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Amongst the many problems which Freud has left us to solve, one has always appeared particularly unattractive to us psychoanalysts: that of consciousness. Freud always considered conscious experience as a necessary starting point of extreme value, but also as an inexplicable phenomenon - a bit like, for other reasons, women. For the following generations of analysts the study of the Conscious has almost always been indirect, that is as a reflected aspect of their study and understanding of phenomena which may be explained on the basis of unconscious forces but which affect and are detectable in conscious mental life. The problem has become topical but, perhaps, more confused together with the increase in the quantity of patients with character problems. Giving a theoretical frame to the problem of consciousness has, however, affected the attitude of those psychoanalists involved in the application of psychoanalysis to education, or of those educationalists who consider in their work - as “impossible” as ours - the contribution of psychoanalysis. Pierandrea Lussana recently in this journal (, 306-308) also mentioned these difficulties in the review of a book on the psychology of education.
The theme of this review is also a book on the psychology of education written by two female psychologists particularly interested in the problems of teaching. The book is reviewed here just because it is not addressed to psychologists or psychoanalysts but to the students and teachers of secondary school. Its aim is to promote thinking over through reason certain phenomena which affect society but also above all affect the intrapsychic balance of each individual. Nemici per la pelle (Close Enemies) intends to examine the problems of differences (between sexes, individuals, groups, populations, ethnic groups, social classes) and tries to make the young reader reflect on affects as well as on behaviour connected to these differences. It is a frank and humourous book, at times stating