Italian Psychoanalysis Research Articles

Letter from Florence.

It is a fascinating decision to hold a conference on identifications in Florence. Now identified for more than five centuries with a brief portion of its millennial story, it sometimes seems imprisoned in its apparently timeless beauty, which is in fact extremely fragile and precarious. In this alternation of isolation and openness Florence is undoubtedly an ideal representation of Italian history. In the end, the characteristics of the development of psychoanalysis in Italy could also be summed up in the oxymoronic pairing of Isolation and Openness. It is thanks to this evolutionary niche that linguistic isolation has been transformed from a difficulty into an advantage. Italian psychoanalysis is a blend of different psychoanalytic traditions interpreted and retranslated into an autonomous psychoanalytic language. If we wish to trace a common feature in Italian psychoanalysis we could point to the concept of relationship as one of its most important transformations, with a shift of focus onto the work of the analytic couple. "Psyche is extended, knows nothing about it", the later Freud's most enigmatic legacy, seems to be one of the compasses for contemporary psychoanalytic research in Italy, one that spins around extensions of practice and the widening of technique.

The divining rod: Pioneering explorations of the psychoanalytic field

At the turn of the twentieth century, curiosity about paranormal events, in particular clairvoyance and telepathy through the state of hypnotic trance, spread widely throughout the Old World and the United States. The investigative interest in this field infected many psychoanalysts, including Freud. This paper intends to examine the pioneering articles which the creators of the psychoanalytical movement in Italy dedicated to this topic. A special place though rightly belongs to Emilio Servadio and to the founding father of Italian psychoanalysis, Edoardo Weiss. Weiss' experiences within the paranormal world are documented in a series of letters, some completely unpublished, which he exchanged with Paul Federn. The A. evaluates this correspondence, with the aim of transposing the discourse onto a theoretical level. Weiss' interpretations of his mediumistic experiences and Servadio's writings on telepathy and on paranormal dreams contains incredibly suggestive observations, which seemed to herald an expansion into the analytic field of the area of ⁣⁣exchange between analyst and patient. They sensed some axioms which would only much later be theorised within the inter-subjective psychoanalysis and the field model.

Harry Stack Sullivan and Stephen Mitchell in Italy – A historical and a personal account

Having introduced readers to the history of the reception of psychoanalysis in Italy, the author reconstructs the history of the Italian reception of the work of Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949) and Stephen A. Mitchell (1946–2000). Sullivan’s work played a fundamental role in adding to the “new Italian psychiatry,” founded by Franco Basaglia (1824–1980), the psychodynamic dimension it lacked, creating a new convergence between the social and psychological dimensions of psychiatry. Mitchell’s work played a fundamental role in the development of the Italian tradition of psychoanalytic psychotherapy originally articulated by Gaetano Benedetti (1920–2013) and Pier Francesco Galli, following their reception of Sullivan’s work. This phenomenon coincided, from an institutional point of view, with the emergence of a network of Italian institutes and societies affiliated to the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, which had been originally cofounded by the William Alanson White Institute – the institute founded by Sullivan in 1943, where Mitchell himself trained as a psychoanalyst at the end of the 1970s. Interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis also ended up finding a place in the work of several colleagues of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, as well as allowing the foundation of several institutes and societies affiliated to the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. The author reconstructs this chapter of Italian psychoanalysis from both a historiographical and a personal point of view.

On the Birth and Development of Psychoanalytic Field Theory, Part 1

Defining Psychoanalysis: Achieving a Vernacular Expression, by Ian Miller. London: Karnac, 2016. 116 pp.The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America: An Essential Guide, edited by Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski. London/New York: Routledge, 2015. 537 pp.Reading Italian Psychoanalysis, edited by Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti, and Luisa Marino Coe. London/New York: Routledge, 2016. 738 pp.

Reading Italian Psychoanalysis, edited by Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti and Luisa Marino Coe, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, 738pp.

Reading Italian Psychoanalysis, edited by Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti and Luisa Marino Coe, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, 738pp.

Reading Italian Psychoanalysis

The book springs out from the will, expressed by some American psychoanalysts in 2010, to have a collection of some of the most representative Italian contributions to psychoanalysis, in that Italian psychoanalysis had undertaken an original and interesting theoretical and technical configuration yet not fully known abroad. So, history and epistemology of psychoanalysis needed of such a source.

