La caduta dell’aura in psicoanalisi: Elvio Fachinelli a Milano

In this presentation I shall outline the problem of alienation as it was dealt with in relation to psychoanalysis in Milan during the 70s and 80s. In Italy, there were at least two mainstream tendencies in the left-wing approach to the field of mental health: so-called Anti-psychiatry (Foot 2017), which will not be discussed here, and criticism of psychoanalysis. This criticism resulted in different developments: in continuity with, or in breaking with, psychoanalysis. The case of Fachinelli, who worked in continuity with psychoanalysis - with reference to Sandor Ferenczi (Dupont 1995) - will be considered in terms of Ferenczi’s idea of “reciprocity”, with particular reference to the Italian reception of Jean-Jaques Abrahams’ L’homme au magnetophone (1969) which was was published by L’Erba Voglio (a “proletarian and feminist” publisher with which Fachinelli was involved) in a revised edition as L’uomo col magnetofono (Abrahams 1977).