Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica

The Italian Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy was founded in 1980 from the merging of two existing minor psychotherapy centres. The SIPP is rooted in Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory and technique, and the original members were psychotherapists who had been analysed by members of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. Gradually, the SIPP became a training organisation for psychoanalytic psychotherapists, training which is connected with La Sapienza University in Rome. The four-year training consists of a personal analysis/therapy, supervised psychotherapeutic work, and seminars. At the beginning of 1994, they published the first issue of their journal called Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica. To quote from the editorial, the journal hopes to represent

…‘a new space for discussion and debate, a new voice within the complex panorama of psychotherapeutic culture and practice’.

The journal aims to publish original clinical papers which should foster a constructive dialogue within the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In its editorial, Capogrosse-Guarana stresses the need for our profession to keep up with a changing society, already so different from the one which saw the birth of psychoanalysis. He hopes that psychoanalytic psychotherapy will develop in a way that will enable therapists to respond adequately to the changing needs of patients.

The first article, by Favaretti-Camposampiero, attempts to outline some trends present in the history of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Some of the concepts which are examined happen to have been the central theme of the SIPP congresses in the last few years. Therefore a sense of the most recent history and theoretical/clinical preoccupations of the Society is conveyed. The article is very ambitious as it ranges widely over concepts such as need and desire, concrete and symbolic, and touches on issues such as the treatment of patients with erotised transferences and patients with narcissistic and borderline persona