Raffaello Cortina Editore

The debate about Winnicott’s relationship to Metapsychology is raised in the margins of the research project promoted and led by Riolo (2015-2020). Moving from the consistent dialogue between Fulgencio and Girard, the author revisits Winnicott’s theory of instincts in a constant dialectics with the Freud’s one. After reviewing Winnicott’s conceptual work, the author argues that the theory of destructiveness, different from Freud’s, is crucial and remarkable for the elaboration of some of the most original  concepts, such as intermediate area and potential space.KEY WORDS: Drive/instinctual theory, Fulgencio-Girard debate (2007-2017), metapsychology, Winnicott-Freud comparison.

In this paper, I present a portion of the analysis of a young woman, from the first meeting to the moment when conditions within the analytic field make possible the emergence of a function through which the analytic couple co-construct original narratives. From a theoretical point of view, I address a crux in the Bion-Field Theory, namely, the way in which the analyst attempts to reconcile the search for an atmosphere based on the centrality of the waking dream thought with the impact of historical reality and trauma. In addressing the theme of developing the narrative function, I also discuss the use of characters and reverie in the session and how developments in narratology may be of special interestto the analyst.KEY WORDS: Bion-field theory, narrative function, narratology, reality, reverie.

The evolution of the concept of the unconscious is described from its origin to the present days and the changes in its conception that have made it possible to abandon a static representation of it and observe its interpersonal development. A more primitive domain of the unconscious, to which Winnicott refers when speaking of formless states and non-integration, is the current frontier of our studies. Two clinical cases are discussed.KEYWORDS: Creative unconscious, function of the unconscious, psychic functioning, receptive unconscious, unconscious.

This paper aims to highlight the journey made by psychoanalysts starting from Freud and his original topographical formulation of the unconscious up to the most recent developments which, by placing more and more emphasis on the bipersonal and group dimension of the birth of the mind, have further elaborated the Unconscious System, assigning it increasingly complex transformative roles and functions. In particular, the article identifies some «evolutionary lines» that have marked, over time, the development of models of mental functioning, and therefore also of the unconscious part of it. Lastly, it addresses the theoretical and technical implications of the pathway that starts from the idea of anunconscious functioning primarily aimed at removing impulses, affects and desires that are incompatible with consciousness, and arrives in our own time at the conception of an unconscious that is more physiologically symbolopoietic, imaginable as a psychic organ capable of performing an osmotic-representative function in relation to internal and external reality.KEY WORDS: Mental functioning, metapsychology, missing piece, structure, unconscious.

Psychoanalysis, as a way of listening to the other and to his or her otherness, questions the Sphinx not only with regard to the analysis of the generational conflict, but also with regard to dimensions of the psychism that are located elsewhere than in the already systematised competences. The extension of the concept of unconscious requires an «other» dimension of listening, a «polyphonic polymorphic heteromorphic listening», in which associative modalities unfold, revealing the communicative potential of the patient only after the response of the object, open to catching communications expressed in preverbal form. Another place in which to meet the Sphinx, the enigmas of psychic life, and question them, concerns the presence in the psychic not only of the traces of relations with more than one: the plural. It is also a question of listening to and making room for the emerging unconscious aspects of the need to belong to groups, in particular the unconscious narcissistic alliances that preserve the survival of the subject and the group together.KEY WORDS: Listening, narcissistic alliances, other, polyphonic, presence of the object, preverbal, unconscious.