Contents & abstracts



Theory and Technique
L. J. Martín Cabré. Ferenczi’s Legacy in Winnicott’s Work. Richard e Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 113-124.

In this article, the author picks out and describes some of Ferenczi’s contributions to science that have influenced the work of psychoanalysts coming after him. He notes how some of the considerations proposed by Winnicott and some of his theoretico-clinical intuitions had already been intuited and almost expressed by Ferenczi many years earlier.  The two analysts’ theorizations on the feminine, on child analysis and on play, in particular, are taken into consideration.

Clinical Reflections
Children in Analysis

M. Mastella. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 125-128.

M. Badoni. Children and A Cure. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 129-136.

Taking her own experience as a starting point, the author touches upon the difficult history of child psychoanalysis. Beginning with the notion of classical treatment, she expands on the meaning of treating and emphasises the particular position of children and their parents, attributing particular importance to the ways of working both with the former and with the latter. Lastly, the author stresses the risk of the psychoanalytical technique becoming fragmented and the usefulness of an integrated training geared towards a more complex and a more finely structured preparation for practising the profession of psychoanalyst.


T. Cancrini. Children in Analysis. Primitive Anxieties and Profound Ties. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 137-146.

Child psychoanalysis had its birth through Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and then Winnicott.  As Melanie Klein was already showing us, in work with children there is an immediate contact with the unconscious and with primitive levels of experience. The author emphasises the importance of the mother-child relationship for emotional and mental development, for which both the physical relationship and the mother’s mental function in understanding and containing the child is considered to be fundamental.  She then highlights the different ways in which the child lives the oedipal situation according to how the parents live as a couple.  If the couple is a united one, feelings of exclusion and jealousy prevail; if the couple is in conflict, a feeling of catastrophe prevails. The author then recounts two cases of child analysis. These stress the therapeutic function of the psychoanalyst who, through transference and counter-transference, can reach the most archaic levels of suffering, thus helping the child to move beyond his/her deepest wounds.  Lastly, the article emphasises the importance, for the psychoanalyst, of tackling child cases as well as adult ones, so as to hone his/her sensitivity towards the primary levels.

Focus 2
Joint Mother-Child Psychotherapy in Very Early Eating Disorders

G. Bruno. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 147-150.

A. Rizzo. “No One Ever Died of Living Just on Milk”. Emilio’s Assessment. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 151-164.

Emilio is a child just over three years old who, for a few months, has been allowing himself to be fed only with milk.  The traumatic connotation of the event triggering the food phobia falls within a symbiotic mother-child relationship, in which Emilio unexpectedly lives the traumatic experience and his separation anxiety. The return to just milk and his refusal of food appear defensively as an illusionary return to the symbiotic union.  The assessment permitted Emilio to master the trauma, represent his internal conflicts through play, recover and repair his faith in the environment, give a new meaning to what happened and make room for the third party, thereby paving the way to recognizing his separateness and reactivating the growth and development processes.


S. Tambone. “The Hurt”. The Treatment of a Very Early Eating Disorder using a Mother-Child Setting. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 165-179.

The article is the clinical account of a psychotherapeutic treatment using a joint mother-child setting. The little 18-month old patient suffers from a serious eating disorder that manifests as a total rejection of solids.  Mother and daughter have come to a halt in the regressive phase of breast-feeding but other “separation areas” such as sleep, walking about and speech are also compromised.  The material allows the reader to see the gradual mise-en-scène, in the baby girl’s play and the first hints of graphic representation, of her phantasies relating to mastication, her anxieties and her defences relating to oral aggressiveness. The therapy opens up spaces for symbolization and supports the gradualness of the separation processes to such an extent that the little girl becomes able to experience solids, after all, and to access new stages of development.

Clinical Diary
G. Parisi. From Image to Thought: Transformation during the Psychoanalysis of an Adolescent.
Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 180-200.

The article describes (in the light of certain concepts in Bion’s theory) the therapy experience with Doriano, a 15-year old adolescent who initially presented a condition of inhibition and partial withdrawal into a phantasy world.  The article shows how, during the course of the therapy, Doriano begins to use drawing (and, subsequently, the creation of three-dimensional objects) as a creative and preferred tool for accessing his own internal world. Thus he creates a sort of ability to read his own emotional states and sets in motion again a developmental process that had seemed seriously compromised.  Thoughts condense around the images: a story and a sense of identity develop that, over time, will be able to begin to be thought and recognized.

The Enchanting Screen
The Editors. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 201-202.

S. Oliva. A Commentary on Melanie Klein’s Notes on Citizen Kane. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 203-210.

This work comments on the notes written by Klein on Orson Welles’ film, Citizen Kane, in which the author gives a clinical description of the protagonist’s personality in the light of her psychoanalytical conceptualization of manic depressive states, as she had developed it at the beginning of the 1940s.


S. Cimino. Rapunzel Tangled. Richard & Piggle, 22, 2, 2014, 211-213.

This story can be read as a metaphor for the separation processes of their developmental stage of adolescence. The cartoon is addressing this issue from the point of view of the relationship between a mother and a daughter, even if the separation and detachment from parental figures encapsulating and protective at the same time, it is a topic that relates to the teenagers of both sexes.

Book reviews