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The author of this book, ‘In the analytic consulting room’, is a training analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, and the volume presents a rich collection of themes suffused with his living clinical experience. Dr Ferro has enlightened us before, in La tecnica nella psicoanalisi infantile (1992), on the techniques and clinical practice of child analysis. He has also published a large number of papers in many international journals. It is impossible to approach any of Ferro's writings—including the work under review—without being struck by his genuine, deep passion for clinical psychoanalytic practice and by the many stories and narrations that unfold within it. This volume offers the reader an alternating sequence of conceptual and theoretical considerations with frequent descriptions of clinical situations in which we can share. That is entertaining and at the same time makes for stimulating and involving reading.
The topics covered in this book include—among many others—the question of analysability (seen as the capacity of the analyst and of the analytic couple to allow themselves to be put to the test), termination (signalled not by contents but by the introjection of functions—in particular, the capacity to think), theories, models, the transference and relating.
Ferro's central ideas concern: the transformation of deep emotions by (a) their narration between characters, (b) sharing by virtue of a story and (c) elaboration by means of unsaturated interpretations; narrative interventions; consideration of characters as functional aggregates, i.e. as personifications of aspects of