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Contemporary Perspectives on
Relational Wellness 1st ed. Edition

Floriana Irtelli
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Floriana Irtelli
CONTEMPORARY
PERSPECTIVES ON
RELATIONAL WELLNESS
Psychoanalysis and the Modern Family
Contemporary Perspectives
on Relational Wellness
“Floriana Irtelli highlights the contradictions of modern human beings; contra-

dictions that are evident in the inconsistent values reflected in our society. She
focuses on family, capturing new traits that spring from our hyper-modern soci-
ety of globalization and hyper-consumerism. An enlightening read for those
studying social phenomena and the evolution of the individual.”
—Elena Cedrola, Professor of Marketing and Management and Director of the
Master Course in Marketing Management at the Univeristy of Macerata, Italy
“The world is in continuous transformation. Will psychoanalysis keep up with the

times and propose itself as a useful resource for the needs of hyper-modern man?
Irtelli’s work makes us think so, because it urges us to question ourselves over
what it means to inhabit today’s society.”
—Romina Coin, Director of the Italian Society
of Psychoanalysis of the Relationship, Milan, Italy
“This is an ethically and responsibly oriented project, since it is the specific task
of psychology to deal with the transformations and changes that affect commu-
nity, as well as those concerning the intrapsychic world.”
—Emanuela Saita, Professor of Health Psychology and Methods and Techniques
of the Psychological Interview, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
“This is an intriguing book on contemporary relationships. Each chapter

explores a thousand questions of love, family, and betrayal in the ‘Facebook Era.’
Something is happening today under the eyes of a million people, but few still
write and comment on it. Why?”
—Federico Durbano, Professor of Medicine at Milan University, Italy
Floriana Irtelli
Contemporary
Perspectives on
Relational Wellness
Psychoanalysis and the Modern Family
Floriana Irtelli
Catholic University
of the Sacred Heart
Milan, Italy
ISBN 978-3-319-91049-9 ISBN 978-3-319-91050-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91050-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942205
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
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Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
A special thanks to Elena, Valentina, Roberta, Emanuela, Emanuele,
Federico, Romina Luca and Enrico.
Contents
1 Introduction: Society, Family, Subjects 1

1.1 Family and Psychoanalysis: From Freud to the
Contemporary Era 3
1.2 The Concept of Proximity Has Changed 20
1.3 The Contemporary Paradoxes 28
References 35
2 Love, Actually 39
2.1 What Is Love? 39
2.2 I Hate You 49
2.3 Beyond Love, Before Hate: Sentimental Shopping and “Top
Pocket” Relationships 53
References 55
3 Marriage and the Parental Bond? 57

3.1 Marriage Today 57
3.2 The Parental Bond 64
References 77
4 Fidelity, Jealousy and Betrayal 79

4.1 Temporary Love 79
4.2 Multifaceted Loyalty and Jealousy 83
vii
viii Contents
4.3 The Bitter Cup of Betrayal 88

4.4 Evolution 94
References 101
5 Stepfamily 103
5.1 Do Not Take It as a Punishment, It Is Only a Remedy 103
5.2 Sons, Brothers, Half-Brothers 112
5.3 Stepfamily 118
Reference 122
6 Relational Well-Being 123

References 136
Bibliography 139
Index 149
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Society, Family, Subjects
In the later 1990s, in the midst of the high-tech boom, I spent a lot of time
in a coffee shop in the theater district in San Francisco […] and I observed
a scene play out there time and time again. Mom is nursing her mocha. The
kids are picking at their muffins, feet dangling from their chairs. And there’s
dad, pulled back slightly from the table, talking into his cell-phone […]. It
was supposed to be a “communications revolution”, and yet here, in the
technological epicenter, the members of this family avoid one another’s eyes.
(Jonathan Rowe, “Reach out and Annoy Someone”,
Washington Monthly, November 2000)
Individuals. Families. Society. We are faced with an image drenched in

Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquidity” and “risks”, which is much under discus-
sion today.
Precisely because of the many social changes currently under way,
contemporary (hyper-modern?) psychoanalysis has become increasingly
interested in the new scenarios embracing the subject, family, society
and their mutual relations; increasing attention is given to topics such as:
“parental role”, “maternal and paternal love”, “marital fidelity”, “step-
family” and “caring for children”. All this speaks of “family”: we are
increasingly asked to get to the heart of—hyper-modern—family bonds.
To contextualize, today we frequently speak of a social environment
full of widespread individualism and of how family and subject are set in
this context. This starting point is important because man is essentially a
© The Author(s) 2018 1

F. Irtelli, Contemporary Perspectives on Relational Wellness,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91050-5_1
2 F. IRTELLI
“relational” and “cultural” being: he cannot be conceived as abstracted

from relationship and culture, outside connections, entirely alone.
Psychoanalysis, as we shall see, has nourished these awarenesses for
some time, and today is particularly called upon to make its contribution,
in a context in which family members “struggle to look each other in the
eyes”, proceed on parallel lines, in a society in which subjects are grow-
ing increasingly “closer and farther at the same time”.
The subject is born of a family, and can contribute to the birth of a
new family, in a genealogical chain that precedes the birth and contin-
ues after death. All this happens in an ever-evolving cultural environment
which also precedes our birth and survives our death.
It has been known for years how the subject is constituted and con-
stitutes itself within the bonds in which it is immersed and inserted—
especially family ones.1 It is then only natural to ask oneself: What is the
role of the family today? Why is it so central now? Functioning as an
intermediary between society and the individual, it is the area that
mediates the family group. How do we clinicians position ourselves in
relation to this data? How can it be useful in the context of a “helping
profession”?
It would be superficial to think, as has often been the case in litera-
ture, that family or society are responsible for the subject’s symptoms,
in a unidirectional manner. For example, and having regard to prac-
tice, it would be simplistic to say that a person develops an eating dis-
order because “it is all his family’s fault”. However, we cannot consider
a subject independently of its evolving context, as even this would be
superficial.
1 This is done through the co-construction of family narratives, stories that are elaborated
about the daily life within the family. They represent a fundamental process from the psy-
chological point of view. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky wrote about when a child inter-
nalizes his experiences with parents to develop the ability to think: children who build their
parents’ accounts of events they have witnessed then begin to relate to themselves, and
the content of their fantasies and their memories becomes an integral and active part of
their inner conscious world (Vygotsky 1934). This approach suggests the possibility that
the processes commonly considered “private” such as thinking and reflecting on ourselves,
have actually originated as a form of interpersonal, family, social communication relation-
ship (Siegel 2001). For further details, see Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Thought and language.
Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press; Siegel, D. J. (2001). La mente relazionale,
neurobiologia dell’esperienza interpersonale. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.
1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIETY, FAMILY, SUBJECTS 3
Perhaps there is a need for an overall, comprehensive vision that goes

beyond not only the linear simplification “family, therefore an individ-
ual’s symptoms” but also the combining of “the subject’s zoom” and
the “wide angle of family and society”. It is not enough to have a clear
picture of both “the frame” and “the picture”; we must conceive the
mutual implications.
1.1 Family and Psychoanalysis: From Freud

to the Contemporary Era
To expand on this, we can say that at first glance in the works of Freud,
psychoanalysis would seem to be a theory of the individual, but it is
reckoned that these theoretical elaborations also contain a latent fam-
ily-group dimension; in fact, even if psychoanalysis originated as a
method of treatment of individuals, and Freud elaborated most of the
theories in terms of “intrapsychic structures”, we must not forget that it
was psychoanalysis that discovered and signaled that the human being is
not conceivable without the existence of others, and that those paradoxical
“attempts at care” that make human beings, classified as “symptoms”,
have a meaning not only for the individual, but also for the relationships
with others.2 The relational theories are therefore salient in psychoanaly-
sis and embrace the family dimension, in continuity with that of the cou-
ple: indeed, group, family and couple are privileged areas of relationship,
of bond. The approach to the family and the couple has attracted the
attention of psychoanalysts to the importance of the function of inter-
subjectivity in the genesis and maintenance of the structure of the psyche
(and the symptoms) and has opened up new horizons, even on the most
“primitive” levels of the psyche, which are expressed also in the context
of family sessions.3 The experience with families allows us to focus on the
importance of real and concrete actions within the family ties, leading to
a clear evolution and openness to relationships, which allows the possibil-
ity for creating new technical conditions to deal with situations in which
2 For further details, see Losso, R. (1984). El Psicoanalisis y el grupo. El Psicoanalisis, a
theory grupal. Rev. Arg. Psychological y Psicoaterapia de Grupo, 7(1), 52.

3 For further details, see Czertok, O., Guzzo, S. A., & Losso, R. (1993).
Controtransferencia y contraidentificatiòn proyectiva en el Psicoanalisis de familia y pareja.

Rev. De Psicoanalisis, 50(4–5), 883.
4 F. IRTELLI
usually “we do not know how to do with the individual approach”. The
explicit intention to develop this theme has progressively been revealed,
starting in the first half of the last century with authors such as Flügel,
who published a psychoanalytic work on the matter,4 illustrating a careful
study about family members.
As already mentioned, the family-group dimension is found in sev-
eral texts by Freud.5 Also, in the Three Essays on Sexual Theory (1905),
Freud speaks of the possible influence of the parents in the transmis-
sion of neuroses to their children: he states that neurotic parents open
up routes that are more direct than the hereditary ones to transmit their
disorder to children, and also that disagreements between parents, or
their unhappy marriage, determine the children’s serious predisposition
for a disturbed sexual development, or for a neurotic illness. Freud also
refers to the negative effects of the mother’s lack of attention to her off-
spring or to the harmful effects of the early absence of one member of
the parental couple, which may be related to the development of hyste-
ria, for example.
The case of Dora, which is the most studied among Freud’s clinical
cases, reveals an indispensable family dimension. Freud (1905) describes
the situation of a young girl entangled in an intricate family situation,
packed with power games and secrets: Dora had been “implicitly deliv-
ered in sacrifice” by her father to a lord in exchange for toleration of his
adulterous relationship with the lord’s wife. Freud also reports that Dora
was complicit in the situation, and in turn colluded with her father’s
clandestine relationship. Curiously, the girl’s mother also “closed one
eye”, or perhaps both. This famous case indicates how the family dimen-
sion was an important focus of attention, in theory and in the clinic,
even in Freud’s time. The symptoms appeared in fact as a communica-
tion for a certain person: as a message and accusation. Equally famous
4 For further details, see Fluguel, S. (1921). The psycho-analytic study of the family.
London: Hogarth Press.

