‘PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A JOURNEY’: A CLINICAL METHOD FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AT UNIVERSITY*

There is widespread consensus that very few works in psychoanalytic literature have addressed the subject of the transmission of psychoanalysis in the academia (Eifermann, 1993; Burstein, Gillian, 1997). It is also a well-known fact that equally few writings engage in the reading of Freud's works with undergraduate and postgraduate students (Auchincloss, Kravis, 2000). This lacuna is possibly connected with Freud's marked ambivalence towards the academic world and the way his stance has influenced us (Shengold, 1979). In this paper I aim to discuss how, in

a general climate of ‘crisis’ of our discipline, psychoanalysis can be transmitted to today's young generation, in order to arouse and develop their sustained interest. Before proceeding to describe in detail the specific methodology I have adopted (in fact, I will do this only at the end of the paper), I shall first examine Freud's ideas on this topic, outlined in his 1938 work Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis. Only after that, I will turn to the development of my personal approach to teaching, as well as my reasons for choosing this, and not other methods, both in a Tavistock-style school of child psychotherapy and in my university courses with final-year and specialisation students of Clinical Psychology.

To Whom Do Resistances Towards the Teaching of Psychoanalysis At University Actually Belong?

In his brief, unfinished writing mentioned above (Freud, 1938), Freud argues that psychoanalysis can be taught to an “uninstructed public” (Freud, 1938, p. 281) in two ways, which he terms ‘dogmatic’ and ‘genetic’. He then goes on to say that, as far as he is concerned, he does not privilege one way in particular, but alternatively resorts to either in different situations. However, after a few lines he also adds that, while the ‘dogmatic’ method is possibly more liable to criticism and objections from the public because of the innovative quality of psychoanalytical hypotheses and their frequent departures from common sense mentality, it also undoubtedly stands out as a more impressive, powerful and attractive approach than the ‘genetic’ one.

Unlike Freud – whose apparent preference, as I shall illustrate below, is by no means consistent throughout his works – since the very beginning of my academic career I have mainly (albeit not exclusively) opted for a ‘historic-genetic’ type of approach.1 I wish to stress that, compared to that of Freud and other analysts – e.g. Meltzer (1978) –, my understanding of this methodological category entails a slightly broader and

somewhat more idiosyncratic significance. In connection to this, while I shall explain what this difference consists of further on in my argument, I point out from the outset that ever since I started to address this issue I have immediately linked the ‘historic-genetic’ perspective to Freud's increasing ability to listen and identify with the other and his/her vicissitudes. Moreover, my choice of this specific heuristic standpoint was determined not only by my individual penchant and personal preferences, but also by the fact that I had been wondering for a long time (and with increasing awareness) about how psychoanalysis could be transmitted in a persuasive fashion to undergraduates, and more generally to students who are not yet expert in the field.

At the time when I made my choice, the atmosphere surrounding psychoanalysis was very different from the current climate. At the end of the 1970s, and even more conspicuously in the early 1980s, our discipline was in full bloom, at least in Italy, and featuring increasingly in university curricula across the country, both in medicine and in the humanities. However, considering how the overall attitude towards psychoanalysis in the world of culture and academia alike has now turned into its opposite (to the extent that students and potential IPA candidates are often actively discouraged from pursuing its study, just as their academic tutors are dissuaded from teaching it), it seems to me that such a choice is all the more relevant today. In fact, it is in view of this undeniable change of attitude that, as the Chair for Europe of the IPA Committee 'Psychoanalysis and University', I proposed the title 'The Transmission of Psychoanalysis: Which Psychoanalysis, Which Way of Transmitting it' for the (by now well-established) panel on psychoanalysis and academia at the EFP Conference held in Brussels in 2009. In doing so, I sought to stimulate a more substantial reflection on this subject in our community – or, at least, among those of us wishing psychoanalysis to survive inside academia. (To be sure, while I would hope that all of us shared such a wish, I am well aware that not everyone concurs with me on this issue). I drew the panelists' attention to three main points. First, how can we get young people more interested in psychoanalysis? Then, as we introduce and discuss psychoanalysis with our students today, what are the aspects in our approach that can make a difference and have a real impact by making their learning process engaging and meaningful? Finally, what made us become progressively less appealing, welcome and popular in our culture? In that context, I also stressed the importance of addressing these questions adopting a more self-critical

stance towards our established teaching styles and our standard modes of transmitting psychoanalysis. For instance, as far as university teaching is concerned, I suggested that a first, necessary step would be that of putting aside (at least pro tempore) some of the most obsolete-sounding psychoanalytic commonplaces – including, to name one, the idea that being unpopular, unwelcome and unappealing is part of the very essence of psychoanalysis, as several of its core notions such as the unconscious would naturally elicit ‘resistances’.

