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This comment on Bottaccioli & Bottaccioli’s (2024a) article critically analyzes Franz Alexander’s role in developing contemporary psychosomatics in both its innovative aspects and limitations. On the one hand, Alexander contributed to emancipating the explanation of physical symptoms from the classical approach of the early 20th century stiffened on the model of hysterical conversion and promoted the organization of the international psychosomatic movement, including the Italian one. On the other hand, his limitations mainly concern the theoretical approach typical of 20th century psychoanalysis: adopting a one-dimensional model centered on intrapsychic conflict and the indeterminacy – necessary for the time – of a biological “X” factor as mediator. Instead, in the second half of the 20th century, a deficit-centered model of explanation (e.g., alexithymia) and complexity (e.g., biopsychosocial model) emerged, in which various moderating biomedical, psychological, and socio-cultural factors assume different relative weights in the explanation of physical illnesses and the clinical management of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixty years after the death of Franz Alexander, it is necessary to investigate what is alive and what is dead in his thought about psychosomatics, focusing in particular on the notions of emotion and vegetative neurosis as central to his model of explanation. It is then worth noting, in the light of the developments after Alexander, the today’s difficulty in supporting psychosomatics as an autonomous discipline, to the point of questioning the legitimacy of the expression itself: Bottaccioli & Bottaccioli’s (2024a) proposal to identify it with Psycho-Neuro-EndocrineImmunology (PNEI) must be measured in this problematic context. In any case, the always valid need remains, already supported by Alexander, for a unitary, “holistic” consideration of the human being, sick and healthy. However, this is a paradigm that has to be justified and clarified conceptually in the actual role it plays as an inspirer of research and specific explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems posed by Leonardo’s pathographies written by Freud are examined. The historical path of the problem of the relationship between genius and psychopathology is reconstructed, showing that psychoanalysis fits into a very active vein at the end of the 19th century, expressing different theoretical approaches with which Freud relates. The interest for the problem then continued, with alternate answers, until the current days. The distortions made by Freud in Leonardo’s pathographical description are examined; these distortions are extensively examined by several authors, which, however, is not distant from what Freud implements in his other works, nor from what other pathographists of the time did. It is a common behavior in the history of science and well known in modern epistemology that identifies in the development of theories also the importance of rhetorical tools with which scientists support them. It is emphasized that one cannot read particular psychological aspects in these Freudian behaviors, making in fact a pathography of the author of pathographies, but only lead his work to the coherence of the historical contexts in which he operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

It is proposed a fine-tuning of the definition of intersubjectivity as inferable by Giuseppe Civitarese (2023a) – especially with regard to the expression “with-being” which is included therein – in order to overcome certain ambiguities within a constructive perspective, also paying particular attention to compatibility with Bion’s notion of group (and therefore of “field”). It is urged also to stick to the most consolidated interpretations of the philosophers mentioned, if their ideas are used in non-philosophical disciplines; in this way it is further attested to Husserl’s unlikely compatibility with psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of presentification finds an important place in clinical models of trauma. In psychotherapy, do “present moment”, focus on the “here and now” and mindfulness refer to the same semantic field? Or is it sufficient to distinguish its contents through the favorable/maladaptive polarity? Are the concepts of “defensive automatism” and of “defensive style” overlapping? Is maladaptive presentation a metahistorical fact? Does adolescence show always behaviors of maladaptive presentification? The brief critical argument presented in this intervention on Luca Degasperi’s (2023) article starts from the need to clarify the epistemological field of the construct of presentification, suggesting an alternative terminological hypothesis to the maladaptive meaning and a socio-cultural recontextualization of the clinical pictures described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dialogue with the paper by Civitarese (2023), some reflections are suggested. Intersubjectivity shifts the focus of psychoanalytic interest from the subject to the "intersubject". Psychoanalytic interest, therefore, moves from a study of phenomena toward a continuously unstable and fluid process. Such a process identifies fields and no more tòpoi in which it can organize itself. Our reflection seeks to emphasize the suggestions of Civitarese and, above all, is oriented toward underlining the three levels of intersubjectivity as proposed by Infant Research, preliminary to the more radical positions of Stolorow's group, and then of Jessica Benjamin and of Ogden. Intersubjectivity necessarily identifies a third type of unconscious, which is not only dynamic and pre-reflexive, but above all not validated. Finally, enactments, by disengaging action from acting-out, assume a function of creative evolution in the therapeutic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the critical remarks in the comments by Ferro & Riefolo (2023) and by Fornaro (2023). The main points are, in the first comment, the status of reality in psychoanalysis, enactment, the various conceptions of the unconscious, self-disclosure, and the dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalysis. As for the second comment, on the other hand, the issues addressed concern the interpretation of Husserl's contribution to a better definition of the concept of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis and methodological aspects related to the use of notions derived from speculative thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When