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Carotenuto tells us that the year 1965 marked an end and a beginning for analytical psychology in Italy. The man who had introduced it there, Ernst Bernhard, died; and translations were published of Memories, dreams, reflections, Answer to Job, and Symbols of transformation—the first of the Collected Works to appear in Italian.
In his diary for 1964, Bernhard noted his anxiety about personal tensions within the AIPA, adding that it was a primitive mistake to think of opposing viewpoints as mutually exclusive: both could be ‘right’. However, with the death of its founder came the moment of truth, and despite efforts to resolve differences in shadow terms, six members broke away in 1966 to form a new group, the CIPA.
It is a touching tribute to Bernhard that five of his closest colleagues, including a Freudian, took turns in sleeping near him in his large studio during his last illness. Marcello Pignatelli and Silvia Rosselli were of this number, and both contribute affectionate as well as admiring reminiscences of him. Pignatelli is very frank about his initial clashes with the Maestro's dominant personality, whose shadow side was commensurate with his exceptional qualities. The most frequently mentioned of these are an intense spirituality, an open and independent mind, acute insight, and ready warmth. By descent a hasiddic Jew, Bernhard loved hasiddic stories and Rosselli recounts one: on the death of a friend a Rabbi is told that it was ‘as if he passed from this room to the one adjoining’. ‘No’ answers the Rabbi, ‘rather from one corner of it to another corner.’ This seems perfectly to illustrate the way in which Bernhard accepted and met his death as truly a part of his life.