I sensi e l'inconscio [The Senses and the Unconscious] by Giuseppe Civitarese Rome:  Edizione Borla, 2014;  255 pp.

“Being able to dream is what matters most!” seems to be the motto of Giuseppe Civitarese's fifth work, titled I sensi e l'inconscio [The Senses and the Unconscious]. Mental life takes place between the relentless pressure of sensorial fluxes and the script of dream activity, each continually generating the other. We're far from the Cartesian split between body and mind, but also beyond the paradigm of Freudian psychosomatic unity, according to which the Ego is above all a bodily ego.

Starting from the unconscious as the original concept of psychoanalysis, Civitarese leads us in the exploration and mapping of two metapsychological models of the mind — Freud's and Bion's — models of mental care that still coexist in the contemporary psychoanalytic landscape, often hidden in their different identifying characteristics by a veil of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Civitarese collects, observes, describes, discriminates, and orders several concepts whose usage in psychoanalytic literature is often confusing. At the end of the book, the reader feels grateful because he's more clearly aware of the differences, caesuras, bridges, and connections between the two models.

The unconscious presented in the book acts not only as a cornerstone, but also as a watershed between Freudian and Bionian metapsychology: two