An Evening with Giuseppe Civitarese

Featuring Aner Govrin and Sharon Ziv Beiman in conversation with Giuseppe Civitarese

We're delighted to invite you to meet with Dr. Giuseppe Civitarese, one of the leading thinkers in developing Bionian Field Theory (BFT) – a contemporary and vibrant evolution of Bion's thinking developed by the Pavia School of Psychoanalysis, which also includes Italian analyst Antonino Ferro.

Civitarese's latest work opens unexplored dimensions of Bion's thought, challenging us to reimagine fundamental psychoanalytic concepts.

What is Bionian Field Theory?

While Bion emphasized the function of 'creative containment' and the analyst's ability to "hold" meaning, Bionian Field Theory insists that all experience – including transformations, dreaming, and encounters with the unknown – occurs within a shared field that patient and analyst continuously co-create, with each undergoing transformation in the process.

Despite his brilliant insights, Bion never developed a new therapeutic technique. In this new model, the analyst views the analytic couple as a group rather than two isolated subjects – a "field process": an emotional, experiential, and shared system that moves and evolves between therapist and patient. The analytic field is a shared space, never fully controllable, where both participants' psychological experience is created, transformed, and healed. No analytic "fact" can be heard without recognizing it as unconsciously and mutually created – as a group or field phenomenon.

For example, when a patient speaks about fear of suffocation, Bionian Field Theory suggests not interpreting this directly as projection or transference, but listening to how a mutual experience of "suffocation" emerges and is recreated in the shared field – perhaps as a hint to both participants' difficulty "breathing" and being free within their current relationship. This unfolds through dialogue and emerging experience, as the therapeutic relationship undergoes continuous transformation.

Field theory sees the unconscious not just as something "hidden" to be decoded. The creation of the field and movement within it generates healing and psychological growth processes, as the field embodies and produces a psychoanalytic function of renewed symbolization, emotional processing, and containment – emphasizing symbolic creation, strengthening the capacity to 'dream' and 'contain,' accepting uncertainty and complexity.

The evening will focus on exploring Bionian Field Theory with Civitarese, examining the similarities, connections, and differences between Bionian Field Theory, the field theory that emerged in South America led by the Barangers, Ogden's intersubjective conception, and relational approaches.

Among other topics, we'll discuss with Civitarese:

• What led him and Bion's followers to prefer a "radical intersubjective" field view – one emphasizing the shared, undifferentiated unconscious between therapist and patient – over more traditional psychoanalytic concepts? How is this field experienced clinically in the room?

• What are the connections and differences between Bionian Field Theory, South American field theory developed by the Barangers, intersubjective approaches, Ogden's concept of the analytic third and reverie, and relational approaches?

• Bionian Field Theory proposes a dramatic shift from focusing on interpreting unconscious content to emphasizing shared waking dream experience and transformation occurring in the "here and now" of the field. How does this approach change the therapist's intervention during emotional crises in sessions?

• The central concepts in the theory emphasize bilateral processes of symbolization and containment – reverie, hallucinosis, and containment. How does he distinguish (or perhaps blur the distinction) between experiences of containment, projection, and processing in the field? What are the signs that authentic psychoanalytic "transformation" is occurring?

• How does this theory address clinical tensions and ethical issues – such as boundaries, role rigidity/fluidity, or mutual attraction/rejection – given the assumption that no content is "personally" owned, but part of a process of mutual identification and shared field?

• How do works of art, literature, or moments of "indescribable beauty" contribute to the essence of healing, suffering, and growth? And how can we invite such moments into daily practice?

Giuseppe Civitarese, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst (SPI, APsaA, IPA). He lives in Pavia, Italy. Among his books are: The Intimate Room: Theory and Technique of the Analytic Field, London, 2010; The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis, London, 2012; The Necessary Dream: New Theories and Techniques of Interpretation in Psychoanalysis, London, 2014; Losing Your Head: Abjection, Aesthetic Conflict and Psychoanalytic Criticism, Lanham, MD 2015; The Analytic Field and its Transformations (with A. Ferro), London 2015; Truth and the Unconscious,London 2016; An Apocriphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, London 2019; Sublime Subjects: Aesthetic Experience and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis, London 2018; Vitality and Play in Psychoanalysis (with A. Ferro), London 2022; On Arrogance: A Psychoanalytic Essay, London 2023; Psychoanalytic Field Theory: A Contemporary Introduction, London 2022; The hour of Birth: Psychoanalysis of the Sublime and Contemporary Art, London 2025; The Limits of Interpretation: Essays on Bion and Field Theory, London 2025; The Horse’s Eye: Animality, Humanity, and the Unconscious in Renaissance Art, London, in press. He has also co-edited L’ipocondria e il dubbio: L’approccio psicoanalitico [Hypochondria and Doubt: The Psychoanalytic Approach], Milano 2011; Le parole e i sogni [Words and Dreams], Rome 2015; The W. R. Bion Tradition: Lines of Development—Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades, London 2015; Advances in Psychoanalytic Field Theory: International Field Theory Association RoundTable Discussion, London 2016. He has edited: Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Reading A Memoir of the Future, London 2018.In 2022, he received the Sigourney Award.