Wilfred Bion's identity as a psychoanalyst in the light of his letters (1939–1951) to his first analyst, John Rickman, and of their multidimensional relationship–Our trainings (and our lives), our letters, and the history, transmission and practice of psychoanalysis

In the Editorial that Christer Sjödin and I wrote for the first issue of the 20th volume of this journal, we gave to the history of psychoanalysis first place in the list of the “great variety of topics” (Sjödin & Conci, 2011 p. 1) our journal had dealt with in the first 19 years of its existence. Since we had so much ground to cover in that Editorial, let me now give you some details concerning this aspect of our work. In fact, we once even joined our forces in the publication of a book, Behind the scenes. Freud in correspondence, edited by Patrick Mahony, Carlo Bonomi, and Jan Stennson, whose single chapters were also published in the second and third issues of Volume 5 (1996) of this journal.

If the second topic Christer Sjödin and I mentioned was “the present application of Sándor Ferenczi's theories” (ibidem), I am happy to remind our readers of the two monographic issues we published featuring Carlo Bonomi and Franco Borgogno as guest editors: “Sándor Ferenczi: Psychoanalysis and the confusion of tongues” (Issue 4 of 1998; Bonomi, 1998) and “Why Ferenczi today?” (Issue 1–2 of 2004; Borgogno, 2004). Christer Sjödin dedicated the second issue of 2007, with the title “Letters from the past which affect the present and shape the future,” to the theme of the reconstruction and re-elaboration of the history of psychoanalysis and of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS), featuring methodological papers such as Per Magnus Johansson's “Historiography and psychoanalysis” (Johansson, 2007) and Juhani Ihanus’ “The archive and psychoanalysis: Memories and histories toward futures” (Ihanus, 2007), along with an important contribution from our founding editor, Jan Stensson: “Some reflections on writing the history of the IFPS” (Stensson, 2007). Such a work of reflection played an important role in terms of the growth of the activity of our IFPS Archives Committee, which I deal with in my report on the Athens Forum also published in this issue. Furthe