Fire at the theatre: (Un)reality of/in the transference and interpretation

Abstract

Only in Bion's extended idea of ‘waking dream thought’ is the oneiric paradigm of the cure (already an obvious Freudian principle) completely applicable. The author's basic hypothesis is that, by adopting this paradigm thoroughly, one can combine the radical antirealism which is expressed in the postulate by which all the patient's communications are transference‐connected (here meaning ‘false connection’‐i.e. as projection/displacement of elements of the patient's inner psychic world) with the ‘reality’ of the transference, that is to say with the conviction that the facts of the analysis are co‐determined by the patient‐analyst dyad and actually rooted in how they interact. The Freudian metaphor of the fi re at the theatre is reintroduced here to suggest the crisis of the therapist's internal setting and capacity for reverie, which occurs when the irreducible ambiguity of the transference is resolved defensively, either in the patient's external reality or in his unconscious fantasy constellation. The author gives three clinical examples. The fi rst shows some of the not necessarily negative effects of this temporary crisis. The other two vignettes show a way of listening to the traumatic events of the patient's life from a perspective (that of the ‘analytic fi eld’) which is thought to be potentially the most transformative and vital to the analytical relationship.

Neutrality in the Field: Alpha-Function and The Dreaming Dyad in Psychoanalytic Process

“…In more recent years, we have seen an increasing number of papers describe the psychoanalytic session as if it were a dream (Bezoari and Ferro 1991;Brown 2006Brown , 2009Brown , 2010Cassorla 2005Cassorla , 2008Cassorla , 2012Cassorla , 2013Civitarese 2005Civitarese , 2008Ferro 1993Ferro , 2002Ferro , 2004Ferro , 2006Ogden 2001Ogden , 2003Ogden , 2004Ogden , 2007. With this perspective, the analyst foregrounds what Loewald (1975) called the fantasy character of the session and places real world concerns aside.…”

‘Caesura’ as Bion’s discourse on method

“…a field model – is not only simultaneity (because there is always a duration to be considered, and hence a ‘historical’ dimension, if only of a few seconds), but also attention to the form of the content, to the system and structure of communication, considered, like language, as the dynamic realm of links and differences. Attention to the transformational structure of the analytic field permits a new vision of the text and a new form of analysis, focusing more on functional aspects and on the container than on the contained, but the two levels are interdependent: it is the interaction with the syntagmatic aspect, by virtue of its selective function, that establishes itself as a limit to interpretive drift (Civitarese, 2005, 2006, 2008a, 2008b). I therefore believe that the guarantee of an effective junction between the two planes, of a type of thought that overcomes the antithesis between the history and the present, lies precisely in the mental state of receptivity permitted by negative capability, a preliminary art of self‐negation and of sacrificing what one knows.…”

Immersion versus interactivity and analytic field

“…However, this new metaphor, like others, again presupposes the image of a passive and detached observer. We will need the ‘fire at the theatre’ of the erotic transference and the discovery of countertransference for challenging this perspective and reconfiguring the roles of both patient and analyst (Civitarese, 2005).…”