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Dear Editor,
The title of the book Reading Italian Psychoanalysis edited by Borgogno, Luchetti, and Coe (2016), reviewed in this journal by Guerrieri Degl’Innocenti (2018), seems to imply that it collects writings of Italian psychoanalysts. However, it includes only papers by members of the two International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA)-affiliated societies, namely the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana (SPI) and the Associazione Italiana di Psicoanalisi (AIPsi). The title, then, is misleading, and this should have been pointed out by the reviewer. The equation of the psychoanalytic movement to the membership of a single association is not only incorrect, but also anti-scientific. This unfortunate habit, which is widespread, not only undermines the scientific status of the discipline (it would be unthinkable, for example, in a medical specialty), but is also illegal to the extent that it links the term “psychoanalysis” to a single association. In this case, it also creates a paradox, because this 738-page book aims “at offering English-speaking psychoanalytic practitioners the possibility of getting to know Italian psychoanalysis for the first time in an extended, in-depth way” (Guerrieri Degl’Innocenti 2018, 1253, italics added). The risk is that English-speaking psychoanalytic practitioners learn that in Italy there are only these IPA-affiliated authors or, worse, that the editors are unaware that in this country the psychoanalytic contributions are much richer, in this way doing a disservice to Italian psychoanalysis itself.
Given the enormous diversity of orientations represented in this book, the real “common ground,” we might say, is the authors’ membership. The fact that this book is not representative of the Italian psychoanalytic community is very well exemplified by the total absence of authors of the Lacanian school, which is important in Italy. It is difficult to explain why our Lacanian colleagues, who propose a “return to Freud,” are not included in a b