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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.
With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their >new country< plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of >migration and identity< is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation.
Since 1999, the author has been working as a psychoanalyst in Munich, Germany, in the context of the German National Health Service, which covers psychoanalytic psychotherapy of up to 300 sessions with a frequency of up to three times a week. He has mostly been working with Italian patients in their common mother language. In other words, globalisation has made it possible to help patients heal the wounds of their old Italian self, develop a new German self, integrate them with each other, and thus allow foreign patients to become >citizens of the world.< After presenting the context of his clinical work, including the German Kassensystem and the characteristics of the Italian patients he works with, the author provides the reader with a review of the literature on migration and identity from a psychoanalytic point of view. Sociology and literature also offer an important key to the understanding of his patients. At this point in the paper, the author presents three patients, their history, the background of their migration to Germany, and the work he did with them. This allows him to come to the conclusion that psychoanalysis can help patients actualise the potentialities intrinsic in globalisation, in order to move towards a richer and more sophisticated identity.
The author compares the life and work of two pioneers and major sources of inspiration to the contemporary psychoanalytic debate: W.R. Bion (1897–1979) and H.S. Sullivan (1892–1949). Both their life and their work show similarities that allow the author to illuminate and constructively compare the one with the other. The author proposes his work as a useful exercise in the field of >comparative psychoanalysis,< an important key for the reconstruction of the history of our field and for a more scientifically coherent articulation of its theories.
My relationship to the IFP in the context of the original construction of our identity as a journal
(2016)
The author presents the context within which the editorial approach of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis was originally constructed, and the identity of its editorial board established, most of whose phases he was personally able to participate in. Particularly important was the role of the founding editor, Jan Stensson, in establishing not only the network sustaining the journal, its aims, and its working routines, but also the analytic methodology of reciprocal and careful listening, which makes our work as members of the editorial board a highly worthwhile professional experience. This is the legacy that the author further developed in his work with Jan Stensson's successor, Christer Sjödin (2007–2014), and that he shares with the new coeditor-in-chief, Grigoris Maniadakis.
Psychoanalytic dialogues
(2015)
Presentazione: H.S. Sullivan, Scritti sulla schizofrenia. Milano: Feltrinelli. Typescript, 8 pp.
(1992)
La rilevanza di Sullivan per la psichiatria e la psicoanalisi contemporanee. Typescript, 16 pp.
(1988)
The aim of this paper is to show how the life, personality, and scientific work of Gaetano Benedetti and Johannes Cremerius shaped the original form and structure of the Milan Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP), which they founded together with their pupils in 1971 and which became a member society of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1989. The training analysis was substituted by a personal analysis to be finished before the beginning of the training proper; group supervision had and still has as much importance as individual supervision; transference and countertransference analysis are fundamental dimensions of both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; and psychoanalysis can survive only in a context of interdisciplinary dialogue, empirical research, and social commitment. The author thinks that all these ingredients, which Benedetti and Cremerius contributed to the life of the Milan Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica and ASP, could represent important resources, as far as the future of the IFPS is concerned.
Review Borgogno, F.: >The girl who committed hara-kiri and other clinical and historical essays<
(2013)
Review Borgogno, F.: >The girl who committed hara-kiri and other clinical and historical essays<
(2013)
The author sees H.S. Sullivan's (1892–1949) interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and presents the former in its pluridimensional articulation. After having extended Freud's therapeutic approach to psychotic patients, Sullivan developed both a developmental psychology and a psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique based on the >interpersonal field< as the basic unit of study. To the pluridimensional character of his theory also belongs its application to the cultural and social aspects of our personal identity. Having the contemporary psychoanalytic authors who shaped the intersubjective perspective limited themselves to the clinical dimension, Sullivan's interpersonal theory can still provide the theoretical framework that any psychoanalytic perspective needs.
Foreword
(2012)
The author sees H.S. Sullivan's (1892–1949) interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and presents the former in its pluridimensional articulation. After having extended Freud's therapeutic approach to psychotic patients, Sullivan developed both a developmental psychology and a psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique based on the >interpersonal field< as the basic unit of study. To the pluridimensional character of his theory also belongs its application to the cultural and social aspects of our personal identity. Having the contemporary psychoanalytic authors who shaped the intersubjective perspective limited themselves to the clinical dimension, Sullivan's interpersonal theory can still provide the theoretical framework that any psychoanalytic perspective needs.
Editorial: Italian themes in psychoanalysis – International dialogue and psychoanalytic identity
(2008)
On the basis of the assumption that the understanding of Freud's work can gain much from illuminating his own psychological development, the author tries to reconstruct the evolution of his self-analysis. Against the common view of placing it in the context of his relationship with Fliess, the author shows how it actually evolved out of a whole series of experiences and relationships. Freud's self-analysis was initially nourished by his study of the Greek and Latin classics; it acquired the necessary interpersonal dimension through his relationship with Emil Fluss and Eduard Silberstein; it gained a cathartic and thus therapeutic quality through his relationship with Martha; and it eventually became a professional enterprise once his patients forced Freud, with the help of Wilhelm Fliess, to systematically look into himself.
The author tries to illuminate H.S. Sullivan's complex professional identity. With E. Fromm he shared a basic humanistic orientation, and also the project of creating an interdisciplinary new science of man. This is the perspective he inherited from W.A. White, who tried to make psychoanalysis a major ingredient of psychiatry and social science. Sullivan's pioneer work with schizophrenic patients changed the prognosis of these patients, represented the basis of his interpersonal theory of psychiatry and of his collaboration with Chicago social science. Not only is the epistemological sophistication of his definition of psychiatrywhich includes the biological, intra- psychic, cultural and social dimensions-very relevant today, but so is the work he conducted, through the Washington School of Psychiatry (1936) and the journal Psychiatry (1938), with the aim of creating what he called a >psychiatry of peoples<, leading to world peace and greater social justice. In his view, psychoanalysis was more than a profession: it was a fundamental instrument of personal, cultural and social change.