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Dear Editor,
D. Bürgin's (2012) Letter from Basle contains information on the history of the ‘Psychoanalytic Seminar Zurich’ (PSZ) - namely on the reason why it became independent from the Swiss Society of Psychoanalysis - that needs to be corrected. But first I have to say few words on my involvement with the PSZ, and in general on my cultural background and professional career both in Italy and in Switzerland. Some biographical information on my part is also important because, as I will explain, I was personally involved with a conflict between the Swiss Society of Psychoanalysis and both the German (DPV) and Vienna (WPV) psychoanalytic associations. In this way I would like to complement Dr Bürgin's letter with some information so that the readers of this Journal can have a more complete picture of the history of psychoanalytic movement in these countries in the 1960s-70s. At the same time I would like to contribute to the long-standing discussion on controversial aspects of psychoanalytic training.
After medical school in Italy I was trained both in general and experimental psychology in Milan, and in 1957 I moved to Basle to work with Gaetano Benedetti (mentioned by Dr Bürgin) on his pioneering research in the psychotherapy of psychotic patients. We formed a group of colleagues with heterogeneous orientations. Members of this group were classical analysts, phenomenologists and dasein-analysts, Jungians, and also some pupils of Peter Szondi. I can mention Ludwig Binswanger Jr, Norman Elrod who had a Jungian orientation, Raymond Battegay who would later become an important researcher on group therapy, Leo Wurmser who would move to the US, Allan Johansson and Ajno Kärkäinen-Kilta from Finland; other Finnish analysts, in close collaboration with Benedetti, were Kauko Kaila and Martti Siirala, who greatly contributed to the study of family therapy in Zurich. From Germany, Walter Bräutigam was working with us, before going to the University of Heidelberg where he would