Introduction

The concept of the analytic field originated in the 1960s from an insight by two Franco-Argentinian analysts, Madeleine and Willy Baranger. Field theory changes the paradigm of analytic work from the unveiling of a hidden meaning to facilitating the possibility of thinking for oneself of possible new meanings. In the Babel of psychoanalytic languages, clinical practice is in our view the most effective way of comparing psychoanalytic models. Field theory readily lends itself to a multi-pronged approach of this kind because it opens the way to a dimension in which free rein is given to the elements of dreaming, narration, and deconstruction. Reality in the field is more virtual in nature, involving characters who are progressively subjected to a process of casting in order to express the types of functioning active in the field.