This commonplace requires first and foremost to take into account that, as we have learnt from our clinical practice, ‘resistances’ are very often caused by the partners (i.e. the analysts and, in this case, the teachers) with which one (i.e. patients or students) interacts. In addition, while such a stance was realistic in Freud's time, today it hints at a rather omnipotent and manic notion of psychoanalysis, characterized by a lack of confidence, fear of engaging with perspectives and ideas different from ours, and a sort of endogamous inclination which often develops as idleness in our thinking and an overall narrow-mindedness. It is in commenting on this set of attitudes that an eminent historian of psychoanalysis has recently highlighted how our group often ends up looking like an ‘insecure Narcissus’ and ‘incestuous Oedipus’ rather than researchers and ‘explorers of science’ (Rudnytsky, 2007).

After all, more than one-hundred years have passed since the birth of psychoanalysis and there is no longer any reason, now, why we should not accept with some modesty that (like for all the other disciplines) it is inevitable, as time goes by, to undergo changes, even radical ones – which sometimes, when needed, must not be delayed but swiftly enforced. If we are not able to accept this, we truly (and regrettably) risk becoming a little ‘bizarre’ and ‘extravagant’. And this will be so not because we talk about unprecedented and original ideas which totally transcend any common sense and challenge, as Freud wrote, the ‘ordinary modes of thought’ (Freud 1938, p. 282), but rather it will happen because, by neglecting other people's observations and criticism, we may end up insulting their intelligence and sensitivity.

In this respect, ten years ago Ferro (2000) warned us with ironic (and responsible) remarks about our inclination to present ourselves to the outside world as if we were ‘animals in a paleontological zoo, i.e. the kind of remote ancestors of today's species which people usually look at in wonder and amazement in natural history museums’. In turn, Kernberg (2002) pointed out along these lines and quite straightforwardly that the

strongest resistances preventing the academic interest in psychoanalysis to be revived do not actually originate from the universities or society in general, but from the psychoanalytic community itself. Indeed, the latter has often shown and still shows a clear tendency to ‘square up’ against whatever comes from the non-psychoanalytic scientific community and is alternative to our practice and beliefs.

The ‘Historic-Genetic’ Approach

I shall now proceed to discuss my preferred approach, that is, the ‘genetic’ or ‘historic-genetic’ one. At some point in my personal and professional itinerary, I started referring to it in terms of a ‘journey’, as this word (in Italian: “percorso”) seemed to me to convey the sense of a closer connection with people's lives and humanity (Borgogno, 1999, 2007). When we talk to students, showing our closeness to the existential quandaries and the personal vicissitudes of individuals is definitely a crucial factor if we are to make what we say stimulating and ‘intriguing’ (Auchincloss, Kravis, 2000; Blass, 2001). Incidentally, such an attitude on our part can generate – in Ferenczi's words (1913, 1924a) – the profound ‘conviction’ originating from 'feeling' and 'experiencing', rather than from astonishing and forestalling 'insights' – which, as is well known, may bring about defensive barriers and feelings of persecution in place of progress and confidence towards what is new and not yet thinkable. On the one hand, this type of negative reaction is triggered when, taking the latter approach, we basically pretend to be authoritative but forget to ask ourselves what it is that actually produces and develops the sense of authoritativeness. On the other hand, in doing so, we totally contradict one of the core principles of the psychoanalytic method – a principle effectively summarized by Ogden (2006), who along the lines of Bion's phrase 'without memory and desire' reminded us that ‘teaching psychoanalysis is a paradoxical affair: someone who is supposed to know teaches someone who wants to know what it means not to know’ (p. 1083).

The issues I am addressing here are all the more significant if one considers that, at the time they attend our courses, our students are usually at a stage in their lives which – as the processes of separation and loss connected with the complete abandonment of childhood are worked through – revolves mainly around entering the adult world (a complex, ambiguous, and mysterious reality) and their search for identity (above all personal, but also professional). Thus, as pointed out also by other colleagues who have included the reading of Freud in

their teaching programs (not only at university),2 students are naturally more engaged when we present the events surrounding the discovery and the making of psychoanalysis focusing on Freud not only as a scientist, but as a man (therefore, taking into account his distinctive emotional and cognitive features). Students can be even more stimulated if, as we cover the early period of psychoanalysis, we focus on a young man who, engaged in his scientific and intellectual enterprise, finds himself – like post-adolescents – ‘alone and struggling with the establishment and the world’, reflecting on the big and small facts of everyday life (both professional and private) and on the future awaiting him, thus achieving psychic consolidation via a dialectic interplay of innovation and tradition, and amidst personal ambitions, uncertainties and fears.

Let us now move on more directly to the question of what Freud meant by ‘genetic approach’. He conceived it mainly in terms of having readers go through and ‘re-experience’ the whole process of the making of the core tenets of psychoanalysis. In this way, they would have the opportunity to take part in the different stages of Freud's development of a new theory and a new method originating from observations and thoughts which had initially been unconscious. At the same time, they would face the same doubts and anxieties he himself had to acknowledge and overcome with great effort as he identified with other people's emotional vicissitudes.

