Giorgio Sassanelli is one of the few Italian authors who are not too taken up with reflecting on method and epistemological matters and who can afford to devote their energies to problems of immediate clinical relevance (for example those relating to narcissism). The research that he has been consistently conducting for almost a decade has resulted in a book (Le basi narcisistiche della personalità, 1982) and in various subsequent publications; therefore I feel it would be useful to reflect on the aims he sets out to achieve in this second monograph, his latest work, before going on to discuss its actual content.

In the last few years narcissism has certainly been a fashionable problem to discuss, and as always this has meant that a great pile of the most heterogeneous works on the subject has formed, as if their authors were inspired by an anxious desire to have their say