5 Taking into considerations some concrete examples, the theory of identifications and
the second Freudian topic introduces the fundamental theme of intersubjectivity, resulting
in a clear change of perspective. So Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego implies
a considerable change, highlighting how the individual is not conceivable without the other
and is always in relation with others. Then the others, the group, are present in the psy-
chic life of the subject. In addition, the same I who gives the sense of identity to the sub-
ject originates in these relationships: the identifications. For further details, see Freud, S.
(1921). Psicologia delle masse e analisi dell’Io (Vol. IX). Boringhieri.
is the narration about a patient suffering from intense anguish, with the
unconscious purpose of taking the mother prisoner and removing the
freedom of movement necessary to attend the lover (but consciously the
subject is unaware of the mother’s betrayal). Here, the problem of family
secrets, which we so frequently find in dysfunctional families, arises.
Another famous Freudian case is that of little Hans. The child
presented a phobia, which, according to Freud, indicated not
only a psychic conflict but also the denunciation of a family con-
flict; as Freud himself states, both in the case of Dora6 and little
6 The Dora case is still today one of the most interesting studies, not only on a psycho-
analytic level, but also on a narrative one. We can understand how this famous case also
emphasizes the importance of family relationships, which is why it is explored in detail
here: with the study of this case, Freud begins to understand how family relationships actu-
ally matter. The Dora case is a fragment of analysis, which lasted only three months and
then stopped. Freud considers this clinical case crucial for the understanding of mental
processes, with referral to the interpretation of dreams but also to the psychopathology of
everyday life. In the course of the analysis, he occasionally allows the patient to choose the
topic to discuss in the session, and underlines the extreme importance of the dream, which
he considers to be one of the preferential channels through which consciousness can make
manifest the material that has been somehow removed, because it is not accepted, and
therefore expelled from the consciousness itself (according to Freud, these removed ele-
ments reveal themselves in a certain symptom). In this case, Dora’s family and its dynamics
are accurately described: Freud writes of all its components, focusing in particular on the
relationship between the father and the mother. The father, at the time of Dora’s analysis,
is about seventy years old; he is a talented, economically affluent man, a professional who
has been affected by various diseases, including tuberculosis, during his lifetime. And it is
precisely because of this that he and his family visit the health resort near Vienna, where
he will meet Mrs. K. Then, when Dora is fifteen, he is stricken with a paralysis. Unlike
her husband, the mother is a woman who does not embrace her emotions, and this emo-
tional detachment is very evident in the relationship with her daughter. The father’s sister
and his brothers have children with neurotic traits; the brother has hypochondriac tenden-
cies, as does Dora’s aunt. From the age of eight, Dora begins to develop the first neurotic
symptoms: at twelve, she suffers from migraine, at sixteen years of coughing attacks, which
last between three and six weeks. The case begins with a description of the last episode,
which is reported to Freud by Dora’s father: during their stay at the health resort, Dora’s
family gets to know the K. family, composed of Mr. K. and Mrs. K. A close friendship is
established between Dora’s father and Mrs. K., while Dora spends a lot of time with Mrs.
K’s husband. But one day something happens: Dora claims that Mr. K. has made some
advances during a visit to the lake, and reports it to her father, who, however, does not
believe her (influenced, no doubt, by the bond he has established with Mr. K’s wife). Dora
has a strong, perhaps even excessive, admiration for Mrs. K. She does not relate to her as
a jealous woman, as a competitor, but as an admirer. Dora senses the relationship between
her father and Mrs. K., and often tries to find ways to divide them. Then another important
incident further complicates matters. While Dora was at the lake, Mr. K. kissed her, and she
6 F. IRTELLI
Hans,7 the iteration of the family group tends to crystallize the symp-
tom and gives it meaning, depending on the context in which it is
located.
felt a deep disgust. Freud considers it fundamental that all Dora’s symptoms are actually
a way to get the father’s attention: and this is also manifested through the attention that
Dora shows towards Mr. K.’s children (she tries to take Mrs. K.’s place as Mr. K.’s wife).
Dora claims that Mrs. K. is in love with her father (partly because he is a rather wealthy
man). This reveals that Dora is very attached to her father and this bond with Mrs. K. is
unacceptable to her, so she refuses the love for Mr. K. Dora also develops many symptoms.
According to Freud, therefore, the aphonia would be the representation and the realiza-
tion, which fantasy offers, of sexual impulses, which, however, present themselves through
the unconscious reactions in the hysterical subject. Freud also interprets her dyspnea as a
symptom that reflects different dynamics: Dora’s love for her father, her jealousy towards
the mother, the reference to the advances received from Mr. K. It turns out from the
analysis of this case that family relationships are relevant to mental health. To read more
on the subject, see Freud, S. (1901). Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse. In Gesammelte
Werke (Vol. V, pp. 161–285). Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1966 [1901]. Tr. it.
“Frammento di un’analisi d’isteria (caso clinico di Dora)”. In Opere (IV, pp. 305–406).
Boringhieri, Torino 1970.
7 This case highlights the importance of family relations, and how unfortunately they are
not always harmonic. If we now look at the case of little Hans (Freud 1908), we note that
here Freud relies on different clinical and narrative assumptions than those of Dora’s case:
in fact, the analyst is Hans’s father and Freud is the supervisor. This case report is a com-
mentary on a pre-existing written text, consisting of the notes that Hans’s father gave to
Freud and which remained at a provisional level of processing. The narrative technique is
very different, resembling a collage of notes written (also in a dialogical form) by Hans’s
father, and observations and interpretations made by him, with which Freud’s overlap.
After having systematized his ideas on sexuality, on the basis of the underlying hypothesis
that all neuroses have a common root in the vicissitudes of infantile sexuality, Freud, whose
theory encountered much resistance, as a consequence felt more and more intensely the
need to provide clinical trials to support hypothesis. In 1908, he was offered the opportu-
nity to provide the evidence he required to support his theory, studying the case of phobia
in a five-year-old child (Little Hans). Freud had treated his mother for a neurosis about
which he provides no other information. The son’s phobia manifested itself in the fear of
being bitten by a horse. The analysis of the phobia is based on the transcription that Hans’s
father made of the talks he had with his son. The phobia arises when Hans is five years old,
but some precedents of interest are given. Hans is an alert and lively child, who manifests
early on a naive interest in urinating and the differences between male and female anat-
omy that he cannot decipher. His father’s transcripts also include interviews before Hans
developed a problem. Freud gives great value to this material, but does not ask why it was
recorded. The reason is obvious. Hans’s father is a neophyte of psychoanalysis and observes
with a watchful eye the development of the child to grasp the evidence of the veracity of the
Freudian theory on child sexual development. When Hans shows interest in his own urinat-
ing, the urination of animals and adults, this interest is constantly encouraged by his father.
The parental attention paid to the child’s sexual development is rigorous. This behavior is
Freud believed that the closest relatives of the patient showed little
interest in promoting the healing of their family member; rather, they
seemed to preserve the current status, substantiated by the same recur-
siveness of their interactions, so that the patient cannot move differently
in the context.
Even today we see how, superficially, when conflicting relation-
ships occur between family members, the publicly defined “healthy”
relative often seems to put their needs and desires ahead of the inter-
est of healing the family member labeled as “sick”; on the other
hand, often in family therapy, parents request the transformation into
seen by Freud as commendable, and evidence of the consequence of an education free from
the “usual omissions”. In fact, however, the parents frustrate the curiosity of the child: the
father never shows himself naked to him, the mother has some reluctance, and both forget
to explain to their son the anatomical differences between man and woman and how chil-
dren come into the world. When he is three and a half years old, and a little sister comes
into the world, Hans is at home. He realizes that a doctor has been called and, entering
the bedroom after the delivery and seeing the basins full of bloody water, is led to think
that children are brought by the stork. In short, the attitude of the parents is, on the one
hand, morbid in relation to the sexual development of the child; on the other, repressive.
Hans is in the phase of manipulation when an important episode occurs: At three and a half
years he is surprised by the mother with his hand on his penis, and she threatens: “If you
do that, I will have Dr. A. cut your penis.” Another similar episode occurs a few months
later when Hans is four years and three months old. This morning his mother bathes and
dries him as usual, applying talc near his penis, but taking care not to touch it. Hans asks:
“Why don’t you put your finger on it?” Mom: “No, it’s a dirty thing.” Hans: “Why dirty?”
Mom: “Because it is not right.” Even later, the parents insist on inhibiting and negatively
judging the tendency Hans has to touch his penis. We do not know much about his par-
ents. Here and there, however, it appears that, presumably exasperated by the vivacity of
the child, the mother threatens to abandon or beat him. At five years old, Hans develops
the phobia of horses. The advent of the phobia is preceded by a crisis of anguish during
which he expresses the fear of being abandoned by his parents, especially his mother, and
represses the need to be close to her and pampered. He is on his way back from a walk
with his mother, who reports that he was afraid that a horse would bite him. Subsequently,
Hans manifests all the symptoms of the phobia: the terror at the sight of the horses, the
avoidance. The contents of the phobia are specified. Hans is not afraid of all horses, but
only of those attached to transport wagons, when these are loaded. His fear is more intense
when there is only one horse, and it is not just about being bitten. Hans thinks that when
the horses have to pull a heavy load, they may fall and and kick. He is also very frightened
by seeing the carters beat the horses and shout at them. Freud relates that “a long time
before the phobia, the child was troubled by observing the whipping of the horses”. These
data, which testify to a lively sensibility, would lead Hans, in terms of common sense, to see
in the horse as a being that, harnessed, subjected to a heavy effort and whipped, falls and
becomes angry. If the bite is an expression of anger and, at the same time, of remorse, the
8 F. IRTELLI
a “non-problematic” child, but once the child is restored, he goes his

own way, which, paradoxically, frequently leaves parents feeling more dis-
satisfied than before. “What is of concern here is not primarily Freud’s
speculation about archaic society but the insight into the family as a soci-
etally determined locus in which personality structure is formed, and
which in turn is socially relevant” (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research
1972, 133).
Several theories have been developed with regard to this
phenomenon—expressed in a few concepts: “family connection”,

“door-entry”, “link”, “functional coupling” (by, respectively: Ronald
David Laing [1984], Enrique Pichon-Rivière [1971], René Kaës [1996],
Enrico Vincenti [2013])—to highlight the tendency to maintain one’s
own configuration. These bonds emerge and are substantiated in the
mutual commitment to preserve their way of being, and some through
the attempt to regulate the way of being of others (acting on the experi-
ence of others).
These dynamics also decline on the couple’s level; various cases reveal
that when a man has been freed from his inhibitions, he decides to break
the marriage (which promoted those inhibitions). Freud himself clearly
shows how neurosis always has an interpersonal and family dimension,
horse is Hans himself, subjected by his father to an innovative and repressive pedagogical
experimentation: encouraged to grow up well and quickly to satisfy the narcissism of par-
ents who consider themselves pioneers of a new pedagogical model, and to repress, in the
name of their moralisms, their legitimate curiosity. But why the horse? Because, evidently, it
is the first living thing with features designed to promote identification that Hans sees.
The father, who evidently has already communicated to Freud his previous observations,
informs him of the situation and asks for his help. Freud invests him in the role of analyst
of his son, who is subjected to exhausting analytically oriented interrogators. The conclu-
sion reached by Freud on the basis of the transcribed interviews is that “Hans is really a
small Oedipus, who wants to get rid and suppress his father to be alone with the beauti-
ful mother, to sleep with her”; “under the fear of the biting horse, expressed at first, we
have discovered the deepest fear of the falling horse, and both of them, the horse biting
and falling, are the father, who will punish Hans for having nourished towards him desires
so bad”; “all moving or loading wagons and omnibuses are nothing but storks’ crates in
the form of caravans, they are of interest to the child only as symbolic references to preg-
nancy … So the horse that falls is not only the father who dies, but also the mother who
gives birth. There is no need to add that the baby is the son of Hans-Edipo.” To read
more on the subject see Freud, S. (1908). Analyse der Phobie eines funfjahrigen Knagen.
In Gesammelte Werke (VII, pp. 245–379). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1968. Tr. it.
Analisi della fobia di un bambino di cinque anni (Casoclinico del piccolo Hans). In Opere
(V, pp. 481–590). Torino: Boringhieri, 1972.
and how family ties condition the presence of symptoms: if the symp-
tomatology disappears, the “pathological” links also disappear. Freud
anticipates the ideas that systemic theory will develop much later,8 both
on familial homeostasis and on the family sense of the symptom.
Passing now from father to daughter, we can say that Anna Freud
was an influential psychologist who had a great impact on psychoanaly-
sis, psychotherapy and child psychology. Anna Freud did more than live
in “her father’s shadow”; she became one of the world’s foremost psy-
choanalysts and is recognized as the founder of child psychoanalysis. She
built her theory of infant and child growth from hundreds of detailed
written observations of infants and young children at various ages and
stages of development, from a few months to five years old. Even for
Anna Freud (1962, 1965), it is important, in therapy with children, to
include parents in the field of observation, so as to ensure their collab-
oration: this allows the therapist to then switch from zooming in on the
subject to a wide angle view—that of the family. In the first chapter of
Normality and Pathology (1965), Anna Freud in fact notifies her desire
to provide parents with the corresponding indications to “discovered dis-
coveries”. For example, parents were asked to try to reduce their chil-
dren’s fear of them. This passage reveals initially that one has in mind an
“ideal subject” that must act in a certain way, according to an idealiza-
tion, for which it is necessary to “correct and straighten”. Anna Freud,
however, noted the ineffectiveness of a corrective approach, which gives
advice, for the full prevention of neurosis. Indeed, it must be stressed
that the role of parents is of great importance in the development of chil-
dren, but is not the determinant causing neurosis or health; there are
many other factors that intertwine with each other (Engel 1977, 1980).
Extending the argument, we can say that Anna Freud devoted herself
also to the prevention of neurosis and developed an excellent theory
of object relations; conducting research on how to prevent the rise of
neurosis in the development of children, she investigated if a psychoana-
lytic education could help in an appropriate process of growth, even for
children who came from concentration camps. Anna Freud strength-
ened awareness of the importance of the mother to the child in war-
time (even if “not a particularly good mother”), which is the outcome
8 To read more on the subject, see Marcer, R. (1985). La obra de Sigmund Freud, punto
de partida para therapy y el estudio psychoanalytic de la familia. Monograph, Instituto de

Psicoàanalisis. Buenos Aires, Asociation psychoanalytic Argentina.
10 F. IRTELLI
of detailed knowledge of the growth and structure of the child’s mind,

in which the figure of the mother is for a certain time the sole signif-
icant representative of the outside world. She noted, for example, that
children were less likely to be traumatized by bombing if they were with
their mothers, and if their mothers remained calm (Dawson 2001). Her
decision to include relations with parents in the field of observation of
the child’s psychoanalysis, in order to obtain parents’ collaboration, was
an innovation in the psychoanalytic field (Irtelli 2016). Unfortunately,
however, over time, she became less optimistic about the possibility that
a psychoanalytic education would always manage to prevent psychopa-
thology: she observed how, despite an attempt to provide parents with
the appropriate indications on how to behave with children (based on
psychoanalytic discoveries), experience had shown that neurosis cannot
be fully prevented. The way in which parents educate the child is very
important, but is not the only determinant of a healthy or unhealthy
development. As we will see, this complex dynamic also involves other
factors (biological, psychological, social and cultural). Even if the family
environment is very important, it appears that the development of the
subject is not linear, and the advice that you can always prevent an illness
(following a cause–effect logic) is questioned. Anna Freud’s theories are
still very interesting today.9 Also Harry Stack Sullivan enhances the rela-
tional and family dimension. According to Sullivan, what the parents do
9 As we have highlighted, the attention given to family dynamics and to the interaction
between parent and child is also very important in Anna Freud’s contribution, but there
are also other relevant elements of her theoretical production. The authors who reviewed
Anna Freud’s contributions agree on some fundamental aspects of her thinking (Young-
Breuehl, 1996): a first aspect concerns her theoretical position that had highlighted her
link to Sigmund Freud’s theorization; the second relevant aspect is her proposal of original
theories and new contributions. Her strong bond with her father’s theories consists in shar-
ing his classical theory and his metapsychology, but the importance of her original and new
contributions represented a great step for psychoanalysis.
After conducting many studies and checks, Anna Freud became much less optimistic
about the possibility that psychoanalytic education could always prevent psychopathology.
In the first chapter of Normality and Pathology in Childhood (1965), she wrote about psy-
choanalysis discoveries and about her conceptualization of prevention: initially, if she tries
to give parents the corresponding indications regarding the new discoveries that have
occurred to prevent the pathology—for example, the importance of child sexuality—she
recommends a more lenient attitude towards its manifestation; when the importance of the
super-ego was established, she suggests reducing the fear that children could have of their
own parents. But in the end, after numerous attempts, Anna Freud concludes that accord-
ing to psychoanalysis there cannot be a complete prevention of neurosis. Of course, there
“structures the Self”: if the mother responds to the child in a construc-