In other words, the ‘genetic’ approach means leading students through the same scientific and personal ‘journey’ (full of ‘steps forward’, ‘steps backwards’, ‘trials’ and 'errors') Freud had taken in his slow process of discovery of the unconscious and his own psyche and during the equally slow construction of psychoanalysis. It is a journey which – with direct reference to the process of individual growth, in this case that of our students – I have 'translated' in terms of inviting students to ‘identify imaginatively’ with Freud and his patients as they proceed in the journey they need to take (now and in the future) in order to be (and become) clinical psychologists – and one day, possibly, psychotherapists or psychoanalysts.

As I have already stated, though, at the time he wrote Some Elementary Lessons in Psycho-Analysis (1938) Freud maintained that this teaching method was not the one bound to be successful. Rather, he thought

the odds were with the ‘dogmatic’ approach – which, in his view, by illustrating all the discoveries on which psychoanalysis is grounded ‘one by one’, was most likely to impress and ‘surprise’ readers (or listeners) more than any other method, due to the subversive and uncanny nature of the set of notions he had conceived.

Overall, as we know, Freud believed that university classrooms were not the place where the teaching of psychoanalysis could be actually imparted. He was convinced that psychoanalysis could be learnt ‘properly’ only in the analyst's office through a personal experience of treatment. Nevertheless, I say again, in addressing the issue of expounding his theories to others, he never failed to emphasise the importance of ‘bearing in mind’ the needs of his interlocutors (Freud, 1932, p. 5). He thus stressed how an effective transmission of knowledge and ideas can be achieved not by resorting to dogmatic and authoritarian approaches but, on the contrary, primarily when the listener is able to connect what is said by the teacher with his own emotional experience of himself and of the other (see Freud's 1916 Introduction to Psychoanalysis, and particularly James Strachey's introduction to this writing in the Standard Edition).

Anyhow, while back in Freud's days the dogmatic method was in many respects a justified and viable option, recommending it as the preferred teaching practice today results in a different outcome. Indeed, presenting psychoanalysis as a form of knowledge which has reached its goals completely and with unquestionable clarity sometimes turns out to be a counterproductive teaching strategy. This is especially true if, in doing so, we also fail to examine each of its tenets in the light of the mainstream scholarship accepted by Freud's contemporaries and of our own current scientific and clinical paradigms (including, of course, non-psychoanalytical ones).3 Such an approach makes us look somewhat like those aristocrats who keep on believing and pretending to be noble, thinking that their status is granted to them only by birthright and because of their origins and that they do not need to continuously and painstakingly strive to conquer it. Furthermore, one should consider that, since its creation, psychoanalysis has developed and diversified in so many different currents that it is now no longer possible (not even if

one wanted to do so!) to present it, trimmed down to the Freudian works and little more, as a coherent whole, and thus teach it moving away from the path which psychoanalysis itself established in accordance with the principles of its method (Binder, 2007).

Therefore, due to the reasons I have outlined so far, I do not believe that students today would (and should) settle for a description of psychoanalysis which takes its value and greatness for granted. On the contrary, in my view the latter will emerge much more prominently if we aim to provide in our lectures a deeper understanding of where and how the Freudian (and post-Freudian) discoveries originated. If our expositions are to impress and appeal to students, they should first and foremost delineate the context in which such discoveries emerged in Freud's mind – i.e. both the broad scientific, philosophical, social framework and the specific circumstances of his private life. They should highlight in what respects he stuck to the conventional way of thinking of his age, and at the same time emphasise how and when his free spirit enabled him to disentangle himself from mainstream opinions and acquire a new perspective on the nature of human beings, the complexity of life and the suffering connected with it. In this respect, Auchincloss argued in 1996 from a comparable standpoint that ‘we should encourage our students to approach every psychoanalytic idea with questions about what is at stake intellectually in the creation of the idea; what intellectual problems presented by observable phenomena are being addressed; what problems are created; what critics of the idea will say about its weaknesses; what the setting is in which this idea was created; what the developmental history of the idea is in terms of the analytic tradition and in terms of ongoing debate about the issues involved […]; what the extra-analytic influences are on the development of the idea in terms of theories about psychology, science, mankind etc. abroad in the surrounding culture; and so on’ (Auchincloss, 1996, p. 399).

