Foreword

The Rivista di Psicoanalisi n. 3 of 2023 is a monographic issue that explores the topic of the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The issue, edited by Angela Iannitelli, welcomes essays written by psychoanalyst colleagues, scholars, and others, testifying to different ways of approaching a crucial field of research for psychoanalysis. In this editorial, unlike in other previous ones, I will not refer, if not occasionally, to individual contributions that I consider on the whole valuable and precious. I will attempt to frame the interdisciplinary topic involving the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, within a broader discourse and contextualizing it as far as possible.

To begin, I wish to clarify how I view interdisciplinary research, which I consider fundamental for a theoretical-conceptual and clinical evolution of psychoanalysis as a discipline on the borderline between ‘natural’ sciences and ‘human sciences’ or ‘humanities’ (Kagan, 2009).

In my experience, over many years of research on the relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology, I have encountered effective and fruitful modes of exchange but also studies and conceptual formulations that have significant limitations and problems. On the one hand cultural anthropology, with some exceptions, has tended, in different ways in the various ‘local’ anthropological cultures, to not sufficiently grasp the importance of an approach to social reality that took into account the important function of unconscious dynamics and the role of interiority in the different declinations of forms of culture and humanity. On the other hand, psychoanalysis has, in my opinion, shown an ‘excess’ of interest in anthropological studies, yet grasping very limited aspects that were mostly used for the purpose of validating clinical theories within a broader social dimension. Overall, anthropologists rarely went beyond knowledge of a few Freudian texts, while psychoanalysts mainly discussed with