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It is quite rare to come across a book that combines sound theoretical and clinical psychological arguments with generous disclosure of the progression and development of an author's thought. What this volume offers, however, is just such an itinerary, or rather journey (the percorso of the title), and moreover one that is strictly psychoanalytic. Different levels of this journey emerge as we read. The first is that of Freud's theoretical development, from his first intuitions that led to the creation of psychoanalysis, to the key works of his maturity. Another concerns the vicissitudes of every psychoanalytic process as manifested in the analyst–patient interaction. A further level of this journey is the evolution of the analytic thought of Franco Borgogno himself, as reflected in the sequence of papers he presents to us here and the highly involving theoretical odyssey they prove to be.
The scientific papers gathered together in Borgogno's book cover a period of approximately fifteen years (1983-1998), during which he seems to have reached a peak of maturity, independence and productivity. The earliest contributions presented here date from the time of his own training, while the latest were written in his current capacity as a prestigious training analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. Here he not only explores ‘early’ Freud, Winnicott and Bion, but also, combining intellectual courage with irreproachable theoretical and clinical rigour, turns his attention to two authors who for many years were viewed with incomprehensible intellectual and political ‘suspicion’ and ‘distrust’ by the psychoanalytic community, namely Heimann and Ferenczi.
It is no coincidence that the last part of the book—comprising five whole chapters—is devoted to some of Ferenczi's principal contributions on psychoanalytic technique, child analysis, trauma, dreams and patients’ pain and suffering. Borgogno here displays the best of himself as an analyst, with a bold, committed and inde