Antonino Ferro

Bio: Antonino Ferro is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Psychoanalytic theory & Dream. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 23 publications receiving 863 citations.

Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field

Abstract: Having reviewed certain similarities and differences between the various psychoanalytic models (historical reconstruction/development of the container and of the mind's metabolic and transformational function; the significance to be attributed to dream-type material; reality gradients of narrations; tolerability of truth/lies as polar opposites; and the form in which characters are understood in a psychoanalytic session), the author uses clinical material to demonstrate his conception of a session as a virtual reality in which the central operation is transformation in dreaming (de-construction, de-concretization, and re-dreaming), accompanied in particular by the development of this attitude in both patient and analyst as an antidote to the operations of transformation in hallucinosis that bear witness to the failure of the functions of meaning generation. The theoretical roots of this model are traced in the concept of the field and its developments as a constantly expanding oneiric holographic field; in the developments of Bion's ideas (waking dream thought and its derivatives, and the patient as signaller of the movements of the field); and in the contributions of narratology (narrative transformations and the transformations of characters and screenplays). Stress is also laid on the transition from a psychoanalysis directed predominantly towards contents to a psychoanalysis that emphasizes the development of the instruments for dreaming, feeling, and thinking. An extensive case history and a session reported in its entirety are presented so as to convey a living impression of the ongoing process, in the consulting room, of the unsaturated co-construction of an emotional reality in the throes of continuous transformation. The author also describes the technical implications of this model in terms of forms of interpretation, the countertransference, reveries, and, in particular, how the analyst listens to the patient's communications. The paper ends with an exploration of the concepts of grasping (in the sense of clinging to the known) and casting (in relation to what is as yet undefined but seeking representation and transformation) as a further oscillation of the minds of the analyst and the patient in addition to those familiar from classical psychoanalysis.

The Bi-Personal Field: Experiences in Child Analysis

Abstract: In The Bi-Personal Field Antonino Ferro sets out his new conceptual system for analysis, considering not only the inner world of the patient but the continued interaction of that world with the inner world of the analyst. The book takes a fresh look at the main aspects of theory and technique in psychoanalysis in the light of Kleinian developments. It reflects the drastic changes due to the thinking of Bion. Illustrated with numerous detailed clinical examples, the author claims that the basic focus of the analytic relationship is the conscious and unconscious interpersonal/ intersubjective processes going on between the analyst and patient.

Seeds of Illness, Seeds of Recovery: The Genesis of Suffering and the Role of Psychoanalysis

Abstract: Ogden, Foreword. Seeds of Illness and the Role of Defences. The Culture of Reverie and the Culture of Evacuation. Container Inadequacy and Violent Emotions. Nachtraglichkeit and the Stork: The Analytic Field and Dream Thought Clinical Illustration. The Waking Dream and Narrations. 'Evidence': Starting Again from Bion. From the Tyranny of the Superego to the Democracy of Affects: The Transformational Passage Through the Analyst's Mind. Self-analysis and Gradients of Functioning in the Analyst. Pivotal-age Crises and Pivotal-event Crises. Psychoanalysis and Narration. Bibliography.

In the analyst's consulting room

Abstract: Criteria of Analysability and Termination. A Radical Vertex. Exercises in Style. The Analytic Dialogue. Possible Worlds and Transformations in the Analytic Field. Interpretive Oscillation. Along the PS-D Axis in the Field of Transformations. The Impasse: Hansel, Gretel and the Witch in the Oven. Sexuality and Aggression. Relational Vectors and Narrations. The "Narrator" and Fear. Some Ideas Based on Freud's 'The "Uncanny". Postscript.

Some implications of bion's thought

Abstract: Following up Bion's idea that dreaming is a continuous process that takes place in waking life as well as in sleep, the author develops its theoretical and technical implications. He describes the ...

Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field

Abstract: Having reviewed certain similarities and differences between the various psychoanalytic models (historical reconstruction/development of the container and of the mind's metabolic and transformational function; the significance to be attributed to dream-type material; reality gradients of narrations; tolerability of truth/lies as polar opposites; and the form in which characters are understood in a psychoanalytic session), the author uses clinical material to demonstrate his conception of a session as a virtual reality in which the central operation is transformation in dreaming (de-construction, de-concretization, and re-dreaming), accompanied in particular by the development of this attitude in both patient and analyst as an antidote to the operations of transformation in hallucinosis that bear witness to the failure of the functions of meaning generation. The theoretical roots of this model are traced in the concept of the field and its developments as a constantly expanding oneiric holographic field; in the developments of Bion's ideas (waking dream thought and its derivatives, and the patient as signaller of the movements of the field); and in the contributions of narratology (narrative transformations and the transformations of characters and screenplays). Stress is also laid on the transition from a psychoanalysis directed predominantly towards contents to a psychoanalysis that emphasizes the development of the instruments for dreaming, feeling, and thinking. An extensive case history and a session reported in its entirety are presented so as to convey a living impression of the ongoing process, in the consulting room, of the unsaturated co-construction of an emotional reality in the throes of continuous transformation. The author also describes the technical implications of this model in terms of forms of interpretation, the countertransference, reveries, and, in particular, how the analyst listens to the patient's communications. The paper ends with an exploration of the concepts of grasping (in the sense of clinging to the known) and casting (in relation to what is as yet undefined but seeking representation and transformation) as a further oscillation of the minds of the analyst and the patient in addition to those familiar from classical psychoanalysis.

Implicit memory and early unrepressed unconscious: Their role in the therapeutic process (How the neurosciences can contribute to psychoanalysis)

Abstract: The author discusses memory from the point of view of the neurosciences and molecular biology, proposing an integration with the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious. The discovery of the implicit memory has extended the concept of the unconscious and supports the hypothesis that this is where the emotional and affective--sometimes traumatic--presymbolic and preverbal experiences of the primary mother-infant relations are stored. They could form the ground structure of an early unrepressed unconscious nucleus of the self. Identifying the unconscious with the memory leads to a theory about its morpho-functional organization. The unrepressed unconscious can be brought to the surface in analysis through the 'musical dimension' of the transference, characterized by the voice (its intonation and rhythm) and the prosody of the language. Dreams can symbolically transform pre-symbolic and preverbal experiences, so that they can be put into words and thought about even without their recollection. Dreams can also create images to fi ll the gap of the absence of representation which characterize the unrepressed unconscious. The description of a segment of analysis of a patient suffering from death anxiety provides a clinical illustration of the theories discussed. The interpretation of her voice and of the prosody of her language, besides the work on dreams, reproduced the emotional essence of the analysand's traumatic childhood experiences. This reconstruction enabled her to speak and think about them even without the actual recollection.

The colourless canvas: Representation, therapeutic action and the creation of mind

Abstract: Freud's initial formulations viewed psychoanalysis as working towards the rediscovery of psychic elements - thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, etc. - that were once known - represented in the mind, articulatable, thinkable - but then disguised and/or barred from consciousness. His subsequent revisions implicated a second, more extensive category of inchoate forces that either lost or never attained psychic representation and, although motivationally active, were not fixed in meaning, symbolically embodied, attached to associational chains, etc. Following Freud's theory of representation, the author conceptualizes these latter forces as "unrepresented" or "weakly represented" mental states that make a demand upon the mind for work and require transformation into something that is represented in the psyche, if they are to be thought about or used to think with. This paper describes, discusses and presents illustrations of this transformational process (figurability),that moves intersubjectively from unrepresented or weakly represented mental states to represented mental states, from force to meaning, from the inchoate to mental order.

The Relational Tradition : Landscape and Canon

Abstract: This essay charts the origins, influences, and evolution of the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. Considering the theoretical and philosophical influences from nineteenth-century...

What is conceptual research in psychoanalysis

Abstract: The development of psychoanalysis as a science and clinical practice has always relied heavily on various forms of conceptual research. Thus, conceptual research has clarified, formulated and reformulated psychoanalytic concepts permitting to better shape the findings emerging in the clinical setting. By enhancing clarity and explicitness in concept usage it has facilitated the integration of existing psychoanalytic thinking as well as the development of new ways of looking at clinical and extraclinical data. Moreover, it has offered conceptual bridges to neighbouring disciplines particularly interested in psychoanalysis, e.g. philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, history of art and literature, and more recently cognitive science/neuroscience. In the present phase of psychoanalytic pluralism, of worldwide scientific communication among psychoanalysts irrespective of language differences and furthermore of an intensifying dialogue with other disciplines, the relevance of conceptual research is steadily increasing. Yet, it still often seems insufficiently clear how conceptual research can be differentiated from clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the IPA presents some of its considerations on the similarities and the differences between various forms of clinical and extraclinical research, their specific aims, quality criteria and thus their specific chances as well as their specific limitations in this paper. Examples taken from six issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2002-3 serve as illustrations for seven different subtypes of conceptual research.