Our Identities in Chiaroscuro

In this third issue of The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, we carry on «presenting» a glimpse at Italian psychoanalysis to the English language reader by means of a selection of papers published throughout the year in Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.

In this instance, perhaps even more so than in the previous volumes, the variety of orientations represented by the different contributors does justice to the plural in our title: psychoanalytical identities, in the plural, as we have done our best to portray from the outset of the Annual. If outlines denoting an identity can be tracked down and isolated-and perhaps an identity can only be denoted in this way: by outlines, then this characteristic of it undoubtedly mirrors one of no trivial importance. The challenge that Rivista di Psicoanalisi has set itself is to facilitate dialogue among this plurality so as to ensure that the meeting is fruitful, within the rigours of the method.

In this issue, however, it is the notion of identity itself which is placed under the microscope and discussed, as took place during the Italian Psychoanalytic Society's XIV Congress, Giornate italiane: Identity and Change: the space of the subject, of which we now publish the papers presented during the opening.

So what will the reader read in this issue? Four passages, taken from these works, may provide a brief idea:

Is it still possible to speak of identity? The concept is in fact indispensable. After all, identity is one of those «damned» notions — like being, consciousness, or time — that are destined to survive not only their reifications but also their confutations. No sooner has it been demolished as an ens than it must be readmitted as a «representation» — because we inevitably need the possibility of representing ourselves to ourselves in order to confer order and meaning on our history, on our experience of the world (F.R.).

Narcissistic pathologies are multiplying, crowding our practices and