tive and encouraging way, the subject will be optimistic in life, will have
confidence and will be positive; in fact, Sullivan maintains, we have as
many selves as the relationships we establish. The child then structures
the self in relation to experiences of gratification and anguish. The part
are cases in which a psychoanalytic education helps the child to find appropriate solutions
that safeguard mental health, but there are also many other childern with an internal dis-
harmony that cannot be prevented, and this becomes the starting point for a pathological
evolution of one kind or another (Freud 1965) However, Anna Freud continued to attrib-
ute particular importance to: the influence of parental reality on the child, the potential
influence of the environment, and the need to investigate the balance between internal and
external forces in the child’s psyche (Freud 1965). According to the author, the psycho-
analysis of the child does not have to interpret the child’s situation exclusively in terms
of internal reality, because there is the risk of neglecting patient reports about the envi-
ronmental circumstances of the moment: relations and enviroment are no less important
than internal reality. This also highlighted the importance of the family environment for
the development of the subject, even if it is not the only determining factor (according
to the Anna Freud, for example, merely altering external reality cannot always produce a
healing effect, except perhaps in the very early childhood). Child analysts must relate to
the harmful external factors that acquire pathological significance through interaction with
innate predispositions and acquired and internalized attitudes of the ego’s libido. However,
it should be emphasized that when we talk about education on a psychoanalytic basis, it is
not a question of pedagogical aspects, but of translating psychoanalytic conceptions with
the aim of helping the child to progress in his normal development.
In Vienna and in London, Anna Freud explored psychoanalytic pedagogy in more depth,
thus demonstrating her interest in education; then she continued in the practice of the
Jackson Nursery in Vienna and the Hampstead War Nurseries in London. However, already
in this last activity, the education about psychoanalytic theories assumes different meanings
from pedagogy. Certainly, poor children in Vienna, and those separated from their parents
in London were also given physical care (nourishment and medical treatment provided by
the pediatrician and friend of Anna Freud, Josephine Strauss), but of fundamental impor-
tance in the theoretical approach was psychological understanding. This understanding led
to a number of contributions in cooperation with Joseph Goldstein, of Yale Law School,
and Albert Solnit at the Yale Center, including a trilogy of works: Beyond the Best Interests
of the Child (1973), Before the Best Interests of the Child (1979) and In the Best Interests of
the Child (1986). These books are dedicated to the psychoanalytic understanding of chil-
dren who, belonging to atypical, divorced or adoptive families, must be placed in a foster
family or institution. The authors discuss the problem, taking into account the needs of the
child at each specific stage of development, the support and the circumstances necessary
to promote healthy maturation, the role of the father and mother in relation to their chil-
dren, the possible typical family effects, foster caregivers, adopters and the care provided by
the residential institutions; they also examined the ways in which disabilities, diseases and
physical traumas can interfere with normal development, stop it or force it in directions
that make it difficult, pushing the effort of adaptation to the limit. The impetus for direct
12 F. IRTELLI
of the ego considered good is related to rewarding experiences with the

mother. For example, the child thinks, “if you are good with me, then
I am a good subject”, and this gives him a sense of security; the “bad
me” is instead a derivative of the distressing experiences that takes place
in the relationship with the mother; finally, the non-ego derives from a
removal of excessively distressing and unacceptable experiences, always
in the relationship with the mother, which is substantiated in “Nothing
answers, then I do not exist.” The subject’s emptiness and absence are
then structured. Sullivan also talks about this line of the self as a multi-
ple: we have as many selves as our relationships because we discover our-
selves according to how others evaluate us: the mother gives an implicit
evaluation, which is internalized. It builds the identity of the subject.
For Heinz Kohut, the accent is also on the family and its dynamics:
this is displayed in his concept of “psychopathology of the parents” in
which the “fundamental genetic trauma” of the son, a common fac-
tor underlying the pathology of the progeny, is rooted (Kohut 1971,
113–114).
observation of the child derives from an interest in verifying the hypotheses on child devel-
opment, derived from her father in the psychoanalysis of adults. This came initially with
the opening of the Jackson Nursery in Vienna, where Anna Freud saw a unique opportu-
nity to learn how to test psychoanalytic ideas in a typical daycare program (Sandler 1996).
The work, continued with the Hampstead War Nurseries in London, where she directed
studies on separation and different substitutes, on libidinal development, on the impact of
the internal and external world on the child, on child development and on the systematic
use of observations in children. She also wrote numerous reports on the activities of the
Hampstead War Nurseries and described the most important scientific conclusions derived
from this work. She states that many psychoanalysts had proposed the idea that the sci-
entific and therapeutic value of psychoanalytic treatment was directly proportional to the
depth of the psychic states examined (Freud 1936), and, starting from this observation,
Anna Freud points out that the psychoanalyst cannot directly observe the profound uncon-
scious but only its derivatives mediated by the ego of the subject. Psychoanalysis is therefore
dedicated to the exploration of the conscious dimensions of the psyche. She revisited the
theories of Sigmund Freud and became increasingly aware of the inadequacy of the phases
of libidinal development as a frame of reference in considering all aspects of the develop-
ment of childhood pathology. For example, it is clear that the classical libidinal phases did
not adequately adapt to the development of the child’s aggression and were not completely
suitable for an evolutionary categorization of the child’s object relations, and certainly
did not constitute a sufficient basis for understanding the complexity of ego development
and of the super-ego. Moreover, from the psychopathological point of view, increasingly
the presence of disorders different from neurotic ones emerged and therefore cannot be
explained in terms of regression fixation with respect to the phases of psychosexual develop-
ment. The awareness of these limitations led her to the brilliant solution of introducing the
concept of evolutionary lines, which, although not contradicting the idea of development
If the mother fails to modulate the anxiety and reacts with panic rather
than raising one impassable wall between self and child she will determine
an inclination […] to the uncontrolled spread of anxiety or induce in him
the formation of an impoverished psychic organization. (Kohut 1984)
According to Kohut, the unavailability of real objects for the child is

the fundamental root of psychopathology, just as the availability of self
objects is an important requirement of mental health. If a “positive feed-
back” in the relationship supports the cohesion of the self and the par-
ents, according to Kohut, to promote the children’s health, it should
also propose an “optimal frustration”, since it is a necessary requirement
to achieving good mental health (but this perspective seems to be based
on preconceptions on “how the things should be”).
The eminent psychologist Alfred Adler had also made some attempts
at family therapy, in order to solve conflicts within families, in accord-
ance with his theory on the “struggle for power”. John Bowlby too
according to the libidinal phases, allows additional ones in order to avoid the existing
restrictions in classical theory. The evolutionary lines theorized by Anna Freud are based
on the central idea that detailed observations of behavior (i.e. an accurate study of surface
phenomena) should allow a professional with adequate training to draw inferences on the
functioning of the inner life of the child. For further details, see Freud, A. (1927). Four lec-
tures on child analysis, in The Writings of A. Freud. Madison, CT: International Universities
Press. 1974 vol. 1; Freud, A. (1936). The ego and the defense mechanisms in Works vol. 1,
Torino: Bollati Boringhieri; Freud A. (1942). Young children in a war time a year’s work in
a residential war nursery. London: Allen and Unwin; Freud, A. (1962). The psychoanalytic
study of the child, International University Press, Madison; Freud, A. (1965). Normality
and pathology in childhood assessment of devotion. New York: International Universities
Press; Freud, A. (1973). Beyond the best interests of the child. Madison, CT: International
Universities Press; Goldstein, J., Freud, A., & Solnit A. (1979). Before the best interests of
the child. New York: Free Press; Goldstein, J., Freud, A., Solnit, A. J., Goldstein, S., &
Robson, K. (1986). In the best interests of the child. Journal of the American Academy
of Child Psychiatry, 25(6), 857; Young-Breuehl, E. (1996). Anna Freud as a historian of
psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 51, 56–68; Sandler, J. & Dreher, A.
(1996). What do psychoanalysts want? London: Routledge. Edgecumbe, R. (1981).
Towards a developmental line for the acquisition of language. Psychoanalytic Study of the
Child, 36, 71–103; Edgecumbe, R. (1984). The development of symbolization. Bulletin
of the Hampstead Clinic, 7, 105–126. Dawson, L. (2001). Anna Freud: A view of devel-
opment, disturbance and Therapeutic techniques, Edgcumbe, R. (Infant Observation, 4:3,
pp. 113–118). London and Philadelphia: Routledge; Irtelli Floriana (2016). Illuminarsi di
Ben-essere. Rome: Armando Editore; Freud, A. (1936). l’Io e i meccanismi di difesa in Opere
vol. 1, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1978. Freud, A. (1962). The psychanalytic study of the
child. Madison: International University Press. Freud, A. (1965). Normality and pathology
in childhood assessment of development. New York: International Universities Press.
14 F. IRTELLI
(a London pediatrician and psychoanalyst who has greatly influenced

and changed psychology in recent years) focused on family relation-
ships. He went into analysis with Joan Riviere and was supervised by
Melanie Klein, but his model is different from Freud’s and Klein’s the-
ories. Bowlby refers to many disciplines,10 and his premises are based
also on Darwin’s ethology and theory of natural selection; he concep-
tualized what he termed a new type of instinctual theory. Bowlby’s main
contributions concern his hypotheses on attachment as a motivational
system that leads the child to develop a specific relationship, defined as
an “attachment relationship”11: expanding the theory of attachment, he
took particular interest in the factors that characterize the mother–child
bond, and those related to the realization of emotional bonds within the
family.
10 Examining more closely this interdisciplinary aspect, we can say that Bowlby felt a
need to study how the psychopathological processes develop and to do this he focused on
many of the disciplines that deal with man and that can be used to explain his behavior;
indeed, John Bowlby’s treatise always maintains an interdisciplinary character. His specu-
lation is based on contributions from various sciences: cybernetics, systems theory, Piaget’s
approach to the study of cognitive psychology, ethology and evolutionary theory. In all his
research, however, psychoanalysis has always been used as a reference framework because
he started from a psychoanalytic training and approach, and believed that psychoanalysis
is the most suitable theory to provide explanations in the psychopathology field, and also
because concepts used by his model (object relations, separation anxiety, defense, mourn-
ing) are essential elements of psychoanalytic thought. On the other hand, as for the contri-
bution made by systems theory to Bowlby’s thought, it consists of the idea that the human
being, in this case the child, is like a system provided by an autonomous organization that
works with a variety of processes of regulation and feedback, on which it is not possible
to operate analytically, dividing the organism into linearly operating mechanisms (Shaffer
1971). The comparison between data on children and those observed in other animal spe-
cies brings the author closer to ethology. He starts from concepts developed in this field:
the “imprinting” concept based on ethological observations that show how the bond that
the child establishes with the mother is independent of the fact that the mother provides
nourishment, just as occurs in the case of the imprinting of Lorenz’s ducklings (1935).
A second element referring to ethology is “the need for heat” detected following obser-
vations on primates (Harlow and Zimmerman, 1959). For further details, see Shaffer, R.
(1971). The growth of sociability. London: Penguin; Lorenz, K. (1935). Companionship in
bird life: Fellow members of the species as releasers of social behaviour. In E. Schiller (Ed.),
Instinctive behaviour. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
11 For further details, see Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment.
New York: Basic Books; Bolwby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss. Vol. 2: Separation: Anxiety
and anger. New York: Basic Books; Bolwby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss. Vol. 3: Loss:
Sadness and depression. New York: Basic Books; Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. London:
Routledge.
The term “attachment”, in itself, has a general meaning and refers

to the condition of “relational attachment” of a subject: the claim that
a child “has an attachment” means that he feels the need to perceive
closeness and physical contact with a reference person (usually a family
member), especially in particular situations. One of the most important
aspects of the theory is the recognition of the “biological component of
the attachment bond”. In fact, attachment has the function of guarantee-
ing the closeness and “protection” of the attachment figure. Such bonds
therefore play a fundamental role in the survival of the individual.
According to Bowlby, attachment is something that, remaining unal-
tered by momentary situations, lasts over time after being structured in
the first months of life around a single figure; it is very likely that this
bond is established with the mother, since she is the first to take care of
the child, but, as Bowlby believed, there is no data that supports the idea
that a father cannot become an attachment figure if entrusted with the
care of the child.
The quality of the experience defines the security of attachment based
on the sensitivity and availability of the caregiver and therefore the for-
mation of internal operating models, which will define future relational
behaviors. With growth, the initial attachment, formed through the pri-
mary maternal relationship or with a “reference caregiver”, is modified
and extended to other figures, both within and outside the family, until
it is considerably reduced: with adolescence and in the adult phase, the
subject will have in fact matured sufficiently to separate from the primary
caregiver, and to bind to new figures of attachment.
Bowlby believed that the influence of family relationships was
very important, and that the attachment could be either “safe” or “inse-
cure”, depending on the way caregivers behave with the children. A safe
attachment is formed if the child feels protection and affection from the
reference figure; in an insecure attachment, instead, the child feels insta-
bility, prudence, excessive dependence, fear of abandonment from the
reference figure. According to these theories, the child’s attachment type
will also affect his future relationships.12 His hypotheses have given rise
to abundant theoretical research and clinical work.
12 This type of theoretical approach recalls the conviction that from safe parents, who
have good self-esteem, are confident with others and capable of establishing satisfactory
interpersonal relationships, descend children who develop good social skills. On the con-
trary, insecure parents often find themselves with children who are very vulnerable to
stress. In reality, environmental deficiences are not merely imprinted on a passive organism,
16 F. IRTELLI
When I took up this work in 1956 I had no idea of the enterprise in