While Freud was certainly a genius, there is no question that his subjectivity (like everyone else's) was unavoidably tied to the culture and the mentality of his age – just as he was equally constrained by the limitations of his own character and those of the family environment in which he had been raised. (It is worth noting that, although my focus here is narrowed exclusively on Freud, the same considerations apply to all the great psychoanalysts who came after him). To my mind, Freud's journey will come across as much more surprising and rewarding if, in teaching his thought to students, we also look at the developments

that took place in philosophy and psychiatry (at least, in the areas he explored) throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as well as at the debates characterising the same disciplines in his day and age. To put it otherwise, the transmission of Freud's thought will become considerably more captivating if our narration focuses on the intellectual, moral, and scientific milieu that inspired his work and ideas, alongside his own cultural background and the books he had, as it were, ‘on his desk’. Even more importantly, our account should endeavour to convey the overall feel and atmosphere permeating the clinics, hospitals and doctors' surgeries Freud used to visit, thus allowing one to get more closely in touch with the values, hopes, beliefs, concerns, and vulnerability which by and large informed the medical doctors' and soul healers' everyday acquaintance with illness and health at that time.4

For instance, there can be no doubt that, the more clearly we illustrate the set of ideas and the irrationalism(s) providing the background to the birth of Freudian concepts, the more aware our students will become of how brave Freud's choices and opinions on the phenomena he studied actually were. In particular, they may come to admire the courage he showed when, challenging a mainstream attitude in his profession, he chose not to be content with the results obtained with suggestion and hypnosis and instead strove to find out the origin of what makes one ‘get sick’ or ‘heal up’. Accordingly, they may also appreciate his constant, tireless exploration of the various relational-transferential features in the relationship between doctor and patient,5 as well as – to mention just one of the crucial leaps forward he made – his unremitting efforts to ‘leaven’ on a metaphoric and symbolic level the anatomic-physiological clinical (and discursive) mindset dominant in the years across the turn of the century and, in doing so, shift to (and address on) a psychic level the sense and the meaning of the rather primitive hygienic and prophylactic practices used to deal with (and ultimately ‘repress‘) sexuality and the terror of it.6

Similarly, students will be greatly benefited if we equip them with cultural, epistemological and affective tools allowing them to understand to what extent Freud's overall intellectual and scientific itinerary was tightly intertwined with the specific nature of his personality and the ways in which this had been shaped by the psychic and ‘moral’ qualities of the restricted family environment where he grew up (Krüll, 1979; Gay, 1988; Sprengnether, 1990; D.P. Margolis, 1996). This would significantly increase their awareness of the close connection between the individual discoveries and the different stages in the life of an author – a crucial link between life and psychoanalysis which Freud himself used in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and in An Autobiographical Study (1924), and one that I have examined in my book Psychoanalysis as a Journey (1999) highlighting the ‘intimate bond’ between the emergence of a number of core tenets of his theoretical model and what he was going through in his personal life at the time he conceived them (which includes the achievements in terms of the constitution of himself he obtained with the help of self-analysis).

Psychoanalysis as a ‘Journey‘

At this point, I should like to go into more detail (albeit succinctly) about my notion of ‘journey’ and what I intend by it.7 I shall start doing this by looking back to the early 1980s, when Livia Di Cagno, then Chair of Child Neuropsychiatry in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Turin, invited me to take part in the planning and creation of a new, Tavistock-style training school of child psychotherapy named A.S.A.R.N.I.A. (Borgogno, 2009).8 It is in that particular circumstance that, following Meltzer's lead, I designed my psychoanalytic theory course with a syllabus focusing on the reading of Freud, Klein and Bion in the first, second and third year respectively (the entire degree lasted five years). However, while Meltzer recommended readers to identify in the texts the passages where the discovery emerged 'of new realms

of phenomena, generating in turn new models of the mind, which then modify [the] method etc…' (Meltzer, 1978, p. 3), I soon realised that my understanding of the 'journey' differed from his in many important ways. Basically, I asked students to read and discuss Freud's clinical cases as if they were a clinical report or the account of an observation experience and, in doing so, to focus not only on the patient's contribution to the analytic process, but also on that of the analyst. From such a standpoint, they could effectively ‘monitor’ the different stages of Freud's growth as both a researcher and an analyst.

Thus, while Meltzer's readings emphasised Freud's progress in identifying the different types of psychopathology and the verbal communications of the patients, I underlined to students that the main goal of our ‘work together’ would be the observation of the relationship between patient and analyst – and, more specifically, of the affects, states of mind, dilemmas and difficulties Freud went through as a therapist, as he offered his listening and a space for dialogue to his patients. This kind of observation, I went on to argue, would allow one to appreciate how Freud, by reflecting on the ongoing clinical situations with patients and the quality of his own analytical attitude (which, at least initially, often seemed to elude his awareness), gradually came to understand something about his patients and his relationships with them. Such a perspective would also illuminate the extent to which Freud's understanding of his patients originated from his own feelings and thoughts about them, as well as (more often) from his immediate reactive response to them, and how only subsequently did he manage to modulate and weigh these feelings, thoughts and reactive responses choosing the words that best favoured progress in each treatment. A relevant example of this can be found as early as in the case of “Little Hans” (Borgogno, 1999, 2011), where Freud, following this approach, attained an analytical stance very similar to the one defined ‘listening to listening’ by Faimberg (1981) – a stance which Freud managed to reach only when, becoming able to take the role of supervisor alongside that of therapist, he acquired a mental function allowing him to be immersed in the experience with the patient while, simultaneously, distancing himself from it by means of an increased ability of self-observation combined with the reflection on the inter-intra-psychic events involved in the ongoing interaction of the analytic couple.

