Discussion of “From What to How: A Conversation with Stefano Bolognini on Emotional Attunement,” by Luca Nicoli and Stefano Bolognini

I am grateful to Drs. Bolognini and Nicoli for this candid and stimulating conversation and for the invitation to look more carefully at the richness of Bolognini’s many contributions to our field. The conversation covers a wide array of Bolognini’s important and creative contributions, while it concurrently puts him in dialogue with contemporary colleagues, positioning him in relation to some of the most pressing controversies now engaging psychoanalytic scholarship and practice. In particular, I am referring to what some have referred to as an emerging paradigm change, characterized by a move from the epistemological to the ontological in psychoanalysis, one in which the how, the experience, the withness of the analyst in sharing the patient’s inner world and suffering has taken center stage in discussions of therapeutic action.

One of the most salient characteristics of Bolognini’s thinking, both in this conversation and elsewhere in his writings, is its quintessentially integrative nature, drawing from and making use of virtually every major psychoanalytic theory, in several languages and multiple geographical locations, while tactfully calling out the pitfalls of an overreliance on any single theory or model scene. This theme of integration is manifest in his emphasis on empathy and the interpsychic, as well as intrapsychically in his emphasis on a more integrative relationship between ego and self,

and between understanding and experience. The theme of integration also permeates his nuanced view of the relationship of the what to the how.

Psychoanalysis begins with the ability of the analyst to tune in to the patient, just as Nicoli tunes in to Bolognini in his initial remarks about dogs. In a similar manner, Bolognini tunes