Preface

As illustrated by the 2007 volume, the first in the series, The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual presents a selection in English of the papers published during the previous year in the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.

Theory and observation: redefining the field. That is standard procedure in science, and the contributions in this volume of the Annual likewise identify some of the cornerstones of psychoanalysis that must be present if it is to thrive in the contemporary situation.

In a journal such as ours that does not have issues devoted to specific subjects but accepts contributions spontaneously submitted by authors, a title is used for indicative purposes only, and it is in this spirit that we present the papers featuring in the 2008 Annual, many of which are devoted to the institution of psychoanalysis, training processes and the ethics of psychoanalysis. The same approach can be applied when reading the other contributions, which examine specific examples of clinical experience as a basis for the possible redefinition of our theoretical and observational field.

Hence this volume can be seen at one and the same time as continuous and discontinuous with its predecessor, Freud after all.

Theory and observation: redefining the field. That is Freud's legacy, or indeed his challenge, to future generations, as stated at the end of the article which opens this volume, and which therefore connects it with last year's Annual — namely, discovering how to ≪re-specify our theoretical and observational field so as to extend it to nonsymbolic processes and the laws governing their transformation into symbolic processes≫. This approach should in our view be applied across the board, and the matters to be observed and reflected upon should include the discipline of psychoanalysis itself and its institutions — the processes of transformation necessary for our ≪science≫, those that seem feasible and the resistances to putting them into practi