I therefore started to realise that, in my reading groups on Freud, Klein, and Bion at A.S.A.R.N.I.A. as well as, later on, in my university

courses, I was in fact adopting a number of features of Bick's method of infant observation. From that basis, I encouraged the participants in my groups to carry out a twofold operation. On the one hand, they had to identify simultaneously (though, of course, taking into account the obvious differences) with both Freud and his patients, trying to imagine what each of them was feeling at a given time and what triggered their respective affective responses. On the other hand (and at the same time), they had to keep track of the complex interplay of emotional and identificatory developments which are under way at all times in a treatment. In this regard, I used to stress how it is nearly always necessary to ‘act a little’ if we are to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on in the relationship with our patients. I also added that, after all, only through a bit of ‘enactment’ (though I did not call it this way back then) was Freud himself able to take – in après-coup – further steps forward in terms of his awareness of what was going on. This advance, it should be noted, was useful as much for his patients as for himself. First of all, it brought about new theoretical acquisitions on mental functioning and psychopathology which Freud might decide to communicate to patients through interpretations. Second, and crucially, it led him to insights into his own psychoanalytical attitude that increasingly enabled him to achieve the degree of distance, abstinence, and separateness the analyst needs in order to ‘hold the other’ without imposing on him his own theories or something which pertains to himself rather than the patient he is trying to help.

In point of fact, if Freud himself realised rather quickly that, so to say, ‘the tongue always turns to the aching tooth’ (both the analyst's and the patient's one), it took him more time and experience to understand that – as I put it paraphrasing a well-known Italian proverb – ‘there is a sea of difference between merely talking about something and operating in a truly analytical way based on an authentic thinking’. I mean to suggest that in this way Freud discovered that the journey leading the unconscious to awareness, just like the working through which enables one to make new theoretical acquisitions one's own and use them effectively with patients, are both extremely long processes. In the face of this discovery, we (and our students) cannot but prepare ourselves to accept that, inevitably, ‘we start from afar’ (Borgogno, 2007), and that there are no shortcuts. Quite simply, in pursuing our project to become clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, we have to humbly arm ourselves with a lot of patience and determination, just as Freud did – whose

journey, it is worth recalling, is also characterised by occasional ‘steps back’ and manic ‘forward thrusts’.

While in some respects such a realisation is bound to alarm students, it also can help them to recognize and deal with the fact that ‘they still have a long way to go’ as an essential and unavoidable stage of their personal and professional growth (an aspect that, as it happens, draws them closer to their patients). Moreover, it may make it easier for them to understand that the journey, no matter where one's starting point is, is itself the tool which ultimately produces change and transformations (of course, as long as one is prepared to acknowledge its ‘ups and downs’ and overall complexity, and to think critically upon it).

Finally, I wish to add that, in leading the A.S.A.R.N.I.A. reading groups, my approach was significantly influenced by Heimann's seminal 1949 paper on countertransference. As is well known, Heimann (1949) argued that Freud's understanding of the functioning of ‘resistance’ and ‘repression’ was produced primarily by his working through on a constant basis both his affective response to the contact with hysterical patients and the ensuing actions that characterised his behaviour with them. She went on to say that, in his effort to help those patients to remember some of their most painful forgotten memories, Freud felt prompted to press his hands on their foreheads, telling them repeatedly and confidently that in the end they would indeed remember; thus, while working through what he was doing (his affective response, i.e. his countertransference), he clearly took a step backwards, thus coming to recognize how an ‘intrapsychic’ agent (i.e. repression) preventing the hysterical patients to remember painful and conflictual events of their lives was actually emerging on ‘the interpersonal level’ as a disruption in the analytic interaction and communication (i.e. resistance) (Heimann, 1949, in 1989, p. 78).

So, in brief, what happened in the A.S.A.R.N.I.A. reading groups? Basically – just like Freud in his clinical journey as described by Heimann – my students began to consider their emotional response to the observations they carried out, their work with children and adolescents, and their reading of Freud and other important authors as crucial elements they had to refer to as they started to identify the psychic dynamics characterizing the clinical situations they were involved in (or studied). That is to say, little by little they learnt to dwell on their private feelings and on the thoughts crossing their minds in those circumstances, experiencing first hand that containing them (i.e. not

reacting immediately, and waiting patiently) proved extremely beneficial to them in terms of the knowledge they acquired. In this way, they could also learn how to use such feelings and thoughts in order to grasp the different types of unconscious relationship and functioning operating in themselves as well as in the persons and characters with which they happened to work.

