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The article is an introduction to Ferrari's thought and is the second of a trilogy published in successive issues of the British Journal of Psychotherapy; the first is Paolo Carignani's history of ‘The body in psychoanalysis’ (BJP, 28, 3) and the third is Fausta Romano's ‘Anorexia and Bulimia: two aspects of adolescence’ (BJP, 29, 1). As a premise, it may be useful to note that Ferrari certainly was one of the most creative and thought-provoking influenced by Bion. Within the Italian psychoanalytic tradition, Bion has played a significant role even amongst those analysts who would not define themselves as strictly post-Kleinian. We can undoubtedly affirm that Bion's thinking today is like a tree with many rich branches developing over the last decades in Italy. Something similar has happened with the Winnicottian tradition, which has influenced generations of Italian thinkers and clinicians. So, approaching Ferrari through this discerning and interesting introduction by Carvalho, is like listening to a solo player in an orchestra made of many other soloists. This makes the music quite captivating, notwithstanding some inevitable dissonance.
Carvalho's article is one of those contributions which, when presented in the form of a written paper, stimulates the reader to immediately want to contact the author to start a passionate discussion of the ideas, or if given in a seminar or a conference leaves the audience disappointed when the time is up and the discussion has to be interrupted.
Thus, instead of simply summarizing the article, which would be a hard task considering the amount of theoretical elements touched upon by Carvalho, and the stimulating richness of the clinical example provided, I would rather report on, as if showing ‘photograms’ (like fragments in succession) in search of the reader's frame, some of what I regard as core elements, theoretically provoking and partly controversial.
One of the most stimulating issues touched upon in the article is the conce