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In the aptly-chosen title of this book, the “two people talking in a room” described in Luciana Nissim's excellent study become “two behind the couch”. Thus we are immediately introduced to the core of the affective and intellectual atmosphere which gave rise to the publication of this volume: a collection of writings by psychoanalysts who did their training analysis with Luciana Nissim, and who wanted to show their respect and gratitude with these Festschriften, to mark her seventieth birthday. But this collection has a special quality all of its own: unlike what usually happens in commemorative volumes, a common thread seems to run through all the contributions, although they deal with different subjects, and this thread is the method and style of work they share, which of spite of the individual variations can be traced to one source: the research and teaching of Luciana Nissim. So quite apart from the specific “occasion”, the reader is presented with a fascinating view of an area of research and development of Italian psychoanalysis upon which Luciana Nissim work has clearly left its mark. Around this area, as Di Chiara points out in his lively and affectionate introduction, an epicentre of the entire Italian group has come into being, following “certain fertile leads (…) in particular those characterized by strong intellectual exogamy”. But there is another element underlying all the contributions which, as Gabriella Bartoli explains in her capacity as careful editor, is like a delicate leitmotiv: this is the “phantasy” of separation, of the analyst from his patient, of the patient from the analyst. In this way, Gabriella Bartoli broadens the scope of the book, with a further comment on the special nature of supervisory work, which “allowed us to experience our analysts' treatments as not quite over, as extended for a short while, though in a very different mode and tone”. She tells us,