which I was embarking […] My goal was limited […] But as my theoret-
ical investigation continued I realized little by little that the time I prom-
ised you to plow so lightly was nothing less than what Freud had begun
to plow sixty years ago and contained the same rocky hitches and thorny
tangles he had encountered and had to face: hatred and love, anguish and
defense, attachment and loss. (Bowlby 1969, p. 11)
The contributions made by the earlier authors who developed the theme
of the family are worthy of further examination.
The modern age is characterized by numerous psychoanalytic theori-
zations and discussions that address the subject. We will briefly outline
some of them, which will then be extensively considered in the book.
In Argentina in the 1960s, the family approach immediately found
a pioneer in Enrique Pichon-Rivière. He proposed his “theory of the
spokesman of family suffering”, which denounces the conflict situation
and the chaos underlying the family. He also theorized the tendency to
segregate the “patient” as a repository of family anxiety, of family myster-
ies or family secrets that resembled the “secrets of Pulcinella”, and of the
conspiracy of silence (the defensive necessity, for the whole family group,
of concealing certain psychic contents). According to Pichon-Rivière,
referring back to Freud, no generation is able to hide the significant psy-
chic events from those which follow; therefore, the disease can be seen
as an expression of the inability to process family suffering, and so the
symptom manifests itself in the spokesperson—i.e. a family member13
(Pichon-Rivière 1971).
but are experienced and filled with meaning by the individual who suffers, and the out-
comes can be very different from person to person because the factors involved are mul-
tiple: it is fundamentally important to observe the interaction between psychologic and
social biological factors. For further details, see Engel, G. L. (1977). The need for a new
medical model: A challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196, 129–136. Engel, G. L. (1980).
The clinical application of the biopsychosocial model. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137,
535–544.
13 To point out: in the family group, the disease is the emergent quality that brings us, as
a signal, to an underlying implicit state represented by a particular mode of interaction to

the group which at that time is alienating. The sufferer is the spokesperson through whom
a disease that affected the entire hotel manifests. For further information, see Vincenti,
E. (2013). Il gruppo come proprietà emergente. Ricerca Psicoanalitica, Franco Angeli,
XXIV (1/2013), 12–26; Pichon-Rivière, E. (1971). Del Psicoanalisis a la Psicologia Social.
Buenos Aires: Galena.
Paul-Claude Racaimier14 distinguishes family secrets into two types

specifically on this matter: libidinal and antilibidinal; the former feed
the content of dreams and are secrets that deal with pleasure, sex and
eroticism, remaining hidden in childhood; fantasies that refer to the pri-
mary scene (coitus between parents), to love, to birth are created based
on such libidinal secrets. Antilibidinal secrets, on the other hand, imply
the hiding of transgressions of the law or of the morality of the domi-
nant culture: for example, they concern suicides, scams, homicides, ille-
gitimate births, strange behaviors, perversions, incest and adultery. These
events are not symbolized, but remain like ghosts.
In the wake of these reflections, in 1984 the Argentine Psychoanalytic
Association created the Department for the Psychoanalytic Study of the
Family and of the Couple, the first case of a psychoanalytic institution
which recognized the family and couples’ approach as “official”.
The movement of psychoanalytic family therapy has thus been
strengthened over the decades, particularly during the 1990s, with the
International Psychoanalytic Association Congresses held in Buenos
Aires (1991) and in Amsterdam (1993); more and more discussion
groups on the subject of “Family and the Couple”, as well as working
groups around “Family Psychoanalysis”, have been developed.
Important figures during those years include Jean Lemaire in
France, and Sally Box (1994),15 Arnon Bentovim (1992)16 and Arthur
Hyatt Williams (1983) of the important Tavistock group in England,17
and the Skynner group (1987)18 of the group analytic school. Within
the USA, there were the adherents of the Washington school of
object relations, which followed the ideas of Ronald Fairbairn and
Melanie Klein—among them Roger Schapiro (1993),19 and Jill and
14 For further details, see Racaimier, P. C. (1996). Folies et secretes (editorial), Groupal
n. 2. Paris: Éditions du Collège de Psychanalyse Groupale et Familiale.

15 For further details, see Box, S. (Ed.). (1994). Crisis at adolescence. Object relations ther-
apy with the family. Northvale, NJ: Janson Aronson.

16 For further details, see Bentovim, A. (1992). Trauma-organized systems. Physical and
sexual abuse in families. London: Karnac Books.

17 For further details, see Williams, A. H. (1983). Nevrosi e Delinquenza. Roma: Borla.
18 For further details, see Skynner, R. (1987). Explorations with families. Group analysis
and family therapy. London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge.

19 For further details, see Schapiro, R. L. (1993). Trasference and countertransference in
the analytic treatment of families, 38° Psychoanalytic International Congress. Amsterdam

(Family Therapy).
18 F. IRTELLI
David Scharff (1989, 1991).20 In Germany, the Stierlin group (1977),

which initially adopted a psychoanalytic approach and then moved
towards a systemic-psychoanalytic mixed line, was also renowned.21
It is important to note that in recent years a movement has been
growing to bring systemic and psychoanalytic therapists together. The
former no longer insists on dealing solely with the family, considering the
patient the expression of disturbed relationships and a pathologic fam-
ily context: chosen unconciously by parents to develop a mental disease;
nor do they propose to “cure” families in “ten sessions”. On the other
hand, many psychoanalysts identify elements of great value in the sys-
temic approach. After all, the “I-Es-Super” system was described in detail
precisely by Freud, father of psychoanalysis. Another important notion
of systemic theory, for example, is that the change of a part of the system
implies a change of the whole system; this dynamic is also well known in
a more or less empirical way to psychoanalysts.
We can say that the approach to the family and the couple has drawn
the attention of psychoanalysts to the importance of the relationship and
intersubjectivity in the genesis and maintenance of the structure of the
psyche, and has also allowed us to open new horizons on basic psycho-
analytic concepts. Finally, it has allowed us to study the more “primitive”
levels (as considered and defined in the past) of the psyche, which are
activated in the context of a family session.
Let us now broaden this discussion to include the “hyper-modern
era” in which we are living, to further contextualize the family and its
bonds.
We live today in the era of Facebook, Twitter, Applemania and “glo-
balization”22: a hyper-modern age. It is natural to wonder how the
20 For further details, see Scharff, J. S. (Ed.). (1989). Foundations of object relations fam-
ily therapy. Northvale, NJ: Janson Aronson; Scharff, D. E., & Scharff, J. S. (1991). Object
relations therapy. Northvale, NJ: Janson Aronson.
21 For further details, see Stierlin, H. (1977). Psychoanalysis and family therapy. New
York: Janson Aronson.

22 The word “globalization” means that the network of interdependencies is acquir-
ing a global dimension. It is a process that does not find an equal in the corresponding
expansion of political control bodies. This term also indicates the rise of a “global culture”.
Closely related to the unlawful development of the economy, politics and culture (formerly
coordinated within the national state) is the separation of power and politics: the power,
as the embodiment of the global movement of capital and information, becomes increas-
ingly extraterritorial, while the political institutions continue to have a very local character.
family fits into this framework. As Karen Horney states,23 we must

remember the importance of the interaction between individual and
cultural factors, to understand the complexity of the current social land-
scape. In fact, the results of interactions between individual and cultural
factors are also very important in influencing psychoanalytic theoretical
work: for example, the emphasis given by Sigmund Freud to the sexual
drive, as much as Heinz Kohut’s emphasis on empathy, tells us some-
thing about the personal vision of these authors (as subjects of reflection
and decision, influenced by their personal lived experience), and about
the cultural era in which they lived (as historical-cultural subjects). A fas-
cinating and unique combination, but also relativizable.24 On this theme
of the influence of culture on the theoretical production of authors,
Horney and Fromm affirmed that
In the nineteenth century there was little knowledge regarding cultural

differences, and the prevailing trend was to ascribe the peculiarities of
one’s own culture to human nature in general. In accordance with these
views Freud believes that the human being he sees, the picture which he
For some, globalization is a necessary step to happiness; for others, globalization is,
however, the very cause of our unhappiness. For all, though, it means the inevitable des-
tiny of the world, an irreversible process, which involves us all to the same extent and in
the same way. For more on the subject, see Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its
discontents. New York: New York University Press; Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization:
The human consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-7456-201 2-4.
23 For example, knowledge of the influence of culture on personality was not available in
Freud’s time: he attributed to biological factors the prevailing neurotic tendencies in bour-
geois Western civilization. Horney states that this type is characterized by a great potential
hostility, by a readiness and capacity for hatred rather than for love, for emotional isolation,
by the tendency to be self-centered, failing to recognize that these tendencies are partly
determined by the conditions of a specific social structure. He then states that the sociolo-
gist can provide information only on the social structure of a given culture and the analyst
can offer information only on the structure of a neurosis: the way to overcome the diffi-
culty is cooperative work. Horney also maintains that we must discard the wealth of individ-
ual differences and seek common denominators in the conditions that generate individual
neuroses and in the content of neurotic conflicts. When these data become available to the
sociologist, they can be related to cultural conditions that favor the development of neu-
roses and are partly responsible for the nature of neurotic conflicts. For further details, see
Horney, K. (1939). New ways in psychoanalysis, The neurotic personality of our time self anal-
ysis, our inner conflicts, a constructive theory of Neurosis. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubnur & Co.
24 For further details, see Irtelli, F. (2016). Illuminarsi di Ben-essere. Rome: Armando
Editore.
20 F. IRTELLI
observes and tries to interpret, has a general validity the world over. His
insufficient cultural orientation is closely intertwined with his biologi-
cal premises. Concerning the influence of the environment on the family
in particular, and culture in general he is interested mostly in the ways in
which it affects what he regards as instinctual drives. On the other hand,
he is inclined to regard cultural phenomena as the result of essentially
biological instinctual structures […] Freud’s approach to psychological
problems is characterized by his explicitly refraining from any value judg-
ment, his abstaining from moral evaluation. This attitude is consistent
with his claim about being a natural scientist and as such concerned only
with recording and interpreting observations. In part, as Erich Fromm has
pointed out, it is influenced by the doctrine of tolerance prevailing in the
economic, political and philosophical thinking of the liberal era. (Horney
1939, 40)
1.2 The Concept of Proximity Has Changed

We are living in an era in which not replying to a text message or email
is the easiest thing in the world: we just press the “delete” button. In
an age in which “it is difficult to continue looking each other in the eyes”,
it would, however, be inconsiderate to accuse technology of being the
cause of the recession of “personal closeness/intimacy”, a proximity that
no longer necessarily requires physical, concrete closeness; paradoxically,
then, physical proximity—that of the “real world”—no longer deter-
mines personal proximity: evanescent relationships are outlined, while
the comforts and advantages of virtual proximity (which feeds on social
networks, chat, email) are proudly claimed.
Virtual closeness is often nourished with more enthusiasm than other
forms of closeness, especially by new generations. Its attractions are
many: immediate and fast, frenetic and lazy at the same time. While the
subject tries to get as close as possible to others, chatting, he risks losing
himself only in palliatives that help him remain unaware of his loneliness:
real proximity is replaced by the virtual one.
Zygmunt Bauman, the eminent sociologist, commented in this regard
that if communication were subject to being reduced to the mere trans-
fer of information (bytes, images), then physical contact and the shar-
ing of experiences would be superfluous.25 We also doubt that this
25 For a more detailed discussion, see Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of
human bonds. Cambridge: Polity.

