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After having tried to reconstruct the nature of Giuseppe Civitarese’s (2023a, 2023b, 2023c) proposal to found intersubjective psychoanalysis on the thought of the philosopher Husserl, and the subsequent discussions by Filippo Maria Ferro & Giuseppe Riefolo (2023) and by Mauro Fornaro (2023a, 20323b), it is proposed to try to reconstruct the history of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis starting from its foundation by Harry Stack Sullivan who preferred to use the term “interpersonal”. Only after the introduction of the concept of projective identification by Melanie Klein in 1946 and the revisitation of the concept of countertransference by Paula Heimann in 1950, also the psychoanalytic mainstream begun moving in this direction, partly also utilizing the important contribution of those European philosophers who put the topic of intersubjectivity at the center of their work. This is how the analyst’s participation and the co-creation of the session are so important today. This is the context in which such a debate has to be placed and through which it can be further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis has assimilated the theoretical contributions derived from neighboring disciplines, which is an opening to pluralism conceived as an opportunity for development, but sometimes it is animated by disagreements on theoretical and technical innovations. By reopening the age-old problem of when it is necessary to abandon an old theory and when a new one can be accepted, various scientific, socio-cultural, geographical and economic factors are called into question in order to explain the reasons why a psychoanalytic theory is successful in the challenge with other theories in a given historical period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pier Francesco Galli's introduction to the book Preconscio e creatività [Preconscious and Creativity] (Turin: Einaudi, 1999) is reprinted. This book contains seven contributions written between 1939 and 1979, namely: a paper read by David Rapaport on June 10, 1942, at the Menninger Foundation (later included in The Collected Papers of David Rapaport, edited by Merton M. Gill in 1967 and translated into Italian in 1977 with an introduction by Enzo Codignola and Pier Francesco Galli), three papers by Ernst Kris (two of 1939 and 1949, respectively, later included in his 1952 book Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, translated into Italian by Elvio Fachinelli in 1967 with a preface by Ernst H. Gombrich, and one of 1956, included in his Selected Papers of 1975, translated into Italian in 1977), and three papers by Peter B. Neubauer, Harold P. Blum e Pinchas Noy of 1978, 1979, and 1976, respectively. Among other things, the complexity of the concept of insight, that may have multiple meanings, is emphasized. This concept has been investigated by various authors, also outside psychoanalysis, who have contributed to the construction of psychoanalytic knowledge, that in itself is an interminable process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A corrected, revised and expanded ego psychology constitutes the strongest foundation for a unified psychoanalytic theory of mind that is capable of integrating different psychoanalytic schools and also of assimilating and integrating relevant findings from non-psychoanalytic disciplines. The areas in which current ego psychology needs a correction and a revision include the acknowledgment of the role of object relations as a matrix of the development of ego functions, the relative autonomy of object relations from drives, an adequate account of the nature of interpersonal understanding, and an adequate theory of affects with a recognition of their motivational primacy. The implications of a revised and expanded ego psychology are discussed also for the conceptions of psychopathology and approach to treatment. Finally, and importantly, it is shown that even from the perspective of Freudian theory the main goal of treatment as expressed in the motto Wo Es war, soll Ich werden - «Where id was, there shall ego be» (S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis [1932]. Standard Edition, XXII, p. 80) - is at least as much the expansion and enrichment of "the I", that is, of subjective experience, as the acquisition of insight and self-knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1957 David Rapaport (1911-1960) gave a series of seminars on psychoanalytic metapsychology to the first year candidates of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis (New Haven, Connecticut). These seminars were never published, but only audio-recorded and then typewritten and assembled in seven folders edited by Stuart C. Miller in 1959: three volumes on “elementary metapsychology” and four volumes on “advanced metapsychology”, for a total of about 700 typewritten pages. The participants, beside Rapaport who was always present, were Helen G. Gilmore, Nathaniel J. London, Seymour L. Lustman, George F. Mahl, Stuart C. Miller, John P. Plunkett, Herbert S. Sacks, Roy Schafer, Virginia Suttenfield, and Robert B. White (in some seminars there were also Paul E. Emery, Jean Schimek, David Shapiro, Eugene Talbot, Eugene E. Trunnel, and Ess A. White Jr.). After an introduction by Pier Francesco Galli and a presentation by Paolo Migone, the detailed programs of the seminars of all seven volumes, with the bibliographies and the assignments, are published. At the end there is also the translation of the first pages of the first of the four volumes of “advanced metapsychology”. This publication aims at showing the method that David Rapaport had in studying theoretical problems, based on a careful conceptual clarification, analysis of original texts, comparison of the definitions of different authors etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]