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Although it is the result of many years' reflection and research, pays great care to detail and is thoroughly, one might almost say meticulously documented, this book is one of those works which, in the best Freudian tradition, leaves scope for the reader himself to reflect, and if he is practised in this art, he is able to develop a free-floating attention, with all the consequences that this entails. Il Padre e la Legge struck me as a work which is worth reading and re-reading. Irrespective of its specific subject matter, while avoiding the extremes of splitting or confusion, it can help in the search for clarity about the relationship between applied psychoanalysis and “pure” or clinical-theoretical psychoanalysis. I would say that all Freud's works on applied psychoanalysis, even his most daring and imaginative ones are rooted in the humus of “pure” psychoanalysis; including of course the resistances that the latter arouses not only in the patient — as is obvious — but in society. This sphere is a veritable minefield which both connects and separate theoretical-clinical psychoanalysis from applied psychoanalysis, and for this very reason it can be a particularly rich sphere of investigation. It is also rich in illusions; and we often seem to have a greater propensity to fall prey to such illusions than Freud did (perhaps this is also due to the more sophisticated and/or latent form that the resistances have gradually taken on); we are prey to illusions and thus defenceless