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This book, the first of a two-volume work, aims, according to its author Carlo Bonomi, to construct a more integrated narration of the origins of psychoanalysis. The idea of building, which initially appears in the title of the book, implies an integration, while cut most probably refers to trauma and its aftermath. The book's subtitle (Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein) points towards a relationally oriented narration. The second volume of the study will bear the subtitle Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi.
Carlo Bonomi is a supervising analyst and a faculty member of the Postgraduate School of Psychotherapy at the Sullivan Institute in Florence. He has taught History of Psychology and Dynamic Psychiatry and is a former president of the Centre for Historical Studies of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. He is also founding president of the Sandor Ferenczi cultural association and an Associate Editor of this journal.
The book is based on decades of arduous research by the author (who has already published a book on part of his research). His research was spurred by his puzzlement over the lack of a credible narration of the origins of psychoanalysis, as well as by a fantasy he had that the entire psychoanalytic edifice rested on a catastrophic event related to real castration. The research led Bonomi to several findings. The first was that the castration of women and circumcision of children was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, an important if not dominant medical practice for curing hysteria and masturbation. Second, Freud most likely did not have his sons circumcised. Finally, one of Freud's first female patients, Emma Eckstein, had probably suffered the trauma of circumcision as a child. The questions that emanated from these findings form the basis of The cut and the building of psychoanalysis.
The book is organized into three parts. Part 1, “The medical context” (Chapters 1 and 2), reconstructs the practice of castration of women and girls in the late ninet