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Writing in Psychoanalysis is the first volume in a proposed series of monographs, published jointly by Italian Rivista di Psicoanalisi and Karnac Books. The series aims to make up for the relative isolation caused by language barriers, and allow an Italian psychoanalytic discussion to reach beyond national borders. The book at hand is the outcome of a Symposium arranged by the Editorial Board in 1993, and it is true to its own aims; three non-Italians have been invited to contribute together with five Italian authors. The result is well worth reading. It is a book for every psychoanalyst who writes, considers writing, or wonders why he or she does not.
The Italian contributors, all members of the editorial board of Rivista di Psicoanalisi, write primarily from their perspectives as editors or readers. The other contributors, Patrick Mahony, Henning Paikin and John E. Gedo, offer a broader perspective on the topic of writing and psychoanalysis.
Mahony discusses the importance of writing to Freud's self-analysis, a process that could be labeled a “writing cure”. Mahony focusses on the period between the summer of 1897 and the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in November, 1899. Freud took careful notes of his dreams and memories, proceeding to a detailed analysis of his own text. Freud's process of understanding appears to interact with his writing and not until The Interpretation of Dreams was completed, did Freud realize to what degree the writing itself had been a part of his self-analysis.
In his essay From analytic dialogue to published text, published in The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, no. 2/1995, Paikin writes that, as analysts, we are trained to listen with a third ear, but not to write with a third hand. Freud seems to be the only exception to this rule. According to Mahony, however, the Interpretation of Dreams only accomplishes a partial “writing and publishing cure”, and the subtext holds much of “acting out, writing out and publishing out”