Reply to Goldberg and Steinberg

Abstract

In response to Peter Goldberg’s (this issue) critical remarks, the author proposes to differentiate between the semantic plane of communication and the semiotic plane, but to place both in the more general category of the symbolic. In humans, non-linguistic communication is always influenced indirectly, if not directly, by the common belonging to the realm of the symbolic and language. The second part of the text contains a commentary on the clinical vignette of Beth Steinberg from the point of view of the theory of the analytical field.

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Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Civitarese

Giuseppe Civitarese, M.D., Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI), and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) and of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He lives and is in private practice in Pavia, Italy. He is the past-editor of the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the official journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. He has published several books, which include: The Intimate Room: Theory and Technique of the Analytic Field (London 2010); The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis (London 2012); Losing Your Head: Abjection, Aesthetic Conflict and Psychoanalytic Criticism (Lanham 2015); Truth and the Unconscious (London 2016); Sublime Subjects: Aesthetic Experience and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis (London 2018); An Apocriphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 2019).