“technological being anywhere and nowhere” could replace a “real and

concrete being together”.
By chatting on the internet, talking on a cell phone, and typing day
and night, intimacy with another person and introspection have often
been replaced by frivolous interactions, the “copy and paste of witty
remarks”, and stereotypical expressions: the emoticon to comment on
everything, the dismissal of conversation. Thanks to social networks,
people also expose their innermost secrets as if they were orders at the
bar: everyone has their eyes on everyone else, watching, perhaps only
ever seeing themselves. In fact, if the increasing use of these means of
communication, particularly by young people, seems, on the one hand,
to be related to social adaptation, to the maintenance of contact with the
world, on the other hand it reveals a narcissistic trait in the user.26
What do we mean by narcissism? Today, it is often substantiated
in trying to preserve one’s self-esteem, in a yearning to be seen and
admired in refined places, in using fashionable accessories, status sym-
bols, in the company of “important” people, in the desire to enhance
one’s image.
Other more detailed scientific studies indicate that a high level of use
of certain social networks is also associated with discomfort and negative
relational outcomes, such as the breaking of ties, misunderstandings and
conflicts related to the use of the social network itself.27 If the purpose of
these tools was to get closer, one wonders, in the light of these studies if,
paradoxically, they only separate us. Surely it depends on how they are
being used, but many questions remain open. Every piece of information
is a springboard for the next; an exchange, restless and frenetic, has the
sole purpose of “keeping the chat alive”.
Frenetic communication thus assumes the form of chatter, curios-
ity and sometimes even misunderstandings. The only thing that counts
is entertaining oneself, communicating. Ties are imbued with the
26 For further details, see Malik, S., Khan M. Impact of Facebook addiction on narcissis-
tic behavior and self-esteem among students. Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association,
65(3), 260–263. Mehdizadeh, S. Self-presentation 2.0: Narcissism and self-esteem on
Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 13(4), 357–364.
27 For further details, see Clayton, R. B., Nagurney, A., & Smith, J. R. (2013). Cheating,
breakup, and divorce: Is Facebook use to blame? Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social
Networking, 16(10), 717–720; Shakya H. B., Christakis N. A. (2017). Association of
Facebook use with compromised well-being: A longitudinal study. American Journal of
Epidemiology, 185(3), 203–211.
22 F. IRTELLI
“messaging” (via Skype, email, SMS, WhatsApp) and the contact lasts as
long as you continue to type: you stop and you’re out.
The new generations are less and less accustomed to confronting one
another face to face but more and more accustomed to “posting” a few
sentences, to be shared with friends, who do not really consider them-
selves such because they do not even say hello on the street when in the
“real world”. We get used to saying certain things virtually that we (for-
tunately) would not be able to say while looking another person in the
eyes. Sometimes communications are made without fearing the reper-
cussions which typically belong to the “real world”, without the fear of
offending, of a dismissal, but which actually can become very real and
tangible after an insult aimed at a boss or his company on social net-
works. News of this kind appears frequently in the newspapers. Only
taking a few clicks, it was “as if” that sentence was something unreal,
evanescent, dreamlike. That same sentence destroys lives, shattering rela-
tionships and careers.
Almost a century has passed but today the words of Heidegger appear
true and “metaphorically prophetic”, when he speaks of a process, ger-
minated and spread over time, a “being there” that remains in the chat-
ter, cut off from the original, genuine and primary relationship with
the world: true, real, concrete, in its details and specificity. Today, this
dynamic is substantiated in solitude, behind closed doors, with a mobile
phone in hand. Even within the family, close but distant around a table.
A process that affects the well-being of the subject.
So why does loneliness spread? Perhaps it appears to be a more
comfortable and secure condition than actually sharing a common space,
even in the family, meeting and clashing. Our world today is character-
ized by distractions and restlessness, and an inability to dwell: human
attention and learning effort are absorbed by virtual contact. The
reduced time dedicated to the acquisition of intimacy in the real world
is linked to all these phenomena. The ability to listen and linger are put
aside: even the first approaches with the other sex begin with a quick
like on meeting and entertainment sites; we no longer meet in bars, in
communal places. Dating sites are often regarded as a supermarket of
the other sex: you go back to the market to “do some shopping”, you
browse the menu from the beginning, or you open a new menu and
with the utmost rationality “filter offers”, without recriminations and
embarrassments. We can detect a certain ravenous “orality in relation-

ships”: long-term commitments are less frequent, long-term involvement
less invested. This happens not only on the level of the couple, but also
in the family and other areas of our social lives (permeated by consum-
erism): a common example is the time best-sellers stay on store shelves;
titles change every week. The entertainment industry recalls the satisfac-
tion of always buying new things, consuming, swallowing; this creates
great appetites, and recursive disappointments.
Everything is an object of exchange and consumption, everything is
accelerated, with bulimic binges of “a thousand – fleeting – first expe-
riences”: to break the ice, a click was enough; as would be necessary to
buy something, the same applies to going out with one another. You get
closer, “you check the zodiac sign”, you explore possibilities, maybe you
live together: satisfied or reimbursed. To break any kind of union only
takes a short time, with a “quick return”. With one click, you can start
again from square one. Creating a consistent relationship requires too
much effort and courage.
Very many comforts, very many risks: the idea of commitment to the
other, especially if unconditional, has lost its popularity socially, overruled
by a thirst for experience. For many, old ties are no longer in fashion.
With the new methods of contact, such as mobile phone apps, it is much
easier to pursue a life of one-night stands, experiencing, as some would
describe it, “all the fish in the sea”: the freedom to choose between
“thousands of offers”, serial dating without the constraint of a stable rela-
tionship and its inconvenient recriminations. Problems arise, however,
when one of the two lovers becomes too fond of the other and would
like a more serious relationship, while the other only wants to “continue
to fish”, to “preserve their freedom”. In the case of relationships, and of
sexual relations in particular, many follow “the cravings”. Bauman notes
that this trend is promoted by the strong powers exerted by the “con-
sumer goods market”. In all areas, it is better to encourage a fast and
voracious desire for something, to which a desire for many other things
will follow, rather than to engage and concentrate with care and dedica-
tion on one thing. Since we are aware that the subject is not “a deriva-
tive” of a culture promoted by powerful forces, but that there is a mutual
influence, it is particularly important to understand the subject’s interac-
tions and its mutual ascendancy with the culture itself—the intertwining.
24 F. IRTELLI
Not only psychoanalysis, but also sociology, recognizes that today

individual freedom is for many “the number one value”.28 We observe
subjects ever on the hunt for new satisfactions and exposed to new
temptations on a daily basis. We fall in love more than once, convinced
that the next love will be an even more exciting experience—a mod-
ern-day version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He is a “collector of pleas-
ures”, “seeker of sensations”, the simulacrum of a man who struggles
to love, precisely because he thinks he will acquire such a capability by
experimenting.
Thus, many ask themselves, with respect to the family, where the
boundary lies between a “personal right to be happy” (and to experience
a new love if the previous one is “finished”) and “cruel individualism”,
aimed at shattering an engagement, a marriage, a family, maybe involving
children. This is a dense and complex issue.
Widening the angle on the city, walking the streets, we witness a
behavior that consists of avoiding others: being dynamic and separate has
become the main survival strategy in hyper-modern metropolises. It is not
a dislike of other people, simply that keeping them at a distance eliminates
the potential embarrassment of relating to them face to face. In the “Big
Brother” society, many relationships come and go, fragile and ephemeral,
and cities come to resemble a vast ant hill where people meet and collide,
remaining strangers and foreigners. Some29 rather bleakly commented:
The Europe of abundance guaranteed by freedom and freedom guaranteed

by the well-being was the light toward which they headed peoples distrib-
uted along its borders. A dazzling light: but when the eyes adjusted and
the contours of things became visible again, what appeared was a long dark
tunnel. (Bauman 1997, 250)
One wonders if, in Western civilization, social structure and a certain

mentality are propitious to the development of love and family, regard-
less of the composition of the latter?
28 For further details, see Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences.
New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-7456-2012-4; Bauman, Z. (1999). The soci-
ety of uncertainty. Bologna: Il Mulino; Bauman, Z. (2008). The art of life. Cambridge, UK
and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
29 For further details, see Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its discontents. New
York: New York University Press.

We can say that we often encounter a difficulty to really love (a bal-

ance of creativity, respect, freedom and sacrifice). To love is to create
a space where it is possible to face life together, but not in a symbiotic
way. Love is embodied, therefore, in an active process, which leads to
the understanding of the other, awareness and tolerance, a negotiation
between mutual points of view. To enter into this process, it is therefore
necessary to create the relevant conditions: to know and recognize the
other as an individual, to be willing to do some soul-searching, regarding
the other not as a continuum of our own past, as the answer to our own
needs and desires—someone who can fix our problems by proxy. Others
would say:
Love does not promise easy access to the happiness. In contrast, the “pure
relationship” inspired by consumerist practices promises an easy life, but
by its nature causes happiness and sense to become hostage to fate. Long
story short: love is not something you can find, it is not an objet trouvé
or a ready-made. It is something that needs to be created and recreated
every day, every hour; that needs to be constantly raised and reaffirmed
and requires attention and care. It is consistent with the increasing fragility
of human bonds, with the unpopularity of long-term commitments, with
the elimination of “duties” by “rights” and avoidance of any obligation
that is not “toward oneself” (“me, I have to”, “I deserve it”, and so on).
(Bauman 2008, 135)
Fromm argues, in this regard, that love is destined to fail if we do not try
to evolve and develop more actively, if we does not start from ourselves.
He argues that satisfaction in loving another person cannot be achieved
without the capacity to love others (with humility, faith and courage).
Love is the desire to take care of and protect the object of our affection.
Love incorporates, expands, in creating something new: those who love
grow by offering themselves to others. In summarizing some of the char-
acteristics of love, Fromm defines it as an art that requires effort and wis-
dom, caring, responsibility, respect and mutual understanding.30
We would like to stress again that love is creative. Even Plato in
his Symposium mentions it, and reports that the prophetess Diotima of
Mantinea pointed out to Socrates, who agreed, that
30 For further details, see Fromm E. (1957). The art of loving. Aquarian/Thorsons.
26 F. IRTELLI
“Love is not love of beauty, as you believe […] but generation and pro-
creation within beauty. To love is to want to “create and procreate” and
therefore those who love “when approaching beauty becomes hilarious,
and his joy is diffused and engenders and creates”.
And the renowned sociologist Bauman also speaks his mind on the
matter:
It is not in the lust for things which are ready to use, beautiful and finite,
that love finds its meaning, but the urge to participate in the becoming of
such things. Love is like the transcendence; it is but another name to
define the creative impulse and as such it is fraught with risk, since
no one may ever know where all creation will end. In every love there
are at least two beings, each of which is the great unknown in the oth-
er’s equation. That’s what makes us perceive love as a quirk of fate: that
strange and mysterious future, impossible to predict, prevent or avoid,
accelerate or stop. To love means to offer oneself to that fate, the most
sublime of all human conditions, a condition in which fear and joy come
together in a blend that no longer allows its ingredients to divide. And
offering oneself to that fate means, ultimately, the acceptance of freedom
in being: that freedom which is embodied in the other, the companion in
love. (Bauman 2003, 10)
Many today, however, believe that loving someone is easy but finding the
right person to love (or to be loved by) is very difficult, “someone to
take me as I am, without complaining”. More and more frequently, we
see forms of “pseudo love” where the need to be loved and accepted,
rather than our own ability to love, know and accept others, is enhanced
first and foremost. The name of (pseudo) love is therefore paired with
many life experiences which are lost in a long chain of similar, brittle,
short, passionate encounters—the belief that mastery of love increases
with the number of experiments and experiences. We become experts.
Sociological studies reveal that the standards of love have dropped31
(Bauman 2003): the horizon of experience which is encompassed by the
term “love” has expanded enormously; indeed, one-night stands are also
referred to as making love. Love as a bond that lasts “until death do us
part” is now often considered very outdated; and this is related to the
31 For further details, see Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds.
Cambridge: Polity.
radical upheaval of family structures. The subject is then caught by both

a desire to love and fear to love, which are intertwined with the diffi-
culties linked to our culture, which is often individualistic. This dynamic
creates ambivalence, attraction and repulsion, to the ambiguous gifts of
love. The temptation to fall in love is strong, but so is the urge to escape.
Another element which contributes to the complexity is that love for
others is often conceived as a function of ourselves: “love” means more
the “demand to be loved” rather than the “attempt to love”. The prob-
lem is how to be loved, and/or how to be lovable. One wonders if this
dynamic is interwoven with an underlying selfish perspective.
What often emerges, however, on various levels, is a certain malaise,
as stated by Kaës. It is natural to wonder what psychoanalysis has to say
about this condition, which occurs when the old safety and depend-
ency nets become unclear and are replaced by convenient contracts that
can be easily terminated. Theories abound on this subject and we will
return to them in detail later; to just mention them briefly, according to
Kaës, the elements that weave suffering and hyper-modern malaise relate
precisely to a psychological and family dimension: he speaks of “pater-
nal instance” (which is a rather complex concept), whose functions and
relevant failings generate anxiety, often because emotional stability is no
longer guaranteed. According to Kaës, it is for the “paternal function”
to open roads for growth, with its “Auctoritas”. And, he continues, it is
through such functions, accepted by the father (or the person who acts
as such), that the process of civilization can find its main support.32
Individualism pervades our culture with the individual and auto-af-
firmation of affection, emotion, desire, need. This can also be read in
light of the subject’s personal history process; this leads to a move-
ment towards the solipsistic and omnipotent affirmation of oneself.
Paradoxically, individualism is approached by massification and fashion,
resulting in an oscillation between the need to comply and to proclaim
oneself as unique. The individual becomes depersonalized, buying what-
ever is deemed trendy by the media; he becomes just another tooth in a
gear, detached from himself, the consumer turned into an object, think-
ing and claiming to be different. People, at least in Western democra-
cies, want to comply and then recite the slogan “it is different”, which
reveals the anxious need to “differentiate oneself” and get away from
32 For further details, see Kaës, R. (2012). The Malêtre. Paris: Dunod.
28 F. IRTELLI
homogenization33; at the same time, there is the fear of impersonality, a

“ghost” that can weaken and deny the uniqueness.
This trend relates to the claiming and defending of the subject’s
uniqueness, its non-interchangeability. Today, in fact, its uniqueness and
difference are idolized, in order to define ourselves in a society where
“being a subject” is the same thing as “freely choosing our own way of
being” but where, in reality, the freedom to define ourselves remains a
real challenge.
1.3 The Contemporary Paradoxes

