ABSTRACT
For Ferro the concept of the field is a point of difference with analysts such as Ogden, Grotstein, and Green. In Ferro’s ‘strong’ concept of the field – ‘understood not in the as yet somewhat simplified sense of Baranger and Baranger, but on a more complex level’ – the internal groupings of both analyst and patient generate ‘a group of presences, or characters – affective holograms in my parlance – resulting from the transformation in dreaming of what is said, acted out, and experienced by the minds of both analyst and patient’ (Ferro 2015a, p. 513). These ‘characters’ are products and derivatives of the waking dream thought of both members of the couple; they are manifestations of the alpha-function of the field.
It is as if Ogden’s analytic third were diluted in a dreamlike narration of the functioning of the two minds, which undertake the casting of the characters they need to breathe life into the particular dream that must be taken care of and – even before this – brought to life.
(Ferro 2015a, p. 513)