In September 2009 the last of Elvio Fachinelli's books, The Ecstatic Mind, was reprinted, 20 years after the publication of the first edition and the author's death. This reprinting sought to refocus attention on a work by one of the most distinguished, underrated2 and probably misinterpreted figures of Italian psychoanalysis.3

A careful translator of Freud, a prominent figure during the ‘red-hot’ years of the radical sixties, a refined and declaratively ‘engage’ intellectual, Fachinelli is known for his experiments which were socially innovative and anti-institutional, such as the foundation of the refuge of Porta Ticinese (Milan) which he managed himself, to cite only the best known of his many ‘anti-authority’ pedagogical initiatives. Even his own position in relation to the psychoanalytic institution was often criticized, although he was someone who loved psychoanalysis deeply and valued his membership (he was a member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society).