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.
As successive works by the Italian psychoanalyst Antonino Ferro have appeared in translation, English-speaking psychoanalysts have come to appreciate his distinctive voice. This voice is earthy, playful, even-tempered, and self-reflective. More than most psychoanalytic authors, Ferro gives us access both to his clinical work and to his own mental processes as he works and as he considers and reconsiders his work with the passage of time. For many of us, particularly those who struggle with more disturbed patients, Ferro's voice has become a presence in our own consulting rooms—admonishing, adjusting, and encouraging. Thus, each new work extends our acquaintance with a clinical teacher with whom we have already established a relationship. In addition, Ferro continues to elucidate, in each new work, the theoretical basis of his clinical work and its foundation in Bionian concepts and their application in a relational context. This latest volume does not disappoint in either regard.
In reading this book, we become aware—even more, I think, than with earlier volumes—of the very steady and systematic way that Ferro listens to his patients. Although he draws upon concepts that may be unfamiliar to many readers, his model is organized, comprehensive, and consistent. Drawing upon the work of Bion,1 as well as that of Baranger, Baranger, and Mom,2 Ferro links psychopathology to failure in the transformation of protoemotions into thoughts—or, in Bionian language, of beta elements into alpha elements. The failure may be global, reflecting a failure in the internalization