Current Issues in Psychopathology What Happened to Neurosis? What is Freud’s Place?

19 giugno 2026 – IPRS Roma, Istituto Elvio Fachinelli

First of all, let me tell you where I come from. You have been told that I come from the University of Urbino. That is only part of the story. I come from the psychoanalytic work of Giacomo Contri, a Lacanian analysand and translator in Italy. He described himself as a Freudian after Lacan. I, too, describe myself as a Freudian after Lacan.

1. The value-in-use of Freudian concepts

From Giacomo Contri I have learnt that Freudian concepts have value-in-use. The aim of my talk is to highlight the value in use of Freudian concepts. In particular, the concepts of inhibition, symptom and anxiety, which Freud focused on 100 years ago. To say that Freudian concepts have value in use means that they are not useful or necessary only to professionals, only to clinicians or only to psychoanalysts. For 15 years, Giacomo Contri ran an online daily newspaper entitled Think!, in which he used Freudian concepts to interpret public life and the individual events unfolding day by day. It was a fine example of Freudian journalism, useful for making sense of the challenges and tragedies of human thought. Through his psychoanalytic work, Giacomo Contri did not remove Freud from the clinical field, but used him to shed light on political experience as well. […]

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