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Psicoanalisi is the first psychoanalytic journal to be published in Italy since the recent war. It applies psychoanalytic knowledge to the fields of medicine, pedagogy, sociology, literature and art. Dr. G. Flescher, the editor, is a psychiatrist who is well-acquainted with psychoanalytic literature and has published several psychoanalytic articles in Switzerland. His effort, through this journal, to bring psychoanalytic concepts to the lay public and physicians is very commendable. Among the contributors are men who formerly were members of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society: C. Musatti (Professor of Psychology at the University of Milan), N. Perrotti, and G. Dalma.
The first number of the journal contains the following articles:
The 'Pessimism' of Freud and the Present Collective Psychosis. J. Flescher.
The supposed 'pessimism' of Freud, Flescher states, is based on a realistic evaluation of the aggressive trends of man which lead to fatal conflicts, demonstrated once again during the recent war with its unbelievable cruelties. Taking Freud's distinction of the two fundamental instincts and the diversion of aggressiveness (called here 'polarization') to people outside the 'psychic mass', as his point of departure, the author stresses the fact that such 'polarization' of the hostile trends implies a process of projection of the aggressive component of the superego so that the individual's own hostility is ascribed to other groups. He emphasizes the point that due to this paranoid projection, which he considers inherent in the formation of the mass, or, as he calls it, of 'psychic collectivization', demagogues have succeeded in leading the masses, through fear of 'the others', into wars and persecutions. (Typical are the accusations of Hitler against the Jews, whom he portrayed as a great danger to Germany.) Flescher sees as the only remedy for a collective-persecution psychosis an 'affective loosening' of the group by balancing the erotic and the destructive