Foreword

Just over a century on from the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), for the first time in its history an Italian and a member of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI), Stefano Bolognini, is this year to become its President, a fact that confers particular additional significance on this issue of The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual.

The present seventh volume contains a selection of papers published in the previous year in the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the journal of the SPI, which, for its part, has a much longer history. Originally bearing the title Rivista Italiana di Psicoanalisi, it was established way back in 1932 by Edoardo Weiss, who was among Freud's first pupils. One of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Italy, Weiss made a name for himself internationally because he spent many years of his life in the United States following his enforced emigration due to the fascist regime's persecution of the Jews.

And it was fascism, coupled with pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, that led to suspension of publication of the Rivista Italiana di Psicoanalisi after just two years and fourteen issues, the last two of which, although complete, could no longer be distributed. Its closure was followed in 1938 by that of the SPI, whose foundation dated from 1925. The SPI resumed its activities only after the Second World War, holding its first two congresses in Rome (in and ), and establishing eleven centres at various locations throughout the country, each of which has always organized scientific activities of its own, frequently involving psychoanalysts from other nations as well as exchanges between the centres themselves; the SPI of course also holds national seminars and congresses.

However, it was only in 1954 that, at the instigation of Cesare Musatti, it was possible to relaunch the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, which has now reached its fifty-ninth volume. As long ago as in 1988-1992, when it became evident that Italian psychoanalysis n