Carlo Ferraris

June of this year was marred by the untimely death of our colleague Carlo Ferraris. He was one of the first analysts to practice psychoanalysis in Turin, a city whose cultural and academic environment at the time was not particularly friendly toward the thought of Freud. Although his approach to psychoanalysis created some misunderstanding with his colleagues as well, he contributed generously, as was in his character, to the development of psychoanalysis in his native Piedmont. With a solid psychiatric curriculum built up in years of work in institutions, he saw in psychoanalysis a model with a potential for new ways to understand and help alleviate mental suffering. In the debate on whether analysis is to be considered essentially a moment of gaining knowledge or a means of treatment, he never doubted that the path to follow was the second. His interest in the psychotic patient was a constant in his clinical and scientific activity and a distinguishing mark of his presence among Turinese analysts.

In the eighties he set himself somewhat apart from the life of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. He had directed his attention and his keen intellectual curiosity toward horizons that lie rather distant from the consulting room: the community treatment of psychotics and epistemological research. He had never entirely lost