You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Not the Accademia bridge, nor Calatrava's Constitution Bridge, but the many small bridges which pass over the canals of Venice: this is the picture which came into my mind as I read the successive chapters of the book by Vergine and De Silvestris. These chapters are brief passages which help us to overcome the obstacles of misunderstanding, dogmatism and problematic cruxes which clutter psychoanalytic theory: but, as in the Venetian lagoon, also to pause on their welcoming summits for breathtaking glimpses which are always the same and yet unbelievably new and surprising. That is the nature of psychoanalysis. We never stop engaging with it, fascinated by its perennial questions, but always with renewed passion. In the end it is ineffable and mysterious, and could not be otherwise, because then it would not be able to reflect the complexity of its subject: the human mind.
Just as the making of a mind needs another mind, so to grasp this complexity and take account of the mystery of subjectivity it is necessary for analysts to use their own subjectivity. The authors of the book are well aware of this. Creativity and style are indispensable resources even when working from a scientific perspective. It is the same when working with the patient. The theories of psychoanalysis cannot dispense with style. The analyst's style expresses his individuality and capacity not only to observe, but to feel - or rather, with Bion, to ‘suffer’ - the events of the analysis. Using the body of his words he passes on an understanding of things which is not only intellectual, but profound, emotional and unconscious.
It is no coincidence that, as the authors write, the great psychoanalysts “who contributed their ideas and their work with patients to the birth and development of psychoanalytic thought, functioned like artists for whom every piece of work is a unique and unrepeatable achievement” (p. 93). The redemption of style: that is how I would translate the cautious optimism which the au