ABSTRACT
Field Theory applied to the child analytic work puts emphasis on the dyadic bi-personal interchange between analyst and child. In child analysis overlapping Fields may exist and the structure facilitating the creation of the Field has a semi-permeable membrane. In the separate Field formed in working directly with parents, the child analyst is available to introject and identify with projected aspects from the parents and can unconsciously import these constellations into the bi-personal Field with the child patient. The Field-oriented analyst is receptive to the notion of ‘illness in the Field’, whereby disruptive emotions, or beta elements as per Wilfred Bion’s ideas of the communicative dimension of projective identification, will seek expression, entering and suffusing the Field. The chapter presents some cases studies that illustrate the creation of a parent/analyst Field and child/analyst Field and how developments in each Field overlap and interpenetrate one another.
