Where does Psychoanalysis go?: Franco Borgogno: Psicoanalisi come percorso. Torino:  Bollati Boringhieri, 1999.

“Psychoanalysis as pathway” (Psicoanalisi come percorso) is the latest book by Franco Borgogno, an Italian psychoanalyst, secretary of the training of the SPI Institute in Milan (the SPI is one of the Italian member societies of I.P.A.), and professor of Clinical psychology at the University of Turin. It consists of 12 papers written between 1981 and 1999, covering the period during which the author passed from the position of analyzand to the one of training analyst. This personal “pathway” permits us to glimpse the type of movement, which, in spite of being written as a book of history of psychoanalysis, remains essentially interested in finding the analytic factors that promote a change in the structure of a mind. At the same time, this “analytic” filter produces a new way of reading the history of psychoanalysis which, instead of being based on the traditional factors — such as the conflicts within the movement, the lives of the authors, the progress of the theories, or the advancement in the technique — assumes history as the place where the concrete traces of the process of transformation of the mind can be found.

Borgogno argues that this process is especially reflected in the stories of three authors: Paula Heimann, Wilfred Bion, and Sándor Ferenczi, all of which were at odds with the psychoanalytic institution. This might make the reader wonder if such a conflict is a necessary element of change. In a way, Borgogno presents it as unavoidable, since the establishment “patronizes what exists creating dependency from it, and is driven to discard what is new and unknown, and every hypothesis which does not fit with it, by rejecting it” (p. 32), while, evidently, no progression can exists without departing from what is known. Yet, something which is outside of the individual is also necessary for the thought to progress, since — as Freud said, recommending Joan Riviere to write down her thoughts — thoughts can become independent only when they are expressed in a