Alfredo Lombardozzi in a Dialogue with Alberto Semi, Patrizio Campanile, Giuseppe Civitarese, and Paola Marion – Former Editorial Directors of Rivista di Psicoanalisi

Dear friends and colleagues, in this interview I would like to ask you four questions. Each of us, at different points in time, has served as Editorial Director of Rivista di Psicoanalisi. The last issue of 2024 marks the seventieth anniversary of the journal's relaunch following its suppression under the fascist regime. We have all been part of this rich and complex experience, which belongs to the intellectual tradition of psychoanalysis and to its dissemination and transmission: this legacy, however, faces daunting challenges in the present, along with ambitious hopes for the future.

2) Alfredo Lombardozzi: Let's begin by looking back at the past through the lens of the present. In 2004, Agostino Racalbuto and Patrizio Campanile edited a landmark issue of the Rivista to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Cesare Musatti's revival of the journal, after its censorship in 1932. In the 1950s, after the tragedies of the Second World War, psychoanalysis entered a remarkably fertile and creative phase; during this time were laid the foundations of many of the theoretical and clinical models whose various iterations can be seen today. From your point of view, how did Rivista di Psicoanalisi manage to carve out a space for writing and theoretical reflection, one that expressed a distinctly Italian psychoanalytic voice, amidst the evolving complexity of psychoanalytic

theory and clinical practice in relation to the profound social changes from the 1950s to the present?

Alberto Semi: That is a crucial question. Personally, I hold the view that knowledge – be it of any kind, whether scientific, humanistic, or psychoanalytic – ultimately transcends national or continental boundaries. For this reason, I believe that the fact that “Italian”, “French”, “American”, etc. schools of psychoanalysis exist should be seen as a symptom of the challenges that the psychoanalytic movement faces in managing the difficulties and conflicts that come with the free circulation of ideas. It is a c