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The article discusses various new frontiers in psychoanalysis and the expansion of human, scientific, and clinical horizons in the field. It highlights the importance of the intersubjective dimension in clinical work and the recent evolution of scientific knowledge in psychoanalysis. The article also explores the concepts of countertransference, total situation, and the role of the digestive system in mental life. Additionally, it discusses the theoretical and clinical features of control-mastery theory, the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in treating bipolar disorders, and the interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and music. [Extracted from the article]

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]

With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their “new country” plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of “migration and identity” is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their “new country” plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of “migration and identity” is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]