Contents & abstracts



Theory and Technique
L.J. Martín Cabré. From Introjection to Intropression. The Evolution of a Theoretical
Concept and the Consequences for Psychoanalytical Technique. Richard e Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 229-238.

This article offers an overview of how the concept of “introjection” evolved in Ferenczi’s thinking. Of undeniable theoretical and clinical value for psychoanalysis, this concept emerged during the year following Ferenczi’s meeting with Freud and, over years of evolution and development, acquired its last acceptation through Ferenczi’s brilliant contribution regarding trauma when he introduced the neologism “intropression”. The latter is a term that refers to an essential analytical issue, namely, to what extent the Super-ego’s unconscious part is capable of modification and in what terms. Furthermore, it is a notion that also regards the passing on of psychoanalytical knowledge and the training of future psychoanalysts.


Clinical Reflections
P. Gatti. The Locked Box in the Attic: Ghosts and Memories. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 239-258.

The author discusses the technical difficulties encountered in clinical work with patients who have suffered an early trauma, as is often the case for fostered or adopted children. An account of the first five years of psychotherapy with a nine-year-old boy (who was removed from his birth family at a tender age) is elaborated in some detail in order to explore these issues. The author dwells both on the difficulties in maintaining an analytical position when working with highly disturbed object relations and on how to facilitate a therapeutic space within which the trauma can be worked through without becoming the sole focus of treatment. The article shows how the acknowledgement, sharing and greater understanding of the trauma together with the patient can help transform traumatic memories or “ghosts”. Then the therapy can truly become a place of change and restitution, laying the foundations for another kind of experience.


M. Naccari Carlizzi. Reverie Dreaming about Death Together. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 259-268.

How much reality can be tolerated by the psyche of a girl who has survived a trauma and what tools and forms of intervention should be used in these conditions? How is an analyst to activate a reintegration of the split-off parts and re-establish the connection between the mind, that has dissociated the traumatic scene, and the body that has perceived and recorded it through the senses? A working style inspired by Bion’s concepts of maternal reverie, the container/contained and transformation into O fostered (through the analyst’s reverie and the patient’s emerging dreams) the creation of a “channel between the analysand and her unconscious” and a progressive ability to tolerate the “Truth”.


F. Burruni. “Unknown” Objects and Gender Violence in Male Adolescents. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 269-287.

In this work, the author refers to three cases of adolescent males presenting violent impulses and instances of acting out against women and, at the same time, problems of sexual impotence. He highlights the problem of the “unknown” object as common to the various forms of violence that are recognisable in various ways in all three cases i.e. a tendency to seek omnipotent control of the object, intrusive violence of a sexual nature and a homicidal tendency in boys in prison. In particular, the author discusses some aspects of the homicidal adolescent being treated in a young offenders’ prison, making particular reference to some of the works by Fonagy and Target on men’s violence against women, to Meltzer’s concept of aesthetic conflict and to some of Golse’s contributions regarding the problems linked to the development of primary intersubjectivity.


A. Stefania. Marion Milner and the Passage from Primary Objects to Secondary Objects. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 288-301.

Marion Milner places the passage from the original primary object to the secondary object (a passage that is based on the identification mechanism) equally at the centre both of a child’s healthy psycho-emotional development and of the psychoanalytical process undergone by those who have been unable to achieve such development. But how is it possible to pass from the primary object to the secondary one? Milner identifies five elements in the answer: fantasy, illusion, setting, concentration and ecstasy, which all constitute facets of the one same entity. Five elements that we can identify in our clinical work if we pay attention both to the verbal and non-verbal material that the patient brings to the “here and now” of the analytical relationship and to our own counter-transference.

Psychoanalysis, Bioethics and Biotechnology
D. Bruno, L. Calzolaretti, E. Fondi, S. Oliva and A. Scanu. Filiation in Assisted Reproduction:
Comments on the Embryo Mix-Up at a Hospital in Rome. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 302-307.

This article comments on the embryo mix-up that occurred at a hospital in Rome and the media outcry that followed it in the spring of 2014. It proposes some reflections on the complexity of the experiences and phantasies and the emotional implications provoked in couples by the filiation process occurring through medically assisted reproduction (MAR).

The Enchanting Screen
G.M. D’Amato. Hugo Cabret. Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 308-311.
C. Altieri. The Son (le Fils). Richard & Piggle, 22, 3, 2014, 312-314.

Book reviews