Bi-Personal Field

Antonino Ferro is Training Analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, President of the Milanese Centre of Psychoanalysis and a Full Member of the IPA. He is Supervisor at the 'Dosso Verde' Child Psychotherapy Centre, Pavia University. He was also Visiting Professor of Child Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at Milan University.

• Bott Spillius, Introduction. A Review of the Theoretical Models. Drawings. Play. Dreams. The Dialogue: Characters and Narrative. The Child and the Family Group. A Geography of the Theoretical Model in Use. The Analyst's Mind at Work: Problems, Risks, Needs.

'The author considers that the psychoanalytic dialogue is an encounter of two minds: that of the patient and that of the analyst. This encounter produces a new story that is different in Ferro's eyes from that gained from classical Freudian analyses, where he sees the emphasis on the patient's 'network of historical, factual relationships'(p2). However, Ferro's approach interprets the psychoanalytic dialogue as taking place in the 'intersubjective field', which focuses on a shared emotional experience based on the relationship between patient and analyst. The patient's emotional growth is dependent on new affective interpersonal experiences within the analytic dialogue that 'facilitates an emotional realisation thus far unknown and inaccessible to thought' (p. 113). From such interchanges transformations can take place that open new pathways towards understanding.' - Athol Hughes, IJPA 81 (2) 2000