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I have approached this third book by Clara Mucci with great curiosity: after two rich, curated and interdisciplinary works (Mucci, 2013, 2018) intended to be a fundamental training tool for all therapists who want to understand and treat trauma, I was eager to find out where the author would lead us this time.
Every time I read her writings, I am reminded of expert Alpine Mountain guides leading expeditions between peaks that they know inch by inch but that rarely are well known to the participants, despite their experience and knowledge of the mountains in general. Clara Mucci is a guide who for years has not only been an expert and passionate about the psychoanalytic clinical work; she is also prepared and up-to-date on the scientific research that bridges psychoanalysis and neurology; and, above all, she is a tireless writer, eager to share her knowledge with the reader. And the reader fearlessly takes on the role of the mountaineer trekker who relies on Mucci as a guide, and describes the places they will visit and lists the tools everyone must have with them. I dwell on this mountaineering and naturalistic image because in the book you breathe fresh air, you let yourself be accompanied by the author, confident in her experience and in the way she makes it available for the reader's use.
From the very first pages of Resilience and Survival, it is clear how this book, while being different from the previous ones, further explores topics previously developed by the author. In the process the book opens new avenues of reflection and understanding of human reality. Unlike Borderline Bodies, Mucci can allow herself here to leave clinical work and neuropsychological research in the background. This work offers a broad perspective of the various conclusions that Mucci reached in a long, dedicated journey from the works of the pioneer of psychoanalysis on trauma, Sàndor Ferenczi, to the meeting with Otto Kernberg, from Liotti's works to Schore's and Steele's great discove