The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual 2025/19

Working in a conceptual research group on countertransference, the authors realized that it is not easy to define Bion’s position in this regard. They then carried out a systematic investigation into his writings, highlighting how Bion’s way of dealing with countertransference has changed over time. Starting from a broad conception, which valorizes it as a useful tool for the analyst to understand the patient’s unconscious, Bion ended up adopting a narrow conception which, in line with Freud’s original one, sees countertransference as an obstacle due to unconscious problems of the analyst not resolved in his personal analysis. Finally, the authors propose some reflections on the possible meanings of this turning point in the context of Bion’s thought.

KEY WORDS: Bion, conceptual research, countertransference, resistance.

The current paper examines the complex attitude, through successive movements of approach and distancing, that Freud developed over the years towards the concept of mysticism up to his mysterious piece Fragment 22, which was probably the last paper written by his own hand. Freud’s relationship with mysticism also passes through the confrontation with Romain Rolland and his concept about the Oceanic Feeling, a perception of the eternal and the unlimited, which can disregard religious experience and nevertheless take the form of an ecstatic moment. Beginning with Fachinelli’s thought, which supports the mystical dimension of the human being as such, the reflection focuses on ecstatic situations as experiences of intense well-being in front of the immensely beautiful and great or in the experience of being in unison with the Other. The pleasure can, however, veer towards a nostalgic sadness or a real terror for a frightening excess. The deep emotional sharing between patient and analyst can take the form, in certain special moments, as an ecstatic experience.

KEY WORDS: Ecstatic situations, negated mysticism, oceanic feeling, secular mysticism.

The article reflects on distortions of relatedness in perverse pathology. After a historical overview of the main psychoanalytic approaches to the theory of perversion, the paper follows the significant stages of an analytic process in order to explore the patient’s transformations and the transference-countertransference dynamics involved. Particular attention is paid to the patient’s gradual shift from a relational modality based on the use of the object toward an increasing awareness of both his own suffering and that of others, ultimately leading to the recognition of his own fragility and of the existence of an object separate from himself, and therefore worthy of respect. The patient appears to have gained partial access to depressive anxiety through the recognition of his own limits, aggression, and underlying destructiveness, gradually moving beyond the paranoid-schizoid position and the position of the idolized child. The paper also emphasizes the central role played by the analyst’s elaboration of countertransference and of the empathic drifts emerging within the analytic relationship in facilitating the transformative process.

KEY WORDS: Perversions, object relations, sense of Self, empathy, depressive anxiety, idolized child.

This paper, which focuses on the aesthetic function of the analyst’s language, draws on Winnicott’s concepts of playing and potential space to explore the experience of intersubjective emotional sharing that may arise in the extra-ordinary verbal exchange within the analytic pair. Through three clinical fragments, the paper develops the idea that the analyst’s linguistic playing, when it occurs, concerns the dimension of potential space and, therefore, the creation of new symbolic content belonging to the intersubjective field. The analyst’s linguistic playing is presented here as an experience of the vitality and creativity of the unconscious, lived and experienced by the analytic pair.

KEY WORDS: Analytic field, aesthetic function, language game, intersubjectivity, language, metacommunication, paradox, playing, potential space.

The juxtaposition of the terms “violence” and “ideality” invites reflection on the reciprocal implication of these two conceptual spheres. In psychoanalytic and metapsychological terms, this reflection leads to the Superego, particularly to the processes of identification. Clinical material drawn from a penitentiary setting highlights a specific configuration of the paternal bond, marked by the emergence of the fantasy “a father is being beaten”, in which the ideal dimension risks consolidating scenarios characterized by violence. The questions of ideality and violence are then extended to the specificity of the analytic setting and the psychoanalytic situation.

KEY WORDS: Violence, ideal, identification, father, psychoanalytic situation.

