Contents & abstracts



Theory and Technique
L. Carbone Tirelli and S. Cimino. An Adopted Boy’s Difficulty in Entering Adolescence.
Richard e Piggle, 25, 1, 2017, 1-20.

The hypothesis in this article is that the various manifestations of adolescent depression are structured both around failures to access and consolidate the depressive position and in the oscillation between the latter and the mechanisms of the paranoid-schizoid position. Psychotherapy at the beginning of an adopted boy’s puberty illustrates the difficulty in negotiating adolescence caused by the impossibility of working through the traumatic events that characterized his infancy and provoked intense ambivalence towards parental figures. Interpretation within transference authorizes memories to be salvaged and holds destructiveness in check, thereby fostering the integration of affects and aspects of identity.


P. Denis. “I Don’t like Being Someone Else”. Strangeness that Worries Children. Richard & Piggle, 25, 1, 2017, 21-30.

In this article, the Author revisits the concept of the uncanny. Taking Freud’s writings as his starting point, he develops the concept through a consideration of the treatment of subjects during the latency period. This in order to illustrate the sensation’s appearance, which involves experiences of depersonalization that surprise the Ego: the child feels invaded by a feeling of worrying extraneousness both in his/her relationship with the surrounding world and in his/her contact with him/herself and his/her body. The Author argues that the appearance of such a sensation is evidence of an underlying identity problem, and of conflicting introjections, in particular. Transitory manifestations of disturbance and depersonalization need not necessarily be identified as a psychopathological condition, as would occur in situations of psychotic psychopathology. A sense of the uncanny is the Ego’s reaction of astonishment. It is caused by engagement with experiences that worry and disorient it, quite independently of their positive or negative quality. The frequency with which this phenomenon occurs in subjects during the latency period – a phase during which the child is grappling with significant cognitive, psychic and relational changes – explains the interest that its conceptualization holds: it is more frequently thought of as the manifestation of anxiety.


S. Martini. When Analysis Becomes Embodied. Somatic Counter-transference and the Therapeutic Process. Richard & Piggle, 25, 1, 207, 31-47.

This article describes the passing of somatic reactions between patient and analyst that gives rise to somatic counter-transference, understood in the sense of a primitive means of communication. Through processes of projective identification, the analyst is directly called to experience personally the somatic symptoms provoked by the analysand’s split-off complexes. The analyst’s attempt at a mind/body integration can accompany the patient towards a gradual understanding and acceptance of his/her own interior suffering. The author relates such experiences of psychic contagion between patient and analyst both to Jung’s “The Psychology of Transference” and to the concept of “subtle body” as a shared unconscious area. The re-attribution of meaning to pre-verbal psychic experiences through the analyst’s “somatic rêverie” permits the analytic couple to come into contact with archetypal energies and the collective unconscious’ structuring power. A clinical case is presented in detail to show how the salvaging of the life-giving connection between the psyche and the soma – a connection severed by traumatic relations with the patient’s parents – allows the Self’s instinctive drive to manifest itself, thereby fostering a reactivation of the individuation process.


C. Paluzzi. Psychosis, Body-Mind Dissociation and Space-Time. An Interview with Riccardo Lombardi. Richard & Piggle, 25, 1, 2017, 48-62.

Clinical Reflections
A.R. Badiali. Dreams as Thinking’s Germinal Phase, or “Life is a Dream”. Richard & Piggle,
25, 1, 2017, 63-81.

This article is about dreams, understood in the sense of oneiric activity, an adolescent illusion about the future and the play of transference and counter-transference during psychoanalytical sessions. The author narrates the dreams dreamed by a young patient in treatment following a serious trauma. Their interpretation becomes the central theme of her journey in growth and, at the same time, the expression of her hopes and anxieties and her dreams for the future. The second part of the article discusses the interpretation of dreams as an expression of the transference and the latter’s capacity to transform a session into a theatre in which transference and counter-transference play themselves and stage the emotions present in the analytic field.


L. Costanzo and G. Margherita. Intersubjectivity’s Double Spiral: an Intervision Group for Healthcare Professionals Treating Autistic Disorders. Richard & Piggle, 25, 1, 2017, 82-92.

Taking the experience of an intervision group of healthcare professionals as its starting point, the article discusses some of the implications of using a joint parent-child setting as a possible technique for treating autistic disorders. Taking an intersubjective perspective as their starting point, the authors emphasise the complexity of the relational interweaving that sees the families and the professionals as co-protagonists in the treatment process. They then go on to demonstrate how the group can promote consonance through a form of learning that is born of emotional experiences, thereby constituting a preferred mechanism that mobilizes transformations both in individuals and in institutional dynamics.

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