Finally, we widen the angle to focus on society, in order to outline a
number of paradoxes and contradictions, and to complete the picture.
A prime example in our society today is the approach to food and
nutrition, symbol of a number of double contradictory messages that
target the subject, who, in turn, becomes more and more immersed in
the interactive channels of communication and yet is increasingly alone.
If we do a little channel hopping, we will find programs and advertise-
ments offering two recursive and contradictory themes: fitness programs,
projects and proposals for weight loss, the latest and “best” diets prolif-
erate, while, conversely, we are inundated with with rich, lavish gourmet
foods, tastings, and new easy and fun recipes. The subject is asked to lose
weight (and keep a food regime) while tempting him to overeat, meta-
phorically oscillating between anorexic and bulimic tendencies that are
continuously intertwined. Such phenomena are rampant, as is the grow-
ing demand for professional help. Rapidly expanding industries that pro-
mote the desire for more refined, exotic, sophisticated, expensive foods
exist alongside increasingly prosperous businesses that create “miracu-
lous” products for weight loss and diet. All this happens while obesity
rampages in Western countries.
The hyper-modern man is to keep his body fit in order to be then
allowed to immerse himself in the pleasures of food, perhaps with a sense
33 Equality as a condition of the development of individualism was the meaning proposed
by the Enlightenment philosophy in the West; it meant that no man should be the medium
that determines the end of another man. But equality in a capitalist society is meant as
uniformity rather than unity: the people have chosen the same entertainment, newspapers,
ideas (Fromm 1957). Today, in the wake of this phenomenon, as a reaction to this uni-
formity, we see the need to differentiate ourselves at all costs, claiming our uniqueness, well
represented by the popular slogan “is different”.
of guilt, and alarmed by food-related pitfalls. The foods are in fact pro-
posed alternately as delicious and dangerous: one has to beware of food
seductions. We have witnessed the proliferation of gluten-free, no sugar,
no fat, no animal derivatives foods, foods that do not contain anything
suspicious. Thus, we are engaged in a continuous struggle between
pleasures and dangers in which we are unconsciously immersed, where,
above all, it is hard to decide which is valid (since they apparently contra-
dict each other).
While incompatible values and contradictory impulses are pro-
posed, rarely are their inconsistencies put under the spotlight. In
looking at food that invites us to approach it but which then immediately
arouses reticence, we can recall a number of Gregory Bateson’s studies
on schizophrenia,34 and a renowned clinical episode in which a mother
sees her son after a long period of hospitalization for mental disorders.
The son tries to hug his mother, in an outpouring of affection, but the
mother stiffens immediately; the son (perceiving her stiffness) therefore
withdraws, whereupon the mother tells him: “You must not be afraid to
communicate your feelings.”
According to Bateson, in terms of what is being communicated on a
non-verbal level (i.e. the stiffening), the mother expresses rejection and
closure towards her son’s embrace, whereas on a verbal communication
level (her words sound like a reproach), she denies responsibility for her
son’s estrangement while at the same time implicitly inviting him to
approach; but this leaves the child confused and feeling blamed, incapa-
ble of rebuttal. Contradiction persists, and the efforts to overcome it are
overshadowed by the charges she aims at her son.
Bateson would claim that we are facing a schizophfrenogenous double
bond, the expression of a potentially confusing living environment that,
according to some authors, could represent a perfect scenario for the
creation of a schizophrenic personality. Recent scientific developments
have now yielded other hypotheses and scenarios where events evolve in
a “non-deterministic” manner; nevertheless, we have to consider the fact
that a paradoxal chaos can be confusing and contribute to the organiza-
tion of the child’s personality.
34 For further details, see Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J. H.
(1956). Towards a theory of schizophrenia. In G. Bateson (1972). Towards an ecology of

mind. Milano: Adelphi.
30 F. IRTELLI
This issue recalls the experiments conducted by researchers Neal Miller

and John Dollard on guinea pigs. They offered the rodents lard, inflicting
an electric shock immediately after they had tasted it. After a while, they
started to develop bizarre and irrational behaviors, becoming confused in
a dangerous gluttonous feast, unable to act rationally. In 1941, the two
researchers formulated a theory: when attraction and repulsion are in
balance—where attraction accompanies increasing hunger and repulsion
the approach of the electric wire—the most likely responses are insanity
and irrational behavior. Can this experiment help us to understand the
contradictions of the hyper-modern human being?
Moving to another context—the development of the global lux-
ury market and of the more notorious brands—it is clear that we spend
money on branded goods and designer labels that will provide assurances
of identity, to which not infrequently we delegate a meaning and philos-
ophy of life.
Today, we hear much about the idea of a philosophy of accumulation
of the economic human, or “Homo economicus”,35 as Bauman would
say. This model presents the stereotype of the lonely person looking for
the best deal, guided in his decisions only by monetary benefits; he is
a subject who regards his time as an investment from which to obtain
the “maximum profit” so as to “satisfy his legitimate cravings”. Detached
from self-awareness, his main purpose is the advantageous exchange, and
the satisfactions the interaction/transaction (regardless of the kind) can
bring him. The interaction must obviously be something he can inter-
rupt at any time, freely. The key to everyone’s happiness, according to
this sociological perspective (which is often the stated purpose of such
policy), is the increase in gross domestic product (GDP), which is calcu-
lated on the basis of the total amount of money spent by each individual.
In the wake of the philosophy of accumulation, so many today are
focused on artificial and expensive substitutes of the so-called free rela-
tional goods: less is done for free, but we stock up on resources. To cite
an example, we are reminded of Peter’s case. His parents had taken him
to the doctor’s with a stomach ache, which, after several tests, the doc-
tor diagnosed as “simply psychosomatic”. Peter spends his days at home
35 Forfurther information, see Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human
bonds. Cambridge: Polity.
alone because his parents are “always immersed in their careers”, perhaps
craving their attention, but the time spent together is replaced by the
expensive latest-generation PC, and the stomach ache returns. There
is no doubt that these substitutes cannot replace human ties, even if
expressions of affection are often confused with exchanges of goods.
The close correlation between economic growth and increase in happiness

is widely considered one of the indisputable truths, if not the most obvious
of all. Or at least that’s what the best known political leaders and estimates
and their advisers and spokesmen tell us, and that is what we, who tend to
trust their opinion (…). They act under the assumption that the correla-
tion actually exists, and we do the same. (Bauman 2008, 4)
This could lead us to think that the more we get, the more money we
make, the more we can treat ourselves, the happier we will be: a logi-
cal move from cause to effect. Nothing could be more wrong. This path
leads us to encounter another paradox. We now ride the “inverted U
roller coaster” to happiness: a major contradiction present in both eco-
nomics and psychology.
In recent years, science has extended research into the area of well-
ness, introducing increasingly rigorous methodologies, and Professor
Richard Easterlin (2001, 2003, 2004) can be credited with applying cer-
tain subjective well-being measures to income. His studies have shown
that during the course of a lifetime, increased happiness is not caused
by the growth of economic resources; quite the contrary, once a cer-
tain threshold is exceeded, income continues to grow while the indices
that relate to happiness remain constant, to the point that they tend to
decrease, following an inverted U-shaped curve.
Probably, a lack of assets is offset by the presence of fewer concerns;
the capacity to enjoy tangible assets is physiologically limited: in every-
day life, those who accumulate more liquidity are able to use up just a
little more than others. These studies suggest that it would be better to
devote time to those areas in which hedonic accumulation and social dis-
play are less important—for instance, in “relational goods”.
There is an awareness that GDP, even though necessary, is certainly
not enough to substantiate the concept of well-being, neither of the
subject nor of the family or society. Anything can quite trivially increase
GDP, from the profits generated by funeral companies to lawyers who
32 F. IRTELLI
raise their fees for divorce cases. In an effort to clarify, Richard Layard36
concluded that satisfaction increases with the domestic product only in
the the context of the population’s move beyond hardship and poverty
(i.e. satisfying basic needs, like eating). Once these basic needs (physio-
logical and safety) have been satisfied, the next step is necessarily to con-
sider the interpersonal level. In such a context, GDP is not a relevant
factor.
This brings us to the hierarchy of human needs and motivations,
classified in the famous “Maslow pyramid”.37 Clearly, Maslow’s model
allows us to better understand some of today’s social processes, but it
must be kept in mind that any individual obviously has his unique needs
and requirements, which also tend to vary over time. Each person fol-
lows his own unique path, possesses a unique “rosary”38 of life and
has particular needs depending on the stage he has reached in his life,
along with many other factors. Nevertheless, we can say that needs, as
synthesized and summarized by Maslow, are arranged in a hierarchy of
importance and dominance, which effectively expresses itself in a pyra-
mid: at the base are the most important needs, the physiological ones
(like eating), followed by the need for security, belonging, esteem and
self-realization. Before satisfying needs higher up the pyramid, the indi-
vidual tends to satisfy those basic needs that are most urgent and essen-
tial to ensuring biological self-preservation. Once the “lowest steps” have
been satisfied, the subject can climb to the “higher level”. We see, also
through the studies mentioned above, that once the first two catego-
ries at the base of the pyramid (physiological needs and those relating to
safety) are satisfied, “relational satisfactions” became more desired.
Let us examine some further, curious, data:
36 For further details, see Layard, R. (2005). Happiness. The new science of the common
welfare. Milan: Rizzoli.

37 For further details, see Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper &
Brothers.
38 Given that the developmental objectives of the life cycle change a great deal from per-
son to person, and focusing on only one joint or standardized objective risks losing the
complexity of the individual: each note has its metaphorical and unique “living rosary
beads”. Using this metaphor, we want to point out that every vital hub of the subject,
objective and developmental needs (or “rosary grain”) does not have equals in those of
other subjects; the “grain” may be more distant, hazy, more dense and difficult, or not.
For each is characterized in a particular way, precisely because “the metaphorical rosary”
of each one is unique. For further details, see Irtelli, F. (2016). Illuminarsi di Ben-essere.
Rome: Armando Editore.
Indeed, as fast as subjective well-being was promised and expected to rise

has so far been the incidence of criminality: of burglary and car theft, drug
trafficking, economic graft and business corruption. And of an uncom-
fortable and uneasy sensation of uncertainty, hard to bear, let alone to live
with permanently. Of diffuse and “ambient” uncertainty, ubiquitous yet
seemingly unanchored, unspecificed and for that reason all the more vex-
ing and aggravating. (Bauman 2008, 2)
The general answers to these paradoxes are summarized in the expression

“the paradoxes of happiness”, first introduced by economists and later
in psychology. They are called paradoxes because they indicate that there
is a crisis in the equation which believed that an increase in wealth was
linked to the growth of well-being. This data takes us even farther away
from the misleading idea that those who binge on resources are more
satisfied, or possess “more means to happiness”.
Such studies point out that well-being is different from the GDP or
the GNP (Gross National Product) and undermine the philosophy of the
“Homo economicus”: accumulation and utilities do not coincide with
happiness and even less with well-being; today, despite the proliferation
of products, goods and services, in reality it is increasingly necessary to
turn the spotlight on relationships.
The GNP does not taken into account the health of our children, the
quality of their education or gaiety of our games. It does not measure the
beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It does not think
to evaluate the quality of our political debate or the integrity of our repre-
sentatives. It leaves out of consideration our courage, wisdom and our cul-
ture. It says nothing about our compassion or dedication to our country.
In a word, GNP measures everything, except what makes life worth the
pain of living it. (Bauman 2008, 3)
Finally, we must deal with yet another paradox.

The sadness or joy arising from a given event tends to naturally fade
after a certain period of time. The concept of the “treadmill of pleas-
ure” was then introduced (Brickman and Campbell 1971)39—namely,
what drives us to seek new stimuli to maintain pleasure levels, without
39 For further details, see P. Brickman P., & Campbell D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism
and planning the good society. In M. H. Appley (Ed.), Adaptation-level theory: A sympo-
sium (pp. 55–63). New York: Academy Press.
34 F. IRTELLI
ever reaching satisfaction and ever-lasting happiness. The subject main-

tains the illusion of moving forward to increase his levels of satisfac-
tion, but remains more or less immobile, as if unknowingly running on
a treadmill. A thousand purchases, a thousand relationships, a thousand
experiences. What rises instead while on the treadmill is the level of
addiction and therefore “ambition for consumption”—we desire increas-
ingly intense pleasures in order to maintain our previous level of satisfac-
tion; so shopping malls are designed with the idea of always giving rise
to new desires, which wither as soon as they bloom. Satisfying a desire
freely is the priority, and it’s easy. In recent centuries, the prevailing focus
on the negative aspects of human nature has been widely present in both
the scientific and non-scientific world.
While considering it important to contextualize our discussion of
these social phenomena that form the backdrop to the family, in order to
acheive a more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the mat-
ters we will be exploring, we offer, however, a different perspective than
that of the “last centuries”. By adopting today a new vision of the sub-
ject, which focuses on the process of its development, the relationship
between subject and society can change. If the subject is conceived as
potentially “positive and active”, as someone who can count on himself
to relate to social phenomena and, consequently, to take control over his
life, we therefore do not feel ourselves crushed by society; we can get
involved in the field, in the circles of mutual influence and address what
other authors have previously described as paradoxical.
If we consider that, as the epistemology of complexity emphasizes,
“observer and observed”, subject and society, family and subject, analyst
and patient change together, then this vision can be enriching, and offer
a new perspective: involving ourselves in the area of society, family and
couple, to grow and evolve together.
In this, we deviate from a certain focus that rendered patholog-
ical almost every conceivable problem of human life, even the state of
mourning. The classifications and clusters, such as those recorded in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, are not a scien-
tific document but a “social document”: mental disorders and the many
diagnostic categories of the DSM do not represent a “discovery” in the
way an archaeologist discovers a buried artifact, or a medical researcher
discovers a virus, but have been “invented”.
This is, however, a clue to the profound influence society has
on the subject’s preconceptions: an invitation to understand
macro-dynamics and an incentive not to label but to maintain a care-

ful gaze. Psychoanalysis, then, can and must consider matters from a
constructive perspective and with a critical and curious spirit in this
hyper-modern, surprising, sometimes grotesque, but interesting and fas-
cinating context. It can immerse itself in this world to try to understand
why certain phenomena occur at various interrelated levels (subjective,
couple, family and society), and how the subject can live in an active way
in this context.
Inside the cafeteria, there were five or six tables, and all the people were
eating, so many different faces and each with something different in front
of them, a cutlet, a sandwich, chilli, all were eating, and everyone was
dressed exactly as they had wanted to dress […] two very elegant men
dressed in gray sitting in the corner, and you could see one of them was
crying, it was absurd, but he was crying over a steak and potatoes, crying
silently, and the other did not bat an eye, and he also had a steak before
him, he was just eating, and at one point, that’s it, he got up, went over
to the next table, took the ketchup bottle, returned to his seat and, being
careful not to stain the gray suit, poured a little on the other man’s plate,
the one who was crying, and whispered something, not sure what, then
put the top back on the bottle and began to eat again; these people in the
corner, and everything else around, with a squashed black cherry ice cream
on the floor, and a sign on the bathroom door saying out of order—I
looked at all that and it was clear that one could only think how disgusting,
guys, something so sad it would make you puke, and yet what happened to
me was that while I was standing there in the queue and the Vietnamese
still did not understand a damn thing, I thought, God, that’s great, hav-
ing even a slight desire to laugh, damn how beautiful it all is, everything,
down to the last crumb of crushed stuff on the ground, the last greasy
napkin, without knowing why, but knowing it was true, it was all pretty
damn beautiful. Absurd, isn’t it? (Alessandro Baricco, City, 5–6)
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CHAPTER 2
Love, Actually
2.1 What Is Love?

