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.
The author's purpose in this book is 'to develop a non-systematical attempt at penetrating the Freudian building in search of its deepest roots and philosophical ancestors', refusing to dogmatize or tidy his views into a school.
With erudition and talent, Mistura, an Italian psychiatrist and psychotherapist, assumes the task of pointing out the similarities and diversities between Freud and Groddeck, and of tracing back a philosophical route which goes from Spinoza to Eraclitus, who like Freud altered profoundly the quality of human awareness and where the origins of the concept of the 'it' are to be found.
The four short essays that form the book are varied in the subject but unitary in the precise approach of research. Most of the first chapter is devoted to Groddeck, describing his social and intellectual background: it helps the reader to follow the development of Groddeck's thought, his professional and personal attitudes, and tries to assess influence of his ideas on the development of psychoanalysis. Groddeck emerges not only as a great clinician but as a profound thinker whose 'it' concept recaptured, if not preserved, the crucial elements of Spinoza's metaphysical philosophy and the significant core of Eraclitus' wisdom.
In the other three chapters the book is complemented, in a pleasant and confident style, by accurate and detailed references, in a sustained discussion of the original texts of the four authors (Freud, Groddeck, Spinoza and Eraclitus).
However, when Mistura exceeds the limits of his own competence, falling into the common mistake of attempting a psychoanalytic investigation of the Freud-Groddeck relationship, the text loses its vigour and reliability.
I think that it is very arbitrary to say that, 'Freud feels struck and reacts, but with tact, pointing out his own tendential similarity to Groddeck'. 'Groddeck uses these letters to have his own analysis with Freud, exactly as Freud had done with Fliess. However they both had to overcome the