Letter from Pavia

Pierandrea Lussana is one of the pioneers of child and adolescent psychoanalysis in Italy. He has trained many child analysts, after completing his own training in child and adolescent psychoanalysis with the Klein group of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Besides teaching in the Psychoanalytic Institute in Rome, Lussana has taught at the Milanese Center for Psychoanalysis.

In the preface of his book, LAdolescente, lo Psicanalista e l'Artista, Lussana provides an outline of the anatomy and pathology of the adolescent, whose personality is compared with that of the painting, the cinema, and the novel. The subtitle of the book, “A Binocular Vision of Adolescence,” could not be more appropriate with its clear reference to how the analyst and the artist understand the phenomenon of adolescence from different viewpoints. Lussana has moved beyond the Kleinian model and is greatly influenced by Bion.

In his introduction, “Outlines of Structure and Tension in Adolescence Viewed by the Psychoanalyst and the Artist,” the author explores in detail the connections found in five stories or films (The Adolescent by Dostoevsky, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier, Augustin by Moravia, America by Kafka, Long Live the Lady by Olmi) as well as in the framework of adolescent development following Meltzer.

The first chapter has an in-depth analysis of Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris, which moves between infantile, adult, and perverse sexuality. Lussana writes of the emotions of the two main characters in the film, showing us how the stories of both are interconnected and demonstrates how perverse behavior is effective on a sexual and mental level as a way to avoid intense depressive anxieties and persecutions. He states that “perhaps the Last Tango in Paris with its internal portrait of a girl, should keep its ambiguity, its obscure and mysterious areas, like any true work of art, and keep its doors open for future exploration.” This is something we may want from every psychoan