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Domenico Chianese, who was born in Naples, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who lives and works in Rome; a training analyst, he is currently President of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. Trained in the classical cultural tradition, he has concerned himself with epistemology and psychoanalytic methodology, with particular reference to historical problems; his clinical interests have focused on the study of constructions, models of relationship and of the analytic field.
His essays are presented in a new context and further developed in this unusual, curious, cultivated, original and intriguing book.
The volume, whose title means ‘Constructions and the analytic field’, is a long and thoroughly considered ‘construction’ of Dr Chianese's personal idea of psychoanalysis as both science and practice, which emerges on page after page from a broadly based and at the same time cogently argued dialogue between the author and his chosen interlocutors—namely, first of all, Freud, whose oeuvre is revisited in a questing spirit leading to the discovery of novel connections, which have hitherto received little attention; philosophers and epistemologists, precious neighbours who can enrich our notions of psychoanalytic thought by bringing a different perspective to it; selected analytic masters and colleagues, some close, akin and congenial to the author and others very different and remote from him, who together form a kind of ‘not-self’ that provides stimulation and opportunities for comparison throughout the length of the book; and finally the reader, who is called upon to share in this interesting and unconventional critical tour—with the implicit promise (which I believe the author keeps) of overall cultural and conceptual enrichment provided that he/she entrusts him/herself to Dr Chianese's inspired if avowedly highly personal choice of route.
The book comprises two main parts and a conclusion. The first deals with the concept of construction and includes sections on mat