The Case of a Young University Student

I am happy to respond to the invitation for clinical accounts, which came out in the Editorial of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. Indeed I feel that the search for Common Ground in psychoanalysis is much easier if we deal with practical day-to-day work than if we want to compare theoretical issues.

I would like to present the case of a young man, whom I call Gennaro, who was 18 years old when he started his analysis with me. He was born in a small town of Southern Italy, where his family still resides. He lived there until he moved to the town where I live and work, in Northern Italy, Genova.

The reasons for his move were both his wish to attend university and his determination to be analysed (he had previously discussed his difficulties with another psychoanalyst whom he had met socially).

He came to me with his parents. First I interviewed him by himself, and then, considering his youth and his still being financially dependent on his parents, I decided to have another meeting with him and his parents together. In the first interview he mainly complained of some occasional moments of diminution of sight (when he was moved emotionally) together with some vague and painful feelings of getting lost (depersonalization?). In addition to this, he suffered from agoraphobia, and also from difficulty in concentrating on his school work. He mentioned that he was rather isolated from his friends, but tended to minimize this problem. He had a girl-friend (considered his fiancée) in his home town, but he had a lot of difficulties with her as well.

His history was the following: he knew that his mother had become pregnant unmarried, and for this reason his father had married her when both were very young (in their early twenties). His father's parents were not very happy with such a marriage mainly for two reasons: first the girl was judged as bad from a moral point of view, second she was inferior with regard to social status. Just a few months aft