Metaphor and Fields

Metaphor and Fields is an explanation and demonstration of the value of metaphoric processes and fields in psychoanalysis. In this book, Montana Katz articulates a future direction for psychoanalysis which is progressively explored, taking into account features essential to psychoanalysts of all persuasions, clinically and theoretically. In this way, psychoanalysis is brought into the postmodern future by fashioning an umbrella for the discipline. With this umbrella, the barriers to mutual understanding may be dismantled and a path permanently forged to the possibility of meaningful international, intercultural, interdisciplinary and poly-perspectival psychoanalytic exchange.

Metaphor and Fields organically merges work on metaphoric processes with work on fields. The use of a framework with metaphoric processes and fields combined exhibits the uniqueness of psychoanalysis and shows how it explores and explains human experience. The relational fields of the North American school of relational theory, intersubjective matrices, self object matrices, and the ground breaking work of Madeleine and Willy Baranger are all examples of field concepts that have been successfully employed in theoretical frameworks and clinical technique. They show how other schools of thought can be understood as using an implicit field concept.

The chapters in this book approach the subject from diverse vantage points. Taken together, they form an intricate web of psychoanalytic thought that moves the scope of psychoanalysis beyond dispute towards the open, inclusive discussion of core concepts and technique. Metaphor and Fields will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, mental health clinicians, psychologists, social workers, and a wide academic audience drawn from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, comparative literature, anthropology and sociology.

Baranger, Foreword. Katz, Introduction. Katz, Preliminary Foundational Concepts. Katz, Metaphoric Processes. Wallerstein, Metaphor in Psychoanalysis and Clinical Data. Wurmser, Metaphor and Conflict. Modell, Metaphor, Meaning, and the Mind. White, Metaphor in Three Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Borberly, Metaphor, Temporality, and Metonymy. Bornstein and Becker-Matero, Metaphor and Psychodynamic Research. Katz, Psychoanalytic Field Concepts. Corel, Context for the Barangers' Work on the Psychoanalytic Field. Civitarese and Ferro, Metaphor in Analytic Field Theory. Rizzuto, Fields, the Talking Cure, and Metaphoric Processes. Tubert-Oklander, Field, Process, and Metaphor. de Leon de Bernardi, Metaphor, Spiral Process, and Fields. Neri, Other Fields Within the Analytic Field. Rappoport de Aisemberg, The Analytic Relationship in Field Theory.