ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a broad outline of the crystallizations that followed: it describes some basic communicative properties of the psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic bipersonal field and suggests a major means of categorizing the overall qualities of these fields. The implications of these conceptualizations for the understanding of the analytic interaction and for the technical approach of the analyst will also receive special emphasis. In the Type A field of symbolic communication, analyzable derivatives and symbolic interpretations of inner mental contents and mechanisms predominate. The Type B field is an action-discharge field in which projective identification predominates. The Type C field is characterized by the pervasive absence of inter-pretable derivatives of unconscious fantasies, memories, and introjects and by the presence of massive defensive barriers. Investigations of the communicative properties of the bipersonal field not only shed light on the intrapsychic and interactional realms, and their interplay, but also generate an additional level of conceptualization that extends beyond these two familiar spheres.
