Editorial

Thehis year's Italian Psychoanalytic Annual is a special one. Unlike our usual volumes, which gather the most significant papers from a single year of the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, this issue spans a broader horizon, bringing together selected texts from 2022, 2023, and 2024. This three-year perspective offers a rare opportunity to perceive the living continuity of Italian psychoanalysis: its transformations, its tensions, its capacity to renew itself without losing its roots.

Over the course of these years, psychoanalysis in Italy has navigated a rapidly changing world: a post-pandemic landscape, new clinical constellations, the pervasive presence of technology, and shifting forms of subjectivity. Within this frame, the contributions collected here bear witness to a discipline that remains both reflective and inventive, deeply grounded in the clinical encounter yet constantly moving toward new theoretical articulations.

Renowned authors such as Anna Ferruta, Francesco Barale, Giuseppe Moccia, and Maurizio Balsamo continue to expand central psychoanalytic concepts – the core self, the après-coup, the heterogeneity of memory – linking them to contemporary clinical practice with rigor and imagination. Alongside these established voices, new authors like Chiara Assante, Laura Balottin, and Davide Bruno bring fresh sensibilities and perspectives, offering readers a glimpse of the next generation of Italian analysts. Their papers on training, identity transformation, and the use of digital devices in child analysis open unexpected territories for psychoanalytic thought.

The variety of themes mirrors the vitality of our field. Nelly Cappelli's exploration of psychophobia and Green's “central phobic position” investigates the very difficulty of thinking: a challenge that resonates beyond the consulting room. Stefano Calamandrei reflects on the fear of transience and mortality during the pandemic, portraying the “existential defence” of the Self in the face of collective vulner