Transmitting One of the Most Noble Aspects of the Psychoanalytical Method: The Constant Process of Learning from Oneself, from the Relationship with Patients and From One's Own Emotional Experience

In conclusion, taking this direction from a certain point onwards also in the context of my university courses in clinical psychology (in the last years of a five-year degree course in Clinical and Community Psychology, and even more so in the five-year Specialisation in Clinical Psychology) where workshops on the study of Freud and his clinical cases were always included,9 I gradually came to realise that I was conveying in my teaching of psychoanalysis not so much the content of its core notions, their evolution and the way they could be applied (like other teachers and colleagues prefer to do also due to the particular necessities of the academic environment in which they work) but what I considered to be the essence of its method: the constant learning from oneself, the analytic relationship, and one's personal emotional experience. What was more, by helping students to explore directly and personally Freud's progression (and then that of Klein and Bion, for those who continued their studies at the postgraduate School of Specialisation), and by encouraging them at the same time to compare what they were learning from their reading and what they were experiencing during their first, shaky steps taken during their practical experience,10 I became ever more aware of the fact that I was working fundamentally (by means of ‘suggestion of courage’ rather than ‘suggestion of content’, Ferenczi, 1931; 1932) in order for them to make these great masters their close and familiar ‘journey companions’ (Fogel, Glick, 1991; Auchincloss, Michels, 2003).11 And that perhaps, over

As my experience has taught me, the two different types of insight I have illustrated here – spurred on by the reading of Freud and by reflecting on their fledgling clinical practice following the method I have indicated – can emotionally bring the student closer to his own particular history and the deep roots of his vocation to become a therapist, as well as to the fact that, when one is personally involved, the eyes and ears of others are indispensable in order to really open up one's heart and intellective scope, so as to give rise to the idea that, sooner or later, one will have to become committed to a journey of personal growth together with a therapist or a psychoanalyst. This result can also be found in the personal experiences of the colleagues I mentioned above, who make students read Freud and the classics in groups, using methods that are in part similar to mine and in part dissimilar. They agree that students do seem to have a greater level of awareness at the end of their courses which is not simply of a theoretical nature but involves both the personal problems that have led them to choose to study the ‘psy-disciplines’ and the importance of the relational and Oedipal ties that pass through their lives. In addition, they also come to acknowledge how difficult it is to get out of the infantile universe, and how important the presence of a ‘third’ is both in terms of cognitive evolution and in the access to a mental dimension that takes others into account, overcoming individual narcissism and the attraction exerted by social conformism (Eifermann, 1993; Auchincloss, Kravis, 2000; Blass, 2001; Ferraro, 2008).12

In short, the main features of the transmission method of psychoanalysis I have outlined in this paper could be summed up in the following two objectives. The first is that of encouraging our students to idiosyncratically meet a Freud who is a curious researcher more “within their reach”, and who gains authority by being and showing himself to be willing (especially at the beginning of his journey towards and within psychoanalysis) to open up and give way to the polyphonic listening to the yet unknown voices and thoughts of others and of himself (the “unexpected guest”, as he advised Ferenczi in a letter on 31 July 1915 [Freud, Ferenczi, 1914–1919]), and obviously to the unforeseen and often unexpected reasons that the actual course of events and time invariably impose on any undertaking in the quest for knowledge. The second is to turn the student into an active protagonist in the teaching and learning process, in so far as he is placed within a didactic context that does not force him to ‘make leaps in understanding’ and does not entail the strong presence of an ‘intermediary (Freud, but also the teacher) who is deemed an expert and thoroughly competent’, but instead relies upon – as Canestri (2003) maintains, echoing Vygotsky – the ‘zone of proximal development’ which proves to be an excellent means of starting up the “transition” from the awareness of himself and his life the student already has (albeit at a unconscious and preconscious level) to the process of slowly building up and absorbing a more elevated forma mentis which previously had not been accessible nor even reachable.

Although the literature currently available on this subject is rather scarce, the majority of the existing studies agree on the positive

outcomes of the reading of Freud ‘on the journey’: a method which, all considered, is more likely than other approaches to succeed in making the fundamental works of psychoanalysis true classics that are alive and inspirational. In this perspective, these texts are “classics” (Calvino, 1981) not for their ideas – which invariably grow old, lose significance and need to be updated in order to give way to the ideas of the new generations – but on the basis of a shared “personalised cognitive path” taken in small groups and enriched both through the exchange of information and ideas with peers and with the help of an older (and possibly not too assertive) journey companion with a facilitating role (Fogel, Glick, 1991, pg. 422). It is a reading path which, as well as making personal viewpoints broader and more accessible, and the viewpoints of others less ‘alien’ (though at first they may seem senseless, wrong and obscure), would enable Freud and the most significant authors in our field to maintain even now their role of valid and reliable mentors in each student's training process.