This article aims to revisit a number of reflections on the application of the psychoanalytic method in the field of early childhood psychoanalysis and mother-infant joint therapies, with a review of the current literature in this realm. In particular, the specific area of the focus of psychoanalytic observation in cases of early trauma are explored. In these circumstances, the aim of an intervention on the dyad will be to initiate processes of emotional repair within the relationship, and to support the resumption of the infant’s development. The evolution of treatment of a clinical case is presented, with a focus on the therapeutic relationships circulating within the analytic field and on the change in the child’s functioning. Finally, certain aspects of the analyst’s countertransference at work are illustrated, with particular attention to the peculiarities of their internal structure when intervening in this field.

KEY WORDS: Infantile, psychoanalysis, infant.

The widespread use of new technologies has profoundly transformed the way in which adolescents live and represent their own experience. In this paper, we seek to outline two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, there exists a continuity in the ways in which they symbolise their experiences: even through new media – social media, blogs, TV series and manga – adolescents seek to construct narratives of themselves similar to those they once entrusted, for example, to a diary. On the other hand, there is a clear shift in the nature of consumption and thought: the speed, fragmentation and proliferation of digital stimuli foster a more immediate and less reflective experience, linked to excitement rather than elaboration. This new way of relating to reality lies at the root of the new psychopathological forms increasingly encountered in adolescent psychoanalytic practice. The clinical vignettes presented illustrate the ways in which the relationship with the smartphone or with the language of manga may become both a defence against anxiety and thought, as well as an opportunity for symbolic transformation. The analysis of these experiences, also in light of Bollas’s concepts of extractive introjection and refractive thinking, shows the extent to which psychoanalysis may offer a horizon of meaning, alongside tools for understanding and treating emerging forms of adolescent distress.

KEY WORDS: Narcissism, adolescents, new technologies, dysregulation disorders, recognition.

The Author offers a reflection on the Freudian unconscious, taking as starting point the plurivocal quality that Freud describes in his essay The Ego and the Id. Through an examination of the evolution of Freud’s thought, the Author identifies the ascending nature of the unconscious and its permeability across the various regions of the psychic apparatus. The Author focuses on the well-known diagrams of the psychic apparatus from 1923 and 1933, and on the lesser-known ones from 1900, in which the problem of the relationship between drives and memory traces is raised. The article concludes by proposing a tripartite division of the unconscious, recalling that Freud ultimately maintains the psychic is unconscious, a statement echoed by Matte Blanco. The reference to a patient’s early memory serves as a link between the unconscious and memory, and intersects with ideas from related fields of study, touching upon the analogy between the non-repressed unconscious and implicit memory.

KEY WORDS: Repressed unconscious, non-repressed unconscious, memory traces, implicit memory, diagrams of the psychic apparatus.

This article aims to illustrate the main innovations introduced in the new edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-3), with a specific focus on its diagnostic approach in adulthood and in patients with feeding and eating disorders. In line with the Manual’s intent to represent a “taxonomy of people” rather than of disorders, the author exemplifies these contents through the clinical case of Viola, a patient diagnosed with binge-eating disorder. The PDM-3-based discussion of the clinical case highlights the relevance of assessing the level of personality organization, personality styles, and mental functioning (with particular attention to the domain of bodily experiences and representations), allowing the clinician to move beyond a symptom-oriented perspective toward the patient’s specific, unique, and idiographic subjective experience.

Key words: Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, psychoanalytic diagnosis, personality, defence mechanisms, bodily experience, feeding and eating disorders.

While the most widely used international nosographic systems, the DSM and ICD, are based on a descriptive and atheoretical approach to psychopathology that is relatively insensitive to the specific features of different life stages, the new edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-3) promotes a person-centered, multidimensional, and developmentally informed model of diagnosis, aimed at integrating a nomothetic perspective with an idiographic understanding of the patient’s psychological functioning. In this contribution, the author presents the new “Adolescence” section of the PDM-3, with a particular focus on mood disorders. Through the discussion of a clinical case, the paper highlights the importance of a psychodynamic framework for understanding depressive disorders within the context of adolescents’ mental functioning and emerging personality profiles, which provides an essential foundation for planning patient-tailored and effective treatments.

Key Words: Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, adolescence, mental functioning, emerging personality, countertransference, depressive disorders.