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

In Reading Italian Psychoanalysis, Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti, and Luisa Marino Coe have presented to the non-Italian speaking psychoanalytic readers a broad survey, from earliest beginnings to contemporary contributors, of a psychoanalytic canon of works that adds a uniquely Italian perspective to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

The readings are a feast for the analytic public, divided into different courses like a menu in an Italian restaurant: antipasto, primi, secundi: carne, pescatore, verdure, and finally dolce. Of course, this robust meal is washed down with an excellent Italian wine: Borgogno, Luchetti, and Coe provide an introduction to each course representing a précis of each paper that helps the reader understand the individual paper in context of the broader Italian psychoanalytic discourse.

Any menu can only give the peruser an idea of the dish described and the actual culinary experience can only be had by ordering the dish and consuming it. As with a menu, I am limited by space to only a superficial description of what the reader might experience by reading the entire text. What follows is the most cursory of summaries of each course on the menu.

In Part 1, Giuseppe DiChiara provides the reader with the factual historical development of psychoanalysis in Italy, while Anna Ferruta discusses the original discourse that Italian psychoanalysis contributes. She suggests that Influences by Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnocott, Rosenfeld, the Barangers, Laplanche, and Ferenczi have resulted in an emphasis on the analytic relationship itself as manifested by the quality of psychoanalytic listening and the personal experience of the analyst, the interpsychic and intrapsychic interactions of the analytic couple, and the actual emotional dimension in the analytic space.

Part 2, Luchetti serves the reader essential papers on Metapsychology. Seeking logical principles to define unconscious modes of thinking, Ignacio Matte Blanco identified two: the represe