Having reached this point, before moving on to the methodological appendix where I will provide greater detail regarding the structure, objectives and results of my teaching experience, I feel the need to clarify that – in accordance with Freud's 1918 On the Teaching of Psycho-Analysis in Universities (p. 35) – one of the core principles lying at the basis of my argument is that I do not think in the slightest that the didactic process I propose will cover everything that can be done to teach young people approaching our field what psychoanalysis actually is. Neither do I consider it to be the best possible way to guide students towards our way of thinking and working. Nevertheless, I do feel that (apart from the limitations it has, just like any other method) it is indeed a valid tool to ‘awaken’ and ‘not to lull’ (Ferenczi, 1924b) the students on the subject of what, in my opinion, is one of the key factors characterising the essence of psychoanalysis – here clearly I refer to the students of psychology, but the same consideration may also apply to those of medicine, as long as they have already been provided with an appropriate humus allowing them to accept this type of transmission. It goes without saying that all those who wish to continue their clinical studies after their degree with a specialisation in psychotherapy will need to become familiar at a much higher level not only with psychoanalysis and its several currents of thought, but also with the other psychotherapeutic theories and techniques and their different stances on both the ordinary development of the mind and psychopathology. Likewise, they should become capable of engaging with the scientific-professional community,

being able – because they have been trained to research in the context of an ad hoc training programme – to present to colleagues the results of their treatments and the implications and impact of their own theoretical affirmations. Should they then wish to pursue an IPA psychoanalytical training, they will also need on the one hand to engage for years (i.e. much more than students of clinical psychology with different theoretical approaches) in weekly discussions on at least two patients with more than one supervisor, on the other hand to undertake the long journey of personal analysis which is paramount for all those who want to get in touch with their personal suffering and consequently with the roots of their vocation to help others in their pain.

Methodological Appendix on the Type of Academic Teaching Offered to Post-Graduates and Students Enrolled in Specialisation Courses: Structure, Aims and Results

Following the more general considerations I have outlined, I would now like to provide more information regarding the specific setting in which the method of transmission of psychoanalysis I have started up at university is placed, as well as the objectives of the experience I propose and the results I feel this can help us achieve.

While the students in a Tavistock-style school like the A.S.A.R.N.I.A., after a selection process where their motivations and personality traits are examined, enrol in the school with a full knowledge of its curriculum (which has a well-defined, standard structure and is carried out in practically the same way all over the world: for this reason, here I take for granted that readers are familiar with it), my university students, especially at the MA in Clinical and Community Psychology (the last two years of the whole degree), find themselves facing a different situation. Whereas those attending the five-year School of Specialisation in Clinical Psychology are closer in age (30-40 years old) to the A.S.A.R.N.I.A. students, with whom they also share a fully-developed interest in psychoanalysis, the post-graduates (22-30 years old) are still at a stage when they need to make a definitive choice regarding the theoretical model they feel is most suitable for them and decide on which topic they will work on for their final dissertation.

Another difference with A.S.A.R.N.I.A. is the overall didactic context in which my university teaching (consisting mainly in lectures and reading workshops on the classics of psychoanalysis) is placed. This framework is not homogeneous and always includes (though less so in the School of

Specialisation, which is already by and large psychoanalytically-oriented) several other modules taught by academic tutors with approaches ranging from psychodynamic-psychoanalytic to cognitive and systemic-relational, and focusing on the theory of the mind and development, diagnosis and psychopathology.

Such a particularity, which obviously influences the intensity and depth of the experience I offer in each of the three situations I am describing, also entails that the number of students attending the workshops and my lectures varies depending on the course. For instance, in contrast with A.S.A.R.N.I.A. and the School of Specialisation (where all the students come to my classes), at the MA attendance is not compulsory and the audience only includes those who freely decide to participate in the ‘reading Freud groups’ – which take place in the first two years on a weekly basis and continue, for those who go on to do the specialisation, for three of the next five years, focusing on other writers such as Klein, Bion, Ferenczi and Winnicott. In the past five years, usually 60% of the people who have attended my MA courses have enrolled in the reading workshops, divided into three or four groups of fifteen participants, depending on the year. They were guided not only by me but also by university researchers or recently trained analysts committed to this way of transmitting psychoanalysis. There is also a relatively small percentage of participants who have dropped out of the workshops in itinere (no more than 5%, and the reason is almost always due to the workload involved).

