Preface

The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual is published to bolster the presence of Italian psychoanalysis in the international psychoanalytic panorama. Our aim is to adequately represent its polyphonic nature and, in the variety of tones which characterise it, to accentuate the harmony and originality of its voice.

To this end, and to facilitate those who are not familiar with our language, it is our intention from now on to bring out an annual edition containing a selection of papers published during the previous year in our journal, Rivista di Psicoanalisi.

Contemporary Italian psychoanalysis owes much to the way in which the psychoanalytic movement has developed in this country: the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (Società Psicoanalitica Italiana) boasts ten Centres, each of which organises its own activities, and many of them have made a habit of setting up meetings with psychoanalysts from different countries so that their thoughts have been shared with those of the founders of the Society, thereby enhancing its cultural wealth and favouring the development of an original yet articulate presence in the Italian psychoanalytic world, a fact which goes some way to explaining its polyphonic features.

The scientific activity carried out at national level, along with the time-honoured habit of communication among the various centres, made up of frequent and systematic exchanges, have over time enabled and facilitated the harmonization of the multiplicity of voices, favouring creative integration and new modulations.

Which is to say that our Annual will therefore speak English … with a marked as well as, we think, a recognisable and distinctive Italian accent.

Last year, to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Freud, Rivista di Psicoanalisi dedicated a great deal of space to his works and many of the articles published here in our 2007 Annual were part of this project which was developed over the course of the entire year: we took up again the topical theme of the importa