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“Have no doubt that there is a future for psychoanalysis in Italy too. You only have to wait for a suitable time,” wrote Freud to Edoardo Weiss , on November 1, 1923, responding to a letter in which the first Italian psychoanalyst had informed Freud of having successfully introduced the Italian psychologists, gathered together in Florence for their Fourth National Congress, to his new science (as we learn from Weiss' book Sigmund Freud as a consultant, ). It actually took many years for psychoanalysis to become established in Italy and for Italian psychoanalysts to gain international recognition as important intellectual players in their field. It was to celebrate this achievement, coinciding with Antonino Ferro's election to the post of Editor for Europe of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (from No. 4/2003), that we decided to produce this special issue, Italian themes in psychoanalysis-International dialogue and psychoanalytic identity. This topic was also dealt with comprehensively in my interview with Stefano Bolognini for this journal (see No. 1/2006), and this special issue can also be seen as a continuation and amplification of that same interview.
Last but not least, I am also very happy to say that the common denominator of the new, creative situation of Italian psychoanalysis, and of the papers contained in this issue, is embodied in the process of “internationalization,” whose first protagonists and contributions had already been a central theme of my paper “Psychoanalysis in Italy: a reappraisal” (No. 2/1994). The bridges built between Italian and international psychoanalysis, the theme of this editorial, are the hallmark of this very exciting new development. As an introduction, let me go back to history and to Edoardo Weiss.
A native of Trieste (until 1918 part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, like my native Trent), where he had first heard about Freud, he went to Vienna in the fall of 1908 to study with him. After what turned out to be one o