Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975
Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto

Alessandra Diazzi

Italian Perspectives 51

Legenda

13 September 2022  •  142pp

ISBN: 978-1-781887-94-3 (hardback)  •  RRP £85, $115, €99

ISBN: 978-1-781887-98-1 (paperback, forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-781888-02-5 (JSTOR ebook)

Access online: Books@JSTOR

ItalianFictionPsychoanalysisPolitics


Over the post-war decades, Italy’s ‘extroverted’ cultural identity was mostly oriented towards social and political questions: the inward turn of psychoanalysis was regarded with suspicion, as a fin-de-siècle cure for middle-class neuroses. The consulting room was, for militant intellectuals, antithetic to class-consciousness and the collective struggle. But despite this resistance from leftist, or Communist, intellectual discourse, psychoanalysis became steadily more influential.

In the period up to the late 1970s, the triad of politics–ideology–commitment acted as a threefold track through which psychoanalysis could spread, and the resistance to it transformed Italy into a unique cultural laboratory for experimental negotiation between analysis and Marxism. Many of these encounters occurred in post-war literature, and Diazzi maps out a distinctively Italian, ideological repurposing of psychoanalysis, turning its inward view into an outward tool of political agency.

Reviews:

  • ‘Through her three case studies Diazzi has successfully demonstrated how psychoanalysis penetrated literature and culture in post-war Italy. As she confirms: “The assimilation of psychoanalysis into literature actively contributed to this rewriting of the discipline”.’ — 606-08, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Katja Liimatta
  • ‘As Diazzi’s three case studies evince, the relationship between psychoanalysis and Italian culture can be more fruitfully understood in terms of reciprocal ‘diffraction’ than as a conflictual opposition. Diazzi creates a suitable environment for understanding the topic thanks to her ability to offer clear summaries of the sociocultural contexts in which the three authors worked.’ — Roberta Passaghe, Modern Language Review October 2024, 119.4, 572-74 (full text online)

For a contents listing, see this volume at JSTOR.

Bibliography entry:

Diazzi, Alessandra, Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto, Italian Perspectives, 51 (Legenda, 2022)

First footnote reference: 35 Alessandra Diazzi, Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto, Italian Perspectives, 51 (Legenda, 2022), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Diazzi, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Diazzi, Alessandra. 2022. Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto, Italian Perspectives, 51 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Diazzi 2022: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Diazzi 2022: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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