narratives become fixed, not open to change or modification, they are expressions of stupidity, as described by Kohon, be it in pathology, psychoanalysis, political discourse, or the present upsurge of identity politics: a symbolic impoverishment that amounts to a collapse of thirdness. The longing for certitudes based on the illusion of completeness, present in all of us, is linked to the ideal ego, an archaic narcissistic fusion with an omnipotent mother. In our work, our identification with Freud as an ego ideal prevents any incestuous acting out of the transferential bond by introducing a symbolic third, difference, and the world of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Solms' revision of the concept of drive represents the latest in a series of his indepth reviews of the most fundamental Freudian concepts. The movement of neuropsychoanalysis begun in 2000 with the first Congress focused precisely on a neuroscientific definition of affects and emotions. In 2013, Solms proposed a substantial and profound modification of Freud's structural model, motivating his theses which argue that the instinctual id can only be conscious. In the current paper, Solms (2021a) reaffirms and re-evaluates the centrality of drive theory in psychoanalysis and neuroscience as a starting point for understanding conscious and unconscious phenomena, in normality as well in pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biography of a person allows us to reconstruct his lifestyle, his personality, and this finds correspondence in his thought. The early recollections which, according to Adler, can provide valuable clues like projective tests and dreams cannot be considered a biography and, especially if taken from multiple sources, must be carefully screened and verified. If you don't do it, the Individual Psychology is banalized and discredited. Similarly, the important assessment of the position in the family constellation cannot be simplistically transferred to the fruitful contrast of ideas between Freud and Adler, especially now that there is documentary evidence of their debate and the schism of the psychoanalytic movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why psychoanalysts came to conceive what Howard Levine (2021) calls a "problematic either-or extremity" between conflict theories and developmental trauma theories? It is hypothesized that at the roots of the polarity between these two different clinical attitudes there is an "originary trauma", a trauma that can never reach a full and effective figurability: a trauma that cannot be represented. Such a trauma constituted the caesura that on the one hand has produced a progress on the intellectual level (in the history of psychoanalysis, the birth of the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious fantasy), but, on the other hand, at the price of creating the lack of development of an affective capacity, not only of a cognitive capacity, of listening the traumaticity within the patient's communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After an epistemological reflection on the necessity of a metapsychology for psychoanalysis, it is pointed out that Howard B. Levine's (2021) representational hypothesis on the problem of trauma leads to rethinking its economic dimension in particular; this is especially true in the light of Freud's last theoretical developments around the concept of trauma and of the technical difficulties of a treatment based only on historical reconstruction. To the extent that trauma is linked to processes of psychic unbinding, it is important to develop a technique apt to repair and reconstruct the symbolic capacities of the patient's ego because of the severity of its structural impairment. Such a reflection implies fundamental questions on the validity of those approaches which, whether they emphasize the representational component or the affective one, are limited to pursuing only hermeneutic or cathartic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper "Revision of drive theory" (Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane, 2022, 56, 3: 363-422) Mark Solms (2021a) correctly argues that the basic motivational forces are affect systems, activated following the general homeostatic principles that govern biological processes that assure survival and reproduction. However, psychoanalytic object relation theory points to a specifically human, supraordinate integrative motivational system that condenses component affect systems into the affiliative and counteraffiliative motivations described by Freud with the concepts of libido and aggression. They are not "drives" in the psychobiological sense, but profoundly define unconscious intrapsychic conflict and are relevant in clinical psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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This article aims to examine whether prevention and intervention strategies, outlined in Services for Addiction (Ser.D.), should pay special attention to the adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs) who are individuals struggling with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Through a comprehensive review of the scientific literature, the article will explore the psychological impact of being raised in families with alcohol abuse problems, highlighting the possible negative consequences on the mental health and quality of life of children of alcoholics. In line with the Italian Ministry of Health 2022 White Paper on Alcoholism, which promotes prevention and the involvement of families in treatment programs, the Nucleo Operativo Alcologia (ASST Ovest Mi) in Legnano, Italy, has offered individual and group counseling to the ACoAs. From the consultations, the recognised needs of the ACoAs included: listening to emotions, especially anger and guilt, prevention of alcohol abuse and violent acts, psycho-health education on the mechanisms of addiction and coping. In conclusion this article highlights the importance of considering ACoAs as a priority population in addiction prevention and treatment initiatives, providing a basis for more comprehensive and inclusive health strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this second paper, which follows on from the first one, published on a previous issue of this journal (n. 26, 2), David Bell responds to the various criticism he received. Here again he focusses on the dysfunction of the Tavistock clinic GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) service. The author considers that