Brad Freeman

Zoom Link https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/83707834058 

Title

Our very next dream: Co-constructing the therapeutic field in the work of Antonino Ferro

Abstract

Psychoanalytic practice has always been shaped by its theory of the unconscious — and each revision of that theory has demanded a different kind of attention from the clinician. Understandings of what is meant by the “unconscious” have changed over time. I will discuss how Antonino Ferro and associates see their psychoanalytic work, as differing from previous Freudian, and Kleinian models. They assert that analytic psychotherapy should move from an interpretative encounter between an 'I' and a 'you' toward the 'us' of a jointly constructed emotional field. He seeks to thaw what he sees as frozen psychoanalytic theory, by turning to literature, narratology, and metaphor as the tools of transformation. Building on Bion’s notion of “O” (as the apprehension of reality), Ferro attends closely to the dreaming function of the mind, enabling…