The first easing of tension in the enchanted game of love usually comes
when the two lovers call each other by their first name. This gesture rep-
resents a solitary promise yesterday that the two individuals’ yesterdays are
embedded in their today. (Franz Rosenzweig 1999, 14)
Plato states in his Symposium that the human being is divided in two and
cannot find happiness unless reunited with the other half from which it
has been separated. Since ancient times, has the subject been presented
as inherently relational? Or just incomplete? This age-old question has
been addressed also by Freud, who states that we seek a partner to avoid
being alone. According to the Freud, the individual feels incomplete
when alone.1
What is love? We ask ourselves this especially today, when the uni-
versal love-thy-neighbor principle—the principle of involvement—
is charged with difficulties, becoming love for a “foreign stranger”
(often poor and exiled). We ask ourselves this in the twenty-first cen-
tury, the century which has seen a decline of tradition: the couple is
often no longer governed by the religious or social rules of the past, by
1 For further details, see Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of works.
Turin: Basic Books.
© The Author(s) 2018 39

F. Irtelli, Contemporary Perspectives on Relational Wellness,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91050-5_2
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“The sixth would be better. The ground slopes from the tee, and
you would be hidden from view by the dog-leg turn.”
“Something in that.”
“My own suggestion would be that you somehow contrive to lead
her into that large bunker to the left of the sixth fairway.”
“Why?”
“I have reason to believe that Jane would respond more readily to
your wooing were it conducted in some vast sandy waste. And there
is another thing,” I proceeded, earnestly, “which I must impress upon
you. See that there is nothing tame or tepid about your behaviour
when you propose. You must show zip and romance. In fact, I
strongly recommend you, before you even say a word to her, to
seize her and clasp her in your arms and let your hot breath sear her
face.”
“Who, me?” said William.
“Believe me, it is what will appeal to her most.”
“But, I say! Hot breath, I mean! Dash it all, you know, what?”
“I assure you it is indispensable.”
“Seize her?” said William blankly.
“Precisely.”
“Clasp her in my arms?”
“Just so.”
William plunged into silent thought once more.
“Well, you know, I suppose,” he said at length. “You’ve had
experience, I take it. Still—Oh, all right, I’ll have a stab at it.”
“There spoke the true William Bates!” I said. “Go to it, lad, and
Heaven speed your wooing!”
In all human schemes—and it is this that so often brings failure to
the subtlest strategists—there is always the chance of the Unknown
Factor popping up, that unforeseen X for which we have made no
allowance and which throws our whole plan of campaign out of gear.
I had not anticipated anything of the kind coming along to mar the
arrangements on the present occasion; but when I reached the first
tee on the Wednesday afternoon to give William Bates that last word
of encouragement, which means so much, I saw that I had been too
sanguine. William had not yet arrived, but Jane was there, and with
her a tall, slim, dark-haired, sickeningly romantic-looking youth in
faultlessly fitting serge. A stranger to me. He was talking to her in a
musical undertone, and she seemed to be hanging on his words. Her
beautiful eyes were fixed on his face, and her lips slightly parted. So
absorbed was she that it was not until I spoke that she became
aware of my presence.
“William not arrived yet?”
She turned with a start.
“William? Hasn’t he? Oh! No, not yet. I don’t suppose he will be
long. I want to introduce you to Mr. Spelvin. He has come to stay
with the Wyndhams for a few weeks. He is going to walk round with
us.”
Naturally this information came as a shock to me, but I masked my
feelings and greeted the young man with a well-assumed cordiality.
“Mr. George Spelvin, the actor?” I asked, shaking hands.
“My cousin,” he said. “My name is Rodney Spelvin. I do not share
George’s histrionic ambitions. If I have any claim to—may I say
renown?—it is as a maker of harmonies.”
“A composer, eh?”
“Verbal harmonies,” explained Mr. Spelvin. “I am, in my humble
fashion, a poet.”
“He writes the most beautiful poetry,” said Jane, warmly. “He has
just been reciting some of it to me.”
“Oh, that little thing?” said Mr. Spelvin, deprecatingly. “A mere
morceau. One of my juvenilia.”
“It was too beautiful for words,” persisted Jane.
“Ah, you,” said Mr. Spelvin, “have the soul to appreciate it. I could
wish that there were more like you, Miss Packard. We singers have
much to put up with in a crass and materialistic world. Only last week
a man, a coarse editor, asked me what my sonnet, ‘Wine of Desire,’
meant.” He laughed indulgently. “I gave him answer, ’twas a sonnet,
not a mining prospectus.”
“It would have served him right,” said Jane, heatedly, “if you had
pasted him one on the nose!”
At this point a low whistle behind me attracted my attention, and I
turned to perceive William Bates towering against the sky-line.
“Hoy!” said William.
I walked to where he stood, leaving Jane and Mr. Spelvin in
earnest conversation with their heads close together.
“I say,” said William, in a rumbling undertone, “who’s the bird with
Jane?”
“A man named Spelvin. He is visiting the Wyndhams. I suppose
Mrs. Wyndham made them acquainted.”
“Looks a bit of a Gawd-help-us,” said William critically.
“He is going to walk round with you.”
It was impossible for a man of William Bates’s temperament to
start, but his face took on a look of faint concern.
“Walk round with us?”
“So Jane said.”
“But look here,” said William. “I can’t possibly seize her and clasp
her in my arms and do all that hot-breath stuff with this pie-faced
exhibit hanging round on the out-skirts.”
“No, I fear not.”
“Postpone it, then, what?” said William, with unmistakable relief.
“Well, as a matter of fact, it’s probably a good thing. There was a
most extraordinarily fine steak-and-kidney pudding at lunch, and,
between ourselves, I’m not feeling what you might call keyed up to
anything in the nature of a romantic scene. Some other time, eh?”
I looked at Jane and the Spelvin youth, and a nameless
apprehension swept over me. There was something in their attitude
which I found alarming. I was just about to whisper a warning to
William not to treat this new arrival too lightly, when Jane caught
sight of him and called him over and a moment later they set out on
their round.
I walked away pensively. This Spelvin’s advent, coming
immediately on top of that book of desert love, was undeniably
sinister. My heart sank for William, and I waited at the club-house to
have a word with him, after his match. He came in two hours later,
flushed and jubilant.
“Played the game of my life!” he said. “We didn’t hole out all the
putts, but, making allowance for everything, you can chalk me up an
eighty-three. Not so bad, eh? You know the eighth hole? Well, I was
a bit short with my drive, and found my ball lying badly for the
brassie, so I took my driving-iron and with a nice easy swing let the
pill have it so squarely on the seat of the pants that it flew—”
“Where is Jane?” I interrupted.
“Jane? Oh, the bloke Spelvin has taken her home.”
“Beware of him, William!” I whispered, tensely. “Have a care,
young Bates! If you don’t look out, you’ll have him stealing Jane from
you. Don’t laugh. Remember that I saw them together before you
arrived. She was gazing into his eyes as a desert maiden might gaze
into the eyes of a sheik. You don’t seem to realise, wretched William
Bates, that Jane is an extremely romantic girl. A fascinating stranger
like this, coming suddenly into her life, may well snatch her away
from you before you know where you are.”
“That’s all right,” said William, lightly. “I don’t mind admitting that
the same idea occurred to me. But I made judicious inquiries on the
way round, and found out that the fellow’s a poet. You don’t seriously
expect me to believe that there’s any chance of Jane falling in love
with a poet?”
He spoke incredulously, for there were three things in the world
that he held in the smallest esteem—slugs, poets, and caddies with
hiccups.
“I think it extremely possible, if not probable,” I replied.
“Nonsense!” said William. “And, besides, the man doesn’t play
golf. Never had a club in his hand, and says he never wants to.
That’s the sort of fellow he is.”
At this, I confess, I did experience a distinct feeling of relief. I could
imagine Jane Packard, stimulated by exotic literature, committing
many follies, but I was compelled to own that I could not conceive of
her giving her heart to one who not only did not play golf but had no
desire to play it. Such a man, to a girl of her fine nature and correct
upbringing, would be beyond the pale. I walked home with William in
a calm and happy frame of mind.
I was to learn but one short week later that Woman is the
unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem we men can never
hope to solve.
The week that followed was one of much festivity in our village.
There were dances, picnics, bathing-parties, and all the other
adjuncts of high summer. In these William Bates played but a minor
part. Dancing was not one of his gifts. He swung, if called upon, an
amiable shoe, but the disposition in the neighbourhood was to refrain
from calling upon him; for he had an incurable habit of coming down
with his full weight upon his partner’s toes, and many a fair girl had
had to lie up for a couple of days after collaborating with him in a fox-
trot.
Picnics, again, bored him, and he always preferred a round on the
links to the merriest bathing-party. The consequence was that he
kept practically aloof from the revels, and all through the week Jane
Packard was squired by Rodney Spelvin. With Spelvin she swayed
over the waxed floor; with Spelvin she dived and swam; and it was
Spelvin who, with zealous hand, brushed ants off her mayonnaise
and squashed wasps with a chivalrous teaspoon. The end was
inevitable. Apart from anything else, the moon was at its full and
many of these picnics were held at night. And you know what that
means. It was about ten days later that William Bates came to me in
my little garden with an expression on his face like a man who didn’t
know it was loaded.
“I say,” said William, “you busy?”
I emptied the remainder of the water-can on the lobelias, and was
at his disposal.
“I say,” said William, “rather a rotten thing has happened. You
know Jane?”
I said I knew Jane.
“You know Spelvin?”
I said I knew Spelvin.
“Well, Jane’s gone and got engaged to him,” said William,
aggrieved.
“What?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Already?”
“Absolutely. She told me this morning. And what I want to know,”
said the stricken boy, sitting down thoroughly unnerved on a basket
of strawberries, “is, where do I get off?”
My heart bled for him, but I could not help reminding him that I had
anticipated this.
“You should not have left them so much alone together,” I said.
“You must have known that there is nothing more conducive to love
than the moon in June. Why, songs have been written about it. In
fact, I cannot at the moment recall a song that has not been written
about it.”
“Yes, but how was I to guess that anything like this would
happen?” cried William, rising and scraping strawberries off his
person. “Who would ever have supposed Jane Packard would leap
off the dock with a fellow who doesn’t play golf?”
“Certainly, as you say, it seems almost incredible. You are sure
you heard her correctly? When she told you about the engagement, I
mean. There was no chance that you could have misunderstood?”
“Not a bit of it. As a matter of fact, what led up to the thing, if you
know what I mean, was me proposing to her myself. I’d been
thinking a lot during the last ten days over what you said to me about
that, and the more I thought of it the more of a sound egg the notion
seemed. So I got her alone up at the club-house and said, ‘I say, old
girl, what about it?’ and she said, ‘What about what?’ and I said,
‘What about marrying me? Don’t if you don’t want to, of course,’ I
said, ‘but I’m bound to say it looks pretty good to me.’ And then she
said she loved another—this bloke Spelvin, to wit. A nasty jar, I can
tell you, it was. I was just starting off on a round, and it made me
hook my putts on every green.”
“But did she say specifically that she was engaged to Spelvin?”
“She said she loved him.”
“There may be hope. If she is not irrevocably engaged the fancy
may pass. I think I will go and see Jane and make tactful inquiries.”
“I wish you would,” said William. “And, I say, you haven’t any stuff
that’ll take strawberry-juice off a fellow’s trousers, have you?”
My interview with Jane that evening served only to confirm the bad
news. Yes, she was definitely engaged to the man Spelvin. In a burst
of girlish confidence she told me some of the details of the affair.
“The moon was shining and a soft breeze played in the trees,” she
said. “And suddenly he took me in his arms, gazed deep into my
eyes, and cried, ‘I love you! I worship you! I adore you! You are the
tree on which the fruit of my life hangs; my mate; my woman;
predestined to me since the first star shone up in yonder sky!’”
“Nothing,” I agreed, “could be fairer than that. And then?” I said,
thinking how different it all must have been from William Bates’s
miserable, limping proposal.
“Then we fixed it up that we would get married in September.”
“You are sure you are doing wisely?” I ventured.
Her eyes opened.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, you know, whatever his other merits—and no doubt they are
numerous—Rodney Spelvin does not play golf.”
“No, but he’s very broad-minded about it.”
I shuddered. Women say these things so lightly.
“Broad-minded?”
“Yes. He has no objection to my going on playing. He says he likes
my pretty enthusiasms.”
There seemed nothing more to say on that subject.
“Well,” I said, “I am sure I wish you every happiness. I had hoped,
of course—but never mind that.”
“What?”
“I had hoped, as you insist on my saying it, that you and William
Bates—”
A shadow passed over her face. Her eyes grew sad.
“Poor William! I’m awfully sorry about that. He’s a dear.”
“A splendid fellow,” I agreed.
“He has been so wonderful about the whole thing. So many men
would have gone off and shot grizzly bears or something. But
William just said ‘Right-o!’ in a quiet voice, and he’s going to caddy
for me at Mossy Heath next week.”
“There is good stuff in the boy.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “If it wasn’t for Rodney—Oh, well!”
I thought it would be tactful to change the subject.
“So you have decided to go to Mossy Heath again?”
“Yes. And I’m really going to qualify this year.”
The annual Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath was one of the

