The work of Italian psychoanalysts has increasingly attracted attention in the United States, particularly for its vivid depictions of clinical work with more disturbed patients and the associated creative development of concepts of mental functioning and psychoanalytic process originated by British and South American post-Kleinian theorists. In particular, the ideas of Bion and the concepts of psychoanalytic field theory have been taken up and used in new ways by the Italians. In this review of four recent books by three influential Italian psychoanalysts, I will highlight aspects of this Italian contribution, and explore some of the questions—therapeutic and theoretical—that it raises. Among the core areas of psychoanalytic theory in which these authors introduce radical revisions are the nature and use of transference as well as the essence and purview of the analyst's work.

An exploration of the Italian use of the “field” concept requires some understanding of its history. Although a theory of the field has a history