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Psychoanalysis in Milan in the Age of Dis-alienation: The Case of Elvio Fachinelli

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The Years of Alienation in Italy

Abstract

This chapter discusses how Italian psychoanalysis dealt with the notion of alienation in the 1970s, looking specifically at Elvio Fachinelli’s work (1928–1989). In Italy at the time there were two main trends in the left-wing approach to mental health: so-called anti-psychiatry, which brought about the closure of asylums, and strong criticism of psychoanalysis. This criticism, which is the object of this chapter, resulted in different developments of psychoanalysis: in continuity with, or in opposition to, psychiatry. The psychoanalyst Fachinelli represents the latter. In this chapter his work will be read through Ferenczi’s notion of reciprocity, in contrast to and in comparison with Lacan, and with particular reference to the Italian reception of Abrahams’s L’homme au magnetophone (1969), first published in Italian by Fachinelli’s cofounded publishing house L’erba voglio.

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Change history

  • 10 October 2019

    The book was inadvertently published with the given name and family name of the author differently abbreviated in all the chapters as A. S. Tarabochia; whereas it has been updated as A. Sforza Tarabochia.

Notes

  1. 1.

    I refer here to Lacan’s notion of “subject supposed to know:” “The term ‘subject supposed to know’ does not designate the analyst himself, but a function which the analyst may come to embody in the treatment. It is only when the analyst is perceived by the analysand to embody this function that the transference can be said to be established. When this occurs, what kind of knowledge is it that the analyst is presumed to possess? […] The analyst is often thought to know the secret meaning of the analysand’s words, the significations of speech of which even the speaker is unaware.” (Evans 1996, p. 199).

  2. 2.

    Although many Italian scholars are currently studying Fachinelli’s activity as a psychoanalyst and political militant (among them see Fachinelli 2016; Benvenuto 1998; Melandri 2014; Madera 2014; Sciacchitano 2014; Janigro 2014; Dotti 2016; Barbetta 2013, 2015b), an exhaustive biography of Fachinelli has not yet been published. Giuditta Fachinelli, Elvio’s daughter and curator of her father’s archive, has provided some unpublished conversations, including one with Elvio’s brother.

  3. 3.

    Now digitized at: https://www.inventati.org/apm/archivio/320/ERB/lerbavoglio.php.

  4. 4.

    For an introduction to the official rules of the psychoanalytic setting see the official IPA website at http://www.ipa.world/en/Psychoanalytic_Treatment/About__Psychoanalysis.aspx, accessed on August 8, 2018.

  5. 5.

    It happened among others to Ferenczi himself, whose Clinical Diary remained for years untranslated into English; to Melanie Klein, whose work with children put her at risk of being expelled from the Psychoanalytical Society (Kristeva 2001); to Wilhelm Reich who was expelled for being a Marxist; and to Jacques Lacan for changing the length of the session. See for instance Steiner (2011).

  6. 6.

    See Fachinelli (2012) and Meghnagi (2004).

  7. 7.

    The name L’erba voglio comes from an Italian proverb: “L’erba voglio non cresce neppure nel giardino del Re” (“Not even in the King’s garden does the ‘I want’ herb grow”). The idea that l’erba voglio might actually exist and grow somewhere seems to go beyond the concept of Nature as an unkind mother that limits your desires and to foster a libertarian concept of unfettered development of human faculties, regardless of rank, status, or social, cultural, and economic position.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

    Pietro Barbetta

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  1. Pietro Barbetta
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Correspondence to Pietro Barbetta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Alessandra Diazzi

  2. Department of Modern Languages School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Alvise Sforza Tarabochia

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Barbetta, P. (2019). Psychoanalysis in Milan in the Age of Dis-alienation: The Case of Elvio Fachinelli. In: Diazzi, A., Sforza Tarabochia, A. (eds) The Years of Alienation in Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8_8

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