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In his preface to this remarkable book, Stefano Bolognini praises the recent tendency to build bridges and create a dialogue with other “psychoanalytic families,” presenting Marco Conci as “an example of this progressive international evolution of the contemporary analyst.” A new type of analyst, indeed, since Conci’s path through different analytic communities outside and inside the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), which Bolognini assimilates to a journey through different countries and cultures, would have been most unusual, if not impossible, until not long ago. Rolling out this metaphor, the 12 chapters of this anthology represent as many travel reports of the shattered world of psychoanalysis, collected with the faith that the time of schism and estrangement is over and that unity is viable and advisable.
These chapters, written in the course of almost three decades, are geographically grouped in four parts, each representing a main region of the psychoanalytic world. Part one is focused on early Freud, from his adolescent correspondence with Silberstein and juvenile choice to study medicine to his self-analysis, which is here reconsidered emphasizing its interpersonal background. Part two consists in an articulated account of the roots of the interpersonal theory and of its contemporary transformation into relational psychoanalysis; two figures stand out here: Harry Stuck Sullivan and Stephen Mitchell. Elements of the Bion galaxy are explored in Part three from different angles: the roots of Bion’s work, his analysis with John Rickman, and the important role played by intersubjectivity in his work, which allows a compelling comparison between Bion and Sullivan. This part ends with a very informative reconstruction of analytic field theory, in which traditional regional divisions are merged and crisscrossed, in anticipation of Part four, namely the idea of a germinal international psychoanalysis. Here we find a chapter on Gaetano Benedetti an