Cinema and Psychoanalysis: Across the Dispositifs

Cinema and Psychoanalysis:Across the Dispositifs Lucilla Albano (bio) In the field of film studies, there are two complex areas for potential research that exist side by side within the equivocal and rather unsuitable syntagm, 'cinema and psychoanalysis'—psychoanalytic film theory and the psychoanalytic interpretation of films. Though distinct, these areas are inextricably linked, presenting us with a vast and articulated panorama of theoretical positions and possibilities for interpretative development. Cinema and Psychoanalysis. Neither the Italian language nor English—the term cinepsychoanalysis is certainly not up to the task—offer a satisfactory alternative with which to succinctly define this field of research, at once theoretical, methodological and hermeneutic. What makes the phrase so unsuitable? When asked by someone outside the field what it is I do, I cannot respond "cinema and psychoanalysis," as the majority would understand this to mean that I study films dealing with psychoanalytical or psychiatric subjects, clinical cases, symptoms, traumas, pathologies and so on, such as Suddenly, Last Summer. They would assume I dealt solely with a certain genre of film and would miss that which is significant about and peculiar to this particular branch of studies. It all began in France in the mid-1940s, with the emergence of Filmologie—the structured interdisciplinary study of cinema first advanced by sociologist Gilbert Cohen-Séat—which allowed for greater specialization and more careful attention to be paid to the problems inherent in film research. Cohen-Séat took full advantage of support from noteworthy collaborators, who included the young Edgar Morin and Roland Barthes and those with backgrounds in psychology and psychoanalysis, such as [End Page 191] psychiatrist and child psychologist Henri Wallon, experimental psychologist Albert Michotte van den Berck, and psychoanalysts Didier Anzieu and Serge Lebovici. There was also Cesare Musatti, a charismatic figure in Italian psychoanalysis, curator of the translations of the works of Sigmund Freud for the publisher house Boringhieri and President for many years of the Italian psychoanalytic society, Società Psicoanalitica Italiana, who was also a cinéphile and avid theater-goer. His Scritti sul cinema have recently been collected and some published for the first time in the journal, Revue Internationale de Filmologie.1 From the 1970s onwards, the contributions and reflections found in Revue would become central to formalizing an authentic psychoanalytic theory of cinema, with in particular the essays by Jean-Louis Baudry. It is here that certain key concepts with their roots in filmology—such as cinematic situation (a precursor to the concept of a cinematic dispositif), segregation of spaces and impression of reality, the analogy between cinema and dreams, and so forth—would be reconsidered within a psychoanalytic framework by the French scholars who provided the basis for the areas of research discussed here. These are, namely, Baudry, Christian Metz, and Raymond Bellour; in his recent book, Le Corps du cinéma (2009), Bellour defines the product of this time as a "French psychoanalytic film theory."2 This theory investigated the metapsychological effects of the relationship between the screen and the spectator with reference to theories and concepts brought to light by psychoanalysis, allowing cinema to understand itself and the conditions of its own existence. It also imposed a Freudian-Lacanian line, on whose models classical film theory is substantially (I would say, exclusively) based—a move followed in Italy and later in Anglo-American reviews, such as the journal Screen, and in feminist film theory. The first point needing specification is: Which spectator and which screen are being referred to? The answer will clarify the structure of the cinematic dispositif, which we can define as the organic matter linking the dark room, the projector, the film, the screen and the spectator, within which the spectators are captured and by which they are transformed and 'imprisoned,' like the prisoners in Plato's cave—the mythical [End Page 192] precursor to the darkened theater. The very nature of darkness, passivity and immobility, and the strength of the moving images passing before their eyes, connected by a fictional plot that is fundamental to the processes of identification and projection, cause the spectators to be pushed unconsciously toward an earlier stage in their development; towards a kind of primary narcissism...

Object Relations and the Ineffable Bodily Dimension

Greenberg and Mitchell's (1983) book has contributed significantly to the dissemination of Relational psychoanalysis and the affirmation of psychoanalytic pluralism in Italy. I will consider some aspects of Italian psychoanalysis since the publication of this historic volume, as well as recent developments focusing on the consideration of primitive mental states. Present day Relational psychoanalysis locates states of primary rootedness and subjectivity in the body and in sensory experience. Bodily and sensory experience can also be a distinctive area of exchange and working through in the analytic relationship, and I will illustrate this with two clinical vignettes.

Italo Svevo and the first psychoanalytic novel.

The first fictional work that used psychoanalysis as a central plot device was La Coscienza di Zeno (Confessions of Zeno), published in 1923 by Ettore Schmitz, a Triestino Jewish businessman who wrote under the pseudonym of 'Italo Svevo'. This paper describes Svevo's background, his relations with such important literary figures as James Joyce and with such central figures in Italian psychoanalysis as Dr Edoardo Weiss. It seeks to demonstrate to the Anglophone reader the particular psychoanalytic elements in the novel and to relate them to Svevo's personal experience (including his indirect contacts with Freud) and to the intellectual currents of the period in a city which had, until the aftermath of the First World War, been a crossroads of European culture.

Italo Svevo and the first psychoanalytic novel

The first fictional work that used psychoanalysis as a central plot device was La Coscienza di Zeno (Confessions of Zeno), published in 1923 by Ettore Schmitz, a Triestino Jewish businessman who wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Italo Svevo’. This paper describes Svevo's background, his relations with such important literary figures as James Joyce and with such central figures in Italian psychoanalysis as Dr Edoardo Weiss. It seeks to demonstrate to the Anglophone reader the particular psychoanalytic elements in the novel and to relate them to Svevo's personal experience (including his indirect contacts with Freud) and to the intellectual currents of the period in a city which had, until the aftermath of the First World War, been a crossroads of European culture.