Psychoanalysis as a Journey (review)

When we think of the journey that psychoanalysis has, both voluntarily and involuntarily, made during its first century, we usually have in mind a well-known itinerary: from Vienna first to Zürich, Budapest, and Berlin, then to England and France, and finally spreading to the four corners of the world. But despite being able to boast of pioneers such as Edoardo Weiss (or even Italo Svevo, for that matter), and leading contemporary figures including Antonino Ferro, the Mediterranean, the cradle of the Old World, is, for reasons difficult to fathom, too often missing from the list of possible destinations for the peregrinations of psychoanalysis. I can only hope that the oversight will be remedied by Franco Borgogno's erudite and brave book, Psychoanalysis as a Journey. Professor Borgogno is a clinical psychologist and a training analyst from Turin, whose work should by now have become familiar to those who follow the development of relational perspectives in psychoanalysis or who have a special interest in Ferenczi. While Borgogno has presented and published many papers in English, this is the first translation of an entire book of his from Italian.

When I first approached the book, I was puzzled by its title. What kind of a journey could psychoanalysis be, I wondered? Although in the volume itself Borgogno offers explicit definitions only in passing, it now seems to me that the whole book is indeed about journeys. I think that one can discern at least three different meanings of this concept.

First, since it contains papers spanning almost twenty years, this is an honest book about Borgogno's own progress, on the one hand, toward theoretical and clinical mastery, and, on the other hand, toward personal maturity during his two experiences of analysis and in his current analytic work. However, although I admire and like this thread of the book, I will here concentrate on the other two, and leave it to the reader to enter the intimate spaces of Borgogno's clinical sessions, losses, and dreams in his or her own way.¹

On the second, and I think the main, level, Borgogno's essays are devoted to four authors—Freud, Ferenczi, Heimann, and Bion, to put them in chronological order—and their journeys of exploration, discovery, disappointment, and creativity. Naturally, these first two levels overlap: it is clear that Borgogno's canon is highly personal, that these are the four psychoanalytic authors with whom he has had the most rewarding dialogues.

In tracing his authors' itineraries, Borgogno devotes two-thirds of the space to Freud (chapters 1-3) and to Ferenczi (chapters 8-12). He reads their works very carefully and often sheds new light on them. This is partially due to his interest in their earliest papers, in the beginnings of their paths: "We can read Freud in various ways, but one of the most rewarding approaches is when we follow the 'journey' of his thought, imaginatively identifying with him as he makes the first steps towards and within psychoanalysis" (10; italics in original). Thus he offers the reader a gem with an insightful reading of an 1892 case to discover Freud as a physician attuned to the emotions of a breast-feeding mother. Another chapter is devoted to an original reading of the case of Little Hans, a text on which Borgogno's authority is well known to the readers of this journal (see Borgogno 2008).

As to Ferenczi, he is definitely the central figure of this book. Borgogno claims that Ferenczi's critical reflection is "unique and remains unequaled in the history of psychoanalysis" (151). He views Ferenczi as a precursor to the British Independent school, specifically, I believe, due to the Hungarian's being, in Ferenczi's own words, "the founder of a 'metapsychology of analyst's own mental processes'" (qtd. 194; italics in original). I understand Borgogno to be a true Ferenczian when it comes to those aspects of analytic work metaphorically called "gardening of the soul" and the "obstetric propensity" (157). It is...