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Abstract
Footnote The authors present some aspects of their experiences in the treatment of two psychotic patients. The first case suffered from hallucinatory mystical delusions and the second from delusional hypochondria and erythrophobia. Since these cases were followed through regular supervision during their novice analysts’ psychoanalytic training, the usefulness of this kind of treatment for the development of current psychoanalytic practice is emphasized.
Notes
1 Translated by Karen Christenfeld.
2 Riccardo Lombardi is the author of this section.
3 Benedetto Genovesi is the author of this section.
4 Matte Blanco (Citation1988) connects the philosophical and mathematical issue of the infinite to the logic of the primary process discovered by Freud (Citation1900) and to the emotional intensity of children and psychotic patients described by Klein (Citation1932). In the psychoanalysis of psychosis the analysts has to accept the patient’s infinite emotions, helping him to unfold them in finite forms (Lombardi Citation2016): in such a way the analysand can cold down his incandescent emotions and learn to think in less extreme and radical ways.
5 The psychotic patient is continuously at risk of falling into a formless infinity: ways of feeling and thinking deprived by respect of boundaries and logical capacity of discrimination. We can find some examples in schizophrenic language (Robbins Citation2002) or in the so called “primary agonies” described by Winnicott (Citation1974).
6 The author of this section is Riccardo Lombardi.
7 When emotions are particularly strong, the mind is pushed to think in infinite terms, following the characteristic of the primary process (Freud Citation1900), in which the discrimination among logical classes is weak or absent (Rayner Citation1995). This lack of differentiation is called by Matte Blanco (Citation1975) “symmetric thinking,” that is typical of the Unconscious (Freud Citation1915), while the antagonistic role of “asymmetric thinking” permits to establish the conscious differentiations of normal thought processes.
8 Sandra Isgrò is the author of this section.
9 Riccardo Lombardi is the author of this section.
10 Riccardo Lombardi is the author of this section.
11 Riccardo Lombardi is the author of this section.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Riccardo Lombardi
Riccardo Lombardi is a psychiatrist and IPA psychoanalyst, and a Training and spervising anayst at the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. He is in private practice in Rome, Italy.
Benedetto Genovesi
Benedetto Genovesi is a psychiatrist and IPA psychoanalyst at the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. He is in private practice in Milazzo, Italy.
Sandra Isgrò
Sandra Isgrò is a psychiatrist and IPA psychoanalyst at the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. He is in private practice in Reggio Calabria, Italy.