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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.
The best way to reconstruct the history of psychoanalytic ideas is to begin from the study not of theories, but of the various authors and their contexts. Important contributions to the study of the ego in Europe had already come from Ferenczi and Fenichel, well before Hartmann founded Ego Psychology (EP), which became mainstream in North America. In Europe, before World War II, significant contributions to what here is called >psychoanalytic ego psychology< (Pep) (contrasted with Hartmann’s EP) came from Anna Freud, Paul Federn, and Gustav Bally. After World War II, contributions came from Alexander Mitscherlich, Paul Parin, and Johannes Cremerius in the German-speaking community, and from Joseph Sandler in the UK. If this is the case, we should then talk of >ego psychologies< in the same way as we talk of the various object relations theories. Pep – as it was described in the guiding principles formulated by Fenichel in the 1930s – keeps informing the clinical work of many psychoanalysts, even if they are not fully aware of it. For example, it represents the basic ingredient of the empirically verifiable >psychoanalytic therapy< formulated in detail by Helmut Thomä and Horst Kächele.
Review Usak-Sahin, H., Psychoanalyse in der Türkei. Eine historische und aktuelle Spurensuche
(2021)
The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a >professional and personal home< that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar >psychoanalytic home.< As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.