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‘Written in an electrified poetic style that glitters and shivers and is drenched in intelligent and stimulating allusions, and peppered with striking images and insights, the new book by Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese is nothing if not exciting and thought-provoking. The book conveys the liveliness and playfulness of the authors’ approach to contemporary psychoanalysis and bravely presents challenges and reassessments of nuclear theoretical concepts. Playing and Vitality in Psychoanalysis crackles and sizzles and might well shake psychoanalysis to its very core. It is a rivetingly smart book.’ Elias M. da Rocha Barros is a training analyst at the Brazilian Psychoanalytical Society of São Paulo and distinguished fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Institute ‘Playing and Vitality in Psychoanalysis is about field theory, but more importantly it is field theory – overbrimming with the characters and the stories and the plots and the angst and the pleasure – all of which is brought to life by a clarity of thinking that is rare in psychoanalysis today. One cannot read this book without being changed by it personally and professionally.’ Thomas Ogden most recently authored Coming to Life in the Consulting Room (Routledge, 2021) ‘Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese, playfully and with great vitality, lead us through the intimacy of their clinical practice. Through the numerous characters that circulate through the book, Ferro and Civi- tarese offer us a psychoanalytic reflection from a true aesthetic experience resulting from the very reading of the text. Several of Bion’s and many other authors’ ideas, such as the concept of the analytic field, come to life and are illustrated and deepened through the many clinical situations presented and through the authors’ original reflections. Reading this book will certainly be a pleasant experience of pleasure, discovery, learning and enchantment.’ Ruggero Levy is a member of the SPPA, Porto Alegre, Brazil Playing and Vitality in Psychoanalysis Building on their long-lasting scientific partnership, Civitarese and Ferro offer an array of thought-provoking writings bolstered by extensive clinical material, attesting to their shared interpretation of psychoanalysis not only as a treatment for psychic suffering but also as inherently pleasurable and vitalizing. In chapters that reflect inclinations, fantasies and obsessions that are both shared and personal, and by engaging with topics various enough to include dreams, ethics, emotions and aesthetics, the authors demonstrate how the practice of psychoanalysis might no longer be an insidiously moralistic or ideological exercise but rather a practice aimed at opening up and liberating the mind. By providing detailed engagement with the work of Bion and Ogden, as well as insights from their own substantial expertise, the authors explore how the synonymous concepts of playing and vitality can meaningfully inform and change clinical psychoanalytic practice. With rich clinical material and a strong foundation in established theory, this book will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic therapists and postgraduate students hoping to make more room in the psychoanalytic lexicon for words like pleasure, dreaming, creativity, hospitality and growth. Giuseppe Civitarese is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI) and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He lives and is in private practice in Pavia, Italy. He is the editor of the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the official journal of the SPI. Antonino Ferro is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, of which he was President, and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Interna- tional Psychoanalytical Association. He has been a visiting professor of psychoanalysis in various institutions in Europe, North America, South America and Australia. He received the Sigourney Award in 2007. Psychoanalytic Field Theory Book Series S. Montana Katz & Giuseppe Civitarese Series Editors The Psychoanalytic Field Theory Book Series was initiated in 2015 as a new subseries of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series. The series pub- lishes books on subjects relevant to the continuing development of psychoanalytic field theory. The emphasis of this series is on contemporary work that includes a vision of the future for psychoanalytic field theory. Since the middle of the twentieth century, forms of psychoanalytic field theory emerged in different geographic parts of the world with different objectives, heuristic principles, and clinical techniques. Taken together they form a family of psychoanalytic perspectives that employs a concept of a bi-personal psychoanalytic field. The Psychoanalytic Field Theory Book Series seeks to represent this pluralism in its publications. Books on field theory in all its diverse forms are of interest in this series. Both theoretical works and discussions of clinical technique will be published in this series. The series editors are especially interested in selecting manuscripts which actively promote the understanding and further expansion of psychoanalytic field theory. Part of the mission of the series is to foster communication amongst psychoanalysts working in different models, in different languages, and in different parts of the world. A full list of titles in this series is available at: www.routledge.com/Psychoanalytic-Field-Theory-Book-Series/ book-series/FIELDTHEORY Playing and Vitality in Psychoanalysis Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro Translated by Ian Harvey Cover image: Drawing by Rocco Civitarese First published in English 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro Translated by Ian Harvey Published in Italian by Cortina Raffaello 2020 The right of Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Civitarese, Giuseppe, 1958– author. | Ferro, Antonino, 1947– author. | Harvey, Ian, active 2013, translator. Title: Playing and vitality in psychoanalysis / Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro ; translated by Ian Harvey. Other titles: Vitalità e gioco in psicoanalisi. English Identifiers: LCCN 2021061915 (print) | LCCN 2021061916 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032245041 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032245058 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003279020 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis. | Play—Psychological aspects. | Vitality—Psychological aspects. Classification: LCC BF173 .C496513 2022 (print) | LCC BF173 (ebook) | DDC 150.19/5—dc23/eng/20220105 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061915 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061916 ISBN: 978-1-032-24504-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-24505-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27902-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003279020 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Preface xi I Dreams, transformations, deconstructions 1 II Vitality as a theoretical and technical parameter in psychoanalysis 7 III Attacks on linking, or uncontainability of beta elements? 23 IV On Bion’s concept of container/contained 37 V Divergences 57 VI The birth of the psyche and intercorporeity 78 VII Going for a stroll: The root of emotions 93 VIII T owards an ethics of responsibility: Notes in the margins of Bion/Rickman correspondence 103 IX Freud’s Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning: A possibly irreverent comment 113 X Ogden’s parentheses, or the continuity between conscious and unconscious experience 121 XI Reality and fictions: People (story), internal objects (unconscious fantasies), characters (casting) 133