Each reading session lasts one and a half hours and takes place throughout my academic semester. Students are expected to read on their own and in chronological progression (“on the journey”) works by the aforementioned authors (Freud, Klein, Bion, Ferenczi and Winnicott) and then write two summaries for each of them. Their coursework is then read and debated in group, adding comments, questions and free associations, as well as resorting, if necessary, to a collective reading of the passages referred to. As I have previously underlined, the students are invited to suspend their critical judgement when reading and debating, avoiding to ask themselves questions regarding the validity of the theories and ideas found in the texts and their current significance (this approach, i.e. questioning the validity of the theories and ideas, is already carried out by other tutors at the university where I teach).13 Furthermore, and

primarily, they have the task of listening with great care and all their sensitivity to what they have read, and then sharing their impressions with peers and tutors – which in fact is not so different from what they are requested to do in their observational and clinical experiences during their training and residencies (these are also presented and discussed in my classes later on during the course). This listening activity, which is focused on the students putting themselves both in Freud's shoes (and then Klein's or other authors') and in those of his patients, must be channelled towards following step by step analyst and patient throughout their dialogue and in the various circumstances and events of their encounters and clinical interaction; in doing so, students must aim both to pay particular attention to the feelings, anxieties, states of mind, desires and expectations emerging in the passages they have read or in themselves as they were reading them, and verbalise the latter, expressing the reasons why they felt and thought one thing rather than another.

Alongside this experience of group readings, and more or less at the same time, the students also receive in my lectures structured notes and presentations on the historical-cultural context and private life events of each author – i.e. on the context in which the hypotheses and clinical phenomena illustrated in the works they have just read originated. Besides, they are encouraged – if they so wish, which increasingly happens over the academic year – to cooperate in the lectures: in brief, as I introduce and comment on the personal, historical and cultural roots of each author's psychoanalytical work, students give their own contribution by sharing images, ideas, and fragments of thoughts which come to their minds in that very moment or by asking questions.

As I have already stated, students end up making increasing use of this ‘listening method’ in the concurrent discussion on their clinical material, which constitutes another part of my course. It is a discussion that, just like the reading of the psychoanalytical texts, is based on a tactful identification with each member of the session or of the work situation under scrutiny, and which is mainly focused on their interventions and on my own general remarks on them – remarks in which I try to give a theoretical or conceptual name to the relevant analytical facts that

arise, on one side by examining such material in more detail in terms of diagnosis, psychopathology or the specific relational features that may have emerged, on the other by comparing it with other clinical vicissitudes of mine or involving cases that the students themselves have discussed during previous lessons.

To bring my argument to conclusion, I shall now deal with the results which I have to a certain extent already commented on above. Quite simply, I wish to say that they are on the whole satisfactory, considering both the opinions expressed in the anonymous standard feedback forms supplied by the university to assess the various aspects of the course (methods used, content, and the teachers' relational style) and the messages left by the students in a “pigeonhole” which I hung in our classroom14 – as well as in view of what the students who have attended my reading workshops go on to do. While such a positive feedback emerges clearly from the overall emotional atmosphere that can be perceived during the classes and within the groups, I also infer it from the distinct improvement in Freud's image even in those students who are more definitely oriented towards cognitivism (which has traditionally portrayed Freud as old, exceedingly assertive, absurd, and anti-scientific). In addition, I deduce it from the fact that numerous students observe that they are more freely able to integrate thoughts, affects and imagination in their studies and in the first stages of their clinical practice as well as in their relationships with psychoanalytical theory, which turns out to be more alive and accessible than they had previously thought. It is then worth noting how students go so far as to state that they are more capable of looking at themselves as both individuals and neo-psychologists or therapists, feeling they have increased their space for ‘guts and thought’ (a student's comment) to house within themselves the complexities of work and life: some of them are now IPA associate members or candidates and many of them have completed, or are currently undergoing a personal analysis. Regarding the second point, the number of students asking to work on a degree thesis on psychoanalytical research (historical, conceptual and empirical) with my collaborators and I has been constant overall. The number of enrolments in the School of Specialisation has been and remains stable, as is the interest in pursuing a PhD in the clinical psychology section of the Postgraduate School

in Human Sciences in which I work. Furthermore, an association of ex-students has been set up in which they can continue to make use of the reading and discussion method they became acquainted with during my courses and, in collaboration with the School of Specialisation and the Postgraduate School (PhD), host Italian and foreign fellow psychoanalysts in order to gain a deeper and more thorough training in psychoanalytical psychotherapy.

I shall take my leave with a few more words on the extent to which the method that I have described here can be replicated – though I do not consider this to be the most important point, but rather the fact that the psychoanalysts (regardless of the method they prefer to use on the basis of their individual competence or personal taste) take their inspiration from the basic ‘psychic modes’ I have outlined while illustrating how psychoanalysis can be taught effectively to young people. Even more importantly, we should be willing to start to discuss together and possibly challenge what we do, how we do it, and why. As for the actual replicability of the method I have presented, I feel that in order to implement it we simply need to have a lot of dedication, passion, and, above all, patience. It takes patience to build a container that can develop a growing feeling of confidence (in the students, but also in ourselves) in the benefits that can derive from experiencing this method. It is of course by no means an easy task, but, as they say nowadays (and this saying is inscribed in our psychoanalyst's genome), if we want “we can”.