The analytic situation as a dynamic field

Abstract

This report intends to draw the consequences of the importance attributed to counter-transference by recent studies. If counter-transference acquires a theoretical and technical value equal to that of transference, the analytic situation appears as a
dynamic by-personal field and the phenomena occurring in it must be formulated in bipersonal terms. Este trabajo es un intento de síntesis de ideas ya expuestas por ambos autores en trabajos anteriores, varios de ellos inéditos por razones de discreción. Su fundamentación técnica figura en dichos trabajos. The field of the analytic situation is described first, in its spatial, temporal, functional aspects and its triangular character (with the third person present-absent) is insistently mentioned. Then the ambiguousness of this field and its bodily aspects are insisted upon, with a special stress on the latter (the bodily experiences of the analyst and the analysand being particularly fit to disclose the unconscious situation in the field). The various dynamic structures and directing lines on the field are discussed: the analytical contract, the structure of over material, the unconscious configuration —the unconscious bi-personal phantasy which gives rise to an interpretable “point of emergency”— and produces the structure of the filed and its modifications. An attempt is made to describe the characteristics of this unconscious pair-phantasy: its
changefulness and indefinition, the importance of projective and introjective identification in its production.
Further the functioning of this field, which sways between damming up and changefulness, integration and splitting, is discussed. The concept of the unconscious and splitted “bastions” as a technical problem of outmost importance is particularly
emphasized. The analyst’s task is described as his partial sinking in the transferencialcountertransferencial microneurosis or micropsychosis, and the interpretation as a means of simultaneous recuperation of the analyst’s and analysand’s parts sunk in the
field. There comes an attempt to describe the act of “insight” from the bi-personal point of view in which we experience it during the analytic process.