Foreword

This eleventh volume of the Annual, a select compendium of the best writings to have appeared in The Italian Journal of Psychoanalysis during 2016, is a good reflection of the intrinsic creativity of Italian psychoanalysis at the present time and the wide range of its interests. And so the thematic thread of this edition unwinds along avenues that are both varied and convergent: autism, psychosis, the long-neglected topic of pleasure in psychoanalysis, and the possible permutations of the analytic relationship, mark out and illuminate the path which the reader will be able to explore on opening this book.

The papers in the first section lead us into the living, vibrant climate of the «intimate room» of analysis. The first two studies are characterised by a readiness to examine and be curious about apparently obvious aspects of our psychoanalytic stance. Bolognini, starting from a clear delineation of concepts such as interpsychic, intersubjective and interpersonal, offers us an interesting and precise examination of the familiar interpsychic tools of technique underlying the experiential distinction of Self and Not-Self, which marks the analytic dialogue.

The paper by Ruggiero and Rossi centres on the highly topical theme of action in analysis, presenting us with a careful reading of the gesture of greeting by means of the handshake, an everyday, formal act which, when located in the analytic encounter, reveals its whole wealth of relational and emotional implications.

Writing about patients whose existence has been marked by early traumatic situations, and drawing on the theme of the negative theorised by Winnicott and Green, Mancuso leads us along the rugged, rocky trail on which the only possible change that is thinkable by the patient is reality as it used to be. Nevertheless, some elements of technique are suggested for getting through the highly delicate stage of concluding the analysis.

The question of how it may be possible to gain access to autism is of absolut