider one of his best works, would have sufficed to consecrate him as a master of psychoanalysis. Yet putting this aside and, since time has elapsed, I would add that the “bipersonal analytical couple” has indeed become a multipersonal analytical group. Time has indeed passed, so that's why I must wear a little smile on my face when I ask what is the meaning of the real historical references? And just what does the analysand's fantasmatic objects of his inner world mean? If I ask myself these questions, it's because I don't believe at all in the existence of a patient's inner world, or in the history of the patient, since all we know derives from the interaction within the analytical room. Well, maybe the patient knows his history, but I don't.

AF: I don't believe at all in any kind of difference between an analysis conducted on a adult, a child, a Chinese, a Japanese or a Czech, since analysis is always one and the same thing. Obviously, with a child, an adolescent, or a serious patient, we do employ a particular language or specific instruments. Luckily for us, an adult patient doesn't know that he or she could play or draw in the session, or even bring along his little toy cars and play on the floor. Of course he doesn't know it, and for sure we aren't going to tell him, otherwise it would become very complicated for us. In any case, and this is the point, analysis is the same for everyone; I mean, even though the language may differ, the substance remains the same. The IPA's recent proposal of integrated training seems to me both sensible and commendable. As a matter of fact, the idea was already broached by Roberto Basi and myself some 10 or 15 years ago.

ABM: Can you tell us about some of the main developments of your most recent book (Le viscere della mente, )?

AF: As you know, my new book, “Le viscere della mente”, hasn't been translated yet. It deals with the further development of my own field concept as well as with the further development of Bion's thought regarding the oneiric and the deepest levels of mental functioning, “the mind's bowels” as the title puts it, i.e., everything that lies behind symbolization and thought itself. Another book, this time in English, “Reveries” is about to be published by Karnac. It deals with a number of mental states which became apparent only through sometimes rather violent images, which precisely reflect those primitive states of the mind.

ABM: In our Society in Portugal, there isn't a specific prevalence of Freudian, Kleinian, Bionian, Winnicottian (etc.) groups, but rather, what I feel to be a salutary psychoanalytical “use of the object”. What are the vicissitudes of psychoanalysis in Italy at the moment?

AF: In Italy, I would say, we don't have a prevalent model, although we have a prevalently strong relational model, derived from post-Kleinian positions yet open enough to Winnicott's and other analysts' contributions, such as Kohon's. There's also a sort of residue of Freudian analysts. Bion himself used to say, when talking about those analysts who boast of having psychotic patients in analysis, that they were “showing off”. So somehow I'm quoting him when I say that Bion's work is more often quoted than really known. We do have a small group of analysts working hard indeed to study, complement, and deepen Bion's work, but I must say that there are also analysts who have used or are using Bion's ideas merely to show off.

ABM: In this beginning of the 21st century, 100 years after the discovery of psychoanalysis, what do you consider its future prospects and challenges to be? It would be great if you could address the metaphor of cooking the Rosetta Stone (mentioned by you in a film of the IPA Congress, Prague ).