European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling

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Introduction to developments in field theory

Del Loewenthal

To cite this article: Del Loewenthal (2022) Introduction to developments in

field theory, European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 24:1, 1-4, DOI:
10.1080/13642537.2022.2069221

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642537.2022.2069221

Published online: 14 Jul 2022.

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY & COUNSELLING
2022, VOL. 24, NO. 1, 1–4
https://doi.org/10.1080/13642537.2022.2069221

INTRODUCTION

Introduction to developments in field theory

Del Loewenthal
University of Roehampton and Southern Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling
(SAFPAC), UK

I can remember when I first started as a therapist seeing a particular client

and thinking ‘I must get some earlier nights!’. Then, the next client came in
and I felt very much awake again (even though no words had yet been
spoken). How might one explain this?
For (Merleau-Ponty, 1962/2002) something emerges in the between. It is as
if people or even objects communicate non-verbally with each other. For
Merleau-Ponty this was mysterious, and sometimes if we try and take the
mystery away we might take away the thing itself. I among others have
considered the therapeutic relationship to be magical (Loewenthal, 2022,
pp. 96–101). There again, there have been many attempts within the psycho­
logical therapies to consider such phenomena as paranormal with ‘. . . such
concepts as the uncanny (Freud, 1919), synchronicity (Jung, 1960), the trans­
personal (Daniels, 2005, Mintz & Schmeidler, 1983), telepathy (Totton, 2003),
mindfulness (Clarke, 2014) and anomalous experiences (for example Sollod,
1992). . .. Abraham and Torok (1994). . . metaphorics bring to life beings like
the crypt, ghosts, goblins, and phantoms.. . . the exploration by Frosh (2012) of
hauntings. . . Fisher 2014 on hautology. . .’ (Loewenthal, 2022, p. 2).
More generally, there have been attempts to name what appears not to be
able to be spoken of with concepts such as ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polyani, 1966).
But perhaps Ogden (1994) ‘analytic third’ and his ‘ontological psychoana­
lysis’ (Ogden, 2019) with Winnicott (1971) ‘playing rather than play’, and
particularly Bion’s ‘the dreaming rather than dream’ (Bion, 1970), hold the
promise of the client and therapist together becoming creatively more alive.
Yet is it possible to go further in describing the indescribable?
Could it be that the two book reviews in this Special Issue give a further
indication of the kind of site of therapeutic knowledge that we are unknow­
ingly working with? One of the editors of this special issue, Robert Snell, in
his book Cézanne and the post-Bionian field: an exploration and meditation,
fascinatingly explains how Cézanne through his paintings is able to commu­
nicate to us how objects influence each other – just as therapist and client do.

CONTACT Del Loewenthal d.loewenthal@roehampton.ac.uk

© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 EDITORIAL

Similarly, David Shaddock, in Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the

Field, explores how poetry in psychoanalysis might inform us about
psychoanalysis.
Yet both these authors have been influenced by another force.
When young people first start learning about physics, a popular experi­
ment is to put some iron filings on a piece of paper and then put a magnet
underneath the paper and see how the magnetic forces create specific
patterns of iron filings – a force field. Now get a very large piece of paper
and do this with two magnets far apart. At first they create their own patterns
but start to bring them together, and they dramatically affect each other’s
patterns. Could something similar be happening when two people meet?
Lewin (1947) developed the idea of ‘force field analysis’. He could also be
seen as a magnet of great influence who, with others because of his and their
enforced repatriation to the UK and the USA, created new fields of influence
including, through Wilfred Bion, psychoanalysis. Since then there has been
another Italian magnet, Antonino Ferro (2019), and it is his influence that
has led to this special issue.
For most people involved with the psychological therapies it is clear that
when we are in it – it is different. It is as if we are experiencing a different
interactional field that once outside it we can never quite describe. So can
Field Theory enable us at last to speak more outside of therapy of what is
happening in therapy? Indeed, could it be that Field Theory can help us not
only become clearer as to what psychotherapy might be about, but also
fundamentally to question the way we have theorised to date what we
think it is about?
We at the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling (EJPC)
therefore feel very privileged that our editors, Richard Morgan Jones and
Robert Snell, have chosen our journal for such important work. Our grateful
thanks to them and their distinguished contributors: Sara Boffito, Giuseppe
Civitarese, Mercia Fagundes, Fulvio Mazzacane, and Marina Mojović.
One of my responsibilities in developing this Special Issue has been the
appointment of published respondents. I believe we are very fortunate to
have had this carried out by Carla Penna and Earl Hopper. In their ‘Fields,
System, and Silos: from electromechanics to the matrix. Commentary on the
Special Edition on Field Theory’, they illuminatingly evaluate the five papers
as a development of the intertwining of Kurt Lewin’s concept of the social
field and the psychoanalysis and group analysis of Bion, the Barangers,
Foulkes, and Elias.
At the EJPC we aim to provide not only original articles but for them to be
available for psychotherapists and counsellors from different orientations.
I am therefore very grateful to Howard Levine for suggesting that instead of
a focus on each paper individually, some of our readers might benefit from
an overview. Hence, in Howard’s ‘Stepping into the Field: Bion and the Post-
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY & COUNSELLING 3

Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro and the Pavia Group’, you will find
an illuminating overview of the conceptual rational and clinical implications
of the work of Ferro and his colleagues, and the work of Bion (whose
concepts can appear daunting) that Ferro builds on.
My further thanks for the vital work in producing this special issue to both
our editorial team: Evrinomy Avdi, Anastasios Gaitanidis, Miranda Kersley,
Jay Watts, David Winter; and Christian Buckland, Anthony McSherry,
Elizabeth Nichol, Sally Parsloe, Daniel Rubenstein and Patricia Talens.
We very much hope you will agree that Kurt Lewin’s field theory is a fine
example of how European ideas can have important implications for under­
standing psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and counselling. More so when they
are intertwined with the work of Bion and others, and then reconsidered
through the writings of Ferro and the psychoanalysts whose papers are
published here. Indeed, here’s hoping this special issue will affect your, the
reader’s, iron filings to the benefit of the iron filings of your clients and those
of others they meet!

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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4 EDITORIAL

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