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In the clearly and engagingly written 132 pages of this book, which presently is available only in the Italian language, Giuseppe Di Chiara leads the reader on a journey of discovery through the psychoanalytic experience—the theory and methodology that he calls the “Italian landscape.” An expert guide, he first briefly traces its origins in Freud, and then—one of the great values of this small book—he surveys the evolution of Italian psychoanalysis through the development of the new ideas, novel problems, and fresh perspectives that have influenced it and yielded its present bipersonal, intersubjective psychoanalytic culture. Another remarkable feature of the book is that after analyzing and describing the components of this culture, Di Chiara manages to integrate it within a classical analytic model; this attempt to be inclusive rather than exclusive is quite helpful to the clinician, because it more closely reflects the daily work of the practicing analyst.
In this intersubjective culture, the analytic field, the analytic narrative, and the analytic relationship the are three main components of the rich and lively landscape that the author cites Chianese (1993, 1997, 1999) and Ferro (1996, 1999) for having so well presented. What makes it a distinctly Italian version of analysis is that it is profoundly influenced by Bion's concept of the transformational “alphabetization” process (1962, 1963, 1970) and by the Barangers' field theory (1990).
Accordingly, certain not yet thinkable mental representations of ranges of experiences, both internal and external, that have remained undigested, unmetabolized, and unknowable—beta elements, or proto-emotions—are stuck in beta phase. They exercise from the depths of the unconscious a continuous pressure while searching for elaboration