a very large number of children have been seriously harmed through the penetration of the "trans" ideology into child and adolescent services leading to their complex problems (such as family histories, internalized homophobia, complex comorbidity problems) being seen only through the prism of gender, thus neglecting the complexities of the intrapsychic and interpsychic nature. The paper also looks at the broader socio-cultural processes that have contributed to this phenomenon. David Bell has continued to be deeply engaged in the understanding of disturbances in gender identity in children and adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud’s lecture given on December 1, 1909, at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on Leonardo da Vinci is examined. This lecture is a forerunner of his later article Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (Freud, 1910b). An attempt is made to emphasize the inconsistency between Freud’s hypotheses and the historical data by then at his disposal. Avoiding entering Freud’s vulture slip that many scholars have pointed out and Freud never acknowledged, concerns are expressed about Freud’s required documentation in the field of art history and about the method he employed for the portrayal of Leonardo da Vinci’s personality. It seems that Freud willingly avoided historical data choosing almost entirely to rely on applied psychoanalysis widely employing his own phantasies in attempting to overcome the paucity of knowledge on Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood. Freud himself later acknowledged that his 1910 paper was partly a fictional story along the lines of Mereskovskij’s 1895 book on Leonardo. A crucial inconsistency of this lecture, that will not be amended in his paper of 1910, relates to the fact that Freud changed into a phantasy what Leonardo had reported as a childhood memory. Many scholars have taken for granted this shift so that they talked about Leonardo’s “phantasy” or “dream”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Copyright of Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper analyzes the discussion between labour lawyers and labour sociologists about the company's limits, emphasizing how the topics concerning company assets and conformation have long remained left out from this dialogue. The organizational changes of the 1990s prompted a reflection from both sectors, however they mostly proceeded on the parallel paths with extremely rare and episodic references and quotations from each other, largely limited to referring to a different perspective of investigation. The comparison has become more relevant only in the last few years with regards to the aggravation of outsourcing phenomenon and the consequent evasion from specific regulation, thanks to the possibility of organizing production by exploiting the existing regulatory and wage differentials between different companies, different industrial sectors and also between different countries. The paper therefore looks at the differentiations and asymmetries that have arisen by exploiting the boundaries and the differentials associated with them, investigating the use of various legal instruments, from contracts to business networks to global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the main lines of development of the sociological literature centred on the theme of "organisational boundaries" in their relationship with legal norms and regulatory institutions. In particular, the paper will focus on three nodes developed by this literature: the recognition of the substantial nature of "regulatory arbitrage" of the organizational processes of fragmentation and the centrality of regulatory structures in their analysis; the role and modes of action of regulatory actors and how these are influenced by the characteristics of organizational configurations; the (in-)application of norms as a variable, the ways in which the processes of organizational fragmentation favour it and the role of the state in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Education Sciences & Society is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Copyright of Psicoanalisi is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Psicoanalisi is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Copyright of Cittadinanza Europea is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cittadinanza Europea is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims at investigating the link between the evolution of money and social change. In order to reach this goal, in the first part of the paper I will discuss the main viewpoints from which money can be observed, and the basic functions it is supposed to perform in every type of social structure. In the second part, I will outline the evolution of money from the perspective of historical sociology, starting from the store of value function, which is commonly considered the least important one. That description will account for both the spread of money throughout the social structure as a whole and its dematerialization. As a final point, I will focus on the current pyramidal structure of the monetary system, both at a national and international level, and its foreseeable developments due to the recent creation of new forms of money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the breakdown of the normative model of employment that underpinned the mid-twentieth-century welfare state. The focus of the chapter is the slow, but continuous, dismantling of labor protections that happened in the last decades which has played a crucial role in facilitating the rise of digital platforms. Thus, while on one hand this can be related to the limits that the traditional labor protections had, especially in including women, migrants, and other usually considered more “marginal” workers; on the other it is a product of the new global division of labor and of the way in which technologies have been used to outsource and manage remote working. These developments are being expanded by the increasing “platformization” of the economy that is spreading across sectors digital management and new forms of task-based work directly controlled by algorithms. Despite the birth of new union forms, capable of intercepting the demands and defending the interests of gig workers, the paper concludes by highlighting how these achievements, despite their relevance, are not a definitive solution, but it is necessary to aim for a new set of universal workers’ rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]