ABSTRACT
The history of psychoanalysis from Freud onwards is the story of the exploration of intermediate space. This chapter illustrates the most radical instance of the paradigm, represented by Ferro's concept of the analytic field. It also notes the conceptions of intermediarity which we can find in Merleau-Ponty and Bion because they represent the foundation of the modern concept of the analytic field. Merleau-Ponty is hardly ever cited in the psychoanalytic literature. Like Derrida, he took a great deal from psychoanalysis, but he also gave much to it, both directly helping to inspire of the concept of the field as first formulated by the Barangers. In Merleau-Ponty, subjectivity begins to be organized in the pre-linguistic phase of the infant's development, when 'there is not one individual over against another, but rather an anonymous collectivity, an undifferentiated group life'.
