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In this discussion we applaud Donnel B. Stern for undertaking his rigorous comparison of the “field” concept in interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis (IRP) and Bionian field theory (BFT). Stern offers a balanced presentation of similarities and differences between these two conceptual models, but we focus primarily on certain differences, starting with what we perceive as differing notions of the nature, purpose, and clinical function of the field itself. We distinguish theinteractionalview of an essentially relational model of the field in IRP (where the clinical aim is to enlarge the domain of the interpersonal dialogue and the capacity for mutual recognition) from the BFT model of a field viewed in terms ofemergent phenomena,realized in multiple modalities of experience (here the clinical aim is to expand the scope of contact with unconscious life and to facilitate the capacity to transform emotional, psycho-sensory and proto-emotional experience). We also take up the differing relationships to external reality and authority within these two models, with special reference to the role of the frame in the function of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses ideology. It puts a question whether it helps to bridge gap between the public narratives being offered and one's felt experiences to identify and understand the psychic mechanisms required to live here now. In two papers, now five years old, sociologist Neil Altman and the author set out to capture the underlying psychic dynamics that permit the current pace of life and the mood it generates. The author believed his combined psychoanalytic training, clinical, and personal experiences offered him a unique window into the interior domain of life in American society. The public narratives (ideology) he is offered relating to freedom, democracy, and opportunity create a complex veneer through which it is often difficult to locate oneself or see through to what is actually going on within and around oneself. As psychoanalysts, the author knows how difficult it is to penetrate beyond the wall of fantasy to reality--to challenge that creative world of illusion and dreaming that can become a barrier to embracing the real world in all of its splendor and disappointment. The world of public fantasy (ideology) is equally, if not more, difficult to penetrate to the realities of societal life.