most important fixtures of our local female golfing year. As is usual
with these affairs, it began with a medal-play qualifying round, the
thirty-two players with the lowest net scores then proceeding to fight
it out during the remainder of the week by match-play. It gratified me
to hear Jane speak so confidently of her chances, for this was the
fourth year she had entered, and each time, though she had started
out with the brightest prospects, she had failed to survive the
qualifying round. Like so many golfers, she was fifty per cent. better
at match-play than at medal-play. Mossy Heath, being a
championship course, is full of nasty pitfalls, and on each of the
three occasions on which she had tackled it one very bad hole had
undone all her steady work on the other seventeen and ruined her
card. I was delighted to find her so undismayed by failure.
“I am sure you will,” I said. “Just play your usual careful game.”
“It doesn’t matter what sort of a game I play this time,” said Jane,
jubilantly. “I’ve just heard that there are only thirty-two entries this
year, so that everybody who finishes is bound to qualify. I have
simply got to get round somehow, and there I am.”
“It would seem somewhat superfluous in these circumstances to
play a qualifying round at all.”
“Oh, but they must. You see, there are prizes for the best three
scores, so they have to play it. But isn’t it a relief to know that, even if
I come to grief on that beastly seventh, as I did last year, I shall still
be all right?”
“It is, indeed. I have a feeling that once it becomes a matter of
match-play you will be irresistible.”
“I do hope so. It would be lovely to win with Rodney looking on.”
“Will he be looking on?”
“Yes. He’s going to walk round with me. Isn’t it sweet of him?”
Her fiancé’s name having slid into the conversation again, she
seemed inclined to become eloquent about him. I left her, however,
before she could begin. To one so strongly pro-William as myself,
eulogistic prattle about Rodney Spelvin was repugnant. I
disapproved entirely of this infatuation of hers. I am not a narrow-
minded man; I quite appreciate the fact that non-golfers are entitled
to marry; but I could not countenance their marrying potential
winners of the Ladies’ Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath.
The Greens Committee, as greens committees are so apt to do in
order to justify their existence, have altered the Mossy Heath course
considerably since the time of which I am speaking, but they have
left the three most poisonous holes untouched. I refer to the fourth,
the seventh, and the fifteenth. Even a soulless Greens Committee
seems to have realised that golfers, long-suffering though they are,
can be pushed too far, and that the addition of even a single extra
bunker to any of these dreadful places would probably lead to armed
riots in the club-house.
Jane Packard had done well on the first three holes, but as she
stood on the fourth tee she was conscious, despite the fact that this
seemed to be one of her good days, of a certain nervousness; and
oddly enough, great as was her love for Rodney Spelvin, it was not
his presence that gave her courage, but the sight of William Bates’s
large, friendly face and the sound of his pleasant voice urging her to
keep her bean down and refrain from pressing.
As a matter of fact, to be perfectly truthful, there was beginning
already to germinate within her by this time a faint but definite regret
that Rodney Spelvin had decided to accompany her on this
qualifying round. It was sweet of him to bother to come, no doubt,
but still there was something about Rodney that did not seem to
blend with the holy atmosphere of a championship course. He was
the one romance of her life and their souls were bound together for
all eternity, but the fact remained that he did not appear to be able to
keep still while she was making her shots, and his light humming,
musical though it was, militated against accuracy on the green. He
was humming now as she addressed her ball, and for an instant a
spasm of irritation shot through her. She fought it down bravely and
concentrated on her drive, and when the ball soared over the cross-
bunker she forgot her annoyance. There is nothing so mellowing, so
conducive to sweet and genial thoughts, as a real juicy one straight
down the middle, and this was a pipterino.
“Nice work,” said William Bates, approvingly.
Jane gave him a grateful smile and turned to Rodney. It was his
appreciation that she wanted. He was not a golfer, but even he must
be able to see that her drive had been something out of the
common.
Rodney Spelvin was standing with his back turned, gazing out
over the rolling prospect, one hand shading his eyes.
“That vista there,” said Rodney. “That calm, wooded hollow,
bathed in the golden sunshine. It reminds me of the island valley of
Avilion—”
“Did you see my drive, Rodney?”
“—where falls not rain nor hail nor any snow, nor ever wind blows
loudly. Eh? Your drive? No, I didn’t.”
Again Jane Packard was aware of that faint, wistful regret. But this
was swept away a few moments later in the ecstasy of a perfect iron-
shot which plunked her ball nicely on to the green. The last time she
had played this hole she had taken seven, for all round the plateau
green are sinister sand-bunkers, each beckoning the ball into its
hideous depths; and now she was on in two and life was very sweet.
Putting was her strong point, so that there was no reason why she
should not get a snappy four on one of the nastiest holes on the
course. She glowed with a strange emotion as she took her putter,
and as she bent over her ball the air seemed filled with soft music.
It was only when she started to concentrate on the line of her putt
that this soft music began to bother her. Then, listening, she became
aware that it proceeded from Rodney Spelvin. He was standing
immediately behind her, humming an old French love-song. It was
the sort of old French love-song to which she could have listened for
hours in some scented garden under the young May moon, but on
the green of the fourth at Mossy Heath it got right in amongst her
nerve-centres.
“Rodney, please!”
“Eh?”
Jane found herself wishing that Rodney Spelvin would not say
“Eh?” whenever she spoke to him.
“Do you mind not humming?” said Jane. “I want to putt.”
“Putt on, child, putt on,” said Rodney Spelvin, indulgently. “I don’t
know what you mean, but, if it makes you happy to putt, putt to your
heart’s content.”
Jane bent over her ball again. She had got the line now. She
brought back her putter with infinite care.
“My God!” exclaimed Rodney Spelvin, going off like a bomb.
Jane’s ball, sharply jabbed, shot past the hole and rolled on about
three yards. She spun round in anguish. Rodney Spelvin was
pointing at the horizon.
“What a bit of colour!” he cried. “Did you ever see such a bit of
colour?”
“Oh, Rodney!” moaned Jane.
“Eh?”
Jane gulped and walked to her ball. Her fourth putt trickled into the
hole.
“Did you win?” said Rodney Spelvin, amiably.
Jane walked to the fifth tee in silence.
The fifth and sixth holes at Mossy Heath are long, but they offer
little trouble to those who are able to keep straight. It is as if the
architect of the course had relaxed over these two in order to ensure
that his malignant mind should be at its freshest and keenest when
he came to design the pestilential seventh. This seventh, as you may
remember, is the hole at which Sandy McHoots, then Open
Champion, took an eleven on an important occasion. It is a short
hole, and a full mashie will take you nicely on to the green, provided
you can carry the river that frolics just beyond the tee and seems to
plead with you to throw it a ball to play with. Once on the green,
however, the problem is to stay there. The green itself is about the
size of a drawing-room carpet, and in the summer, when the ground
is hard, a ball that has not the maximum of back-spin is apt to touch
lightly and bound off into the river beyond; for this is an island green,
where the stream bends like a serpent. I refresh your memory with
these facts in order that you may appreciate to the full what Jane
Packard was up against.
The woman with whom Jane was partnered had the honour, and
drove a nice high ball which fell into one of the bunkers to the left.
She was a silent, patient-looking woman, and she seemed to regard
this as perfectly satisfactory. She withdrew from the tee and made
way for Jane.
“Nice work!” said William Bates, a moment later. For Jane’s ball,
soaring in a perfect arc, was dropping, it seemed on the very pin.
“Oh, Rodney, look!” cried Jane.
“Eh?” said Rodney Spelvin.
His remark was drowned in a passionate squeal of agony from his
betrothed. The most poignant of all tragedies had occurred. The ball,
touching the green, leaped like a young lamb, scuttled past the pin,
and took a running dive over the cliff.
There was a silence. Jane’s partner, who was seated on the bench
by the sand-box reading a pocket edition in limp leather of Vardon’s
What every Young Golfer Should Know, with which she had been
refreshing herself at odd moments all through the round, had not
observed the incident. William Bates, with the tact of a true golfer,
refrained from comment. Jane was herself swallowing painfully. It
was left to Rodney Spelvin to break the silence.
“Good!” he said.
Jane Packard turned like a stepped-on worm.
“What do you mean, good?”
“You hit your ball farther than she did.”
“I sent it into the river,” said Jane, in a low, toneless voice.
“Capital!” said Rodney Spelvin, delicately masking a yawn with two
fingers of his shapely right hand. “Capital! Capital!”
Her face contorted with pain, Jane put down another ball.
“Playing three,” she said.
The student of Vardon marked the place in her book with her
thumb, looked up, nodded, and resumed her reading.
“Nice w—” began William Bates, as the ball soared off the tee, and
checked himself abruptly. Already he could see that the unfortunate
girl had put too little beef into it. The ball was falling, falling. It fell. A
crystal fountain flashed up towards the sun. The ball lay floating on
the bosom of the stream, only some few feet short of the island. But,
as has been well pointed out, that little less and how far away!
“Playing five!” said Jane, between her teeth.
“What,” inquired Rodney Spelvin, chattily, lighting a cigarette, “is
the record break?”
“Playing five,” said Jane, with a dreadful calm, and gripped her
mashie.
“Half a second,” said William Bates, suddenly. “I say, I believe you
could play that last one from where it floats. A good crisp slosh with
a niblick would put you on, and you’d be there in four, with a chance
for a five. Worth trying, what? I mean, no sense in dropping strokes
unless you have to.”
Jane’s eyes were gleaming. She threw William a look of infinite
gratitude.
“Why, I believe I could!”
“Worth having a dash.”
“There’s a boat down there!”
“I could row,” said William.
“I could stand in the middle and slosh,” cried Jane.
“And what’s-his-name—that,” said William, jerking his head in the
direction of Rodney Spelvin, who was strolling up and down behind
the tee, humming a gay Venetian barcarolle, “could steer.”
“William,” said Jane, fervently, “you’re a darling.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said William, modestly.
“There’s no one like you in the world. Rodney!”
“Eh?” said Rodney Spelvin.
“We’re going out in that boat. I want you to steer.”
Rodney Spelvin’s face showed appreciation of the change of
programme. Golf bored him, but what could be nicer than a gentle
row in a boat.
“Capital!” he said. “Capital! Capital!”
There was a dreamy look in Rodney Spelvin’s eyes as he leaned
back with the tiller-ropes in his hands. This was just his idea of the
proper way of passing a summer afternoon. Drifting lazily over the
silver surface of the stream. His eyes closed. He began to murmur
softly:
“All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up shoreward,
Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair, Like a
woodland lake’s weak wavelets lightly lingering forward, Soft and
listless as the—Here! Hi!”
For at this moment the silver surface of the stream was violently
split by a vigorously-wielded niblick, the boat lurched drunkenly, and
over his Panama-hatted head and down his grey-flannelled torso
there descended a cascade of water.
“Here! Hi!” cried Rodney Spelvin.
He cleared his eyes and gazed reproachfully. Jane and William
Bates were peering into the depths.
“I missed it,” said Jane.
“There she spouts!” said William, pointing. “Ready?”
Jane raised her niblick.
“Here! Hi!” bleated Rodney Spelvin, as a second cascade poured
damply over him.
He shook the drops off his face, and perceived that Jane was
regarding him with hostility.
“I do wish you wouldn’t talk just as I am swinging,” she said,
pettishly. “Now you’ve made me miss it again! If you can’t keep quiet,
I wish you wouldn’t insist on coming round with one. Can you see it,
William?”
“There she blows,” said William Bates.
“Here! You aren’t going to do it again, are you?” cried Rodney
Spelvin.
Jane bared her teeth.
“I’m going to get that ball on to the green if I have to stay here all
night,” she said.
Rodney Spelvin looked at her and shuddered. Was this the quiet,
dreamy girl he had loved? This Mænad? Her hair was lying in damp
wisps about her face, her eyes were shining with an unearthly light.
“No, but really—” he faltered.
Jane stamped her foot.
“What are you making all this fuss about, Rodney?” she snapped.
“Where is it, William?”
“There she dips,” said William. “Playing six.”
“Playing six.”
“Let her go,” said William.
“Let her go it is!” said Jane.
A perfect understanding seemed to prevail between these two.
Splash!
The woman on the bank looked up from her Vardon as Rodney
Spelvin’s agonised scream rent the air. She saw a boat upon the
water, a man rowing the boat, another man, hatless, gesticulating in
the stern, a girl beating the water with a niblick. She nodded placidly
and understandingly. A niblick was the club she would have used
herself in such circumstances. Everything appeared to her entirely
regular and orthodox. She resumed her book.
Splash!
“Playing fifteen,” said Jane.
“Fifteen is right,” said William Bates.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
“Playing forty-four.”
“Forty-four is correct.”
Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash!
“Eighty-three?” said Jane, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“No. Only eighty-two,” said William Bates.
“Where is it?”
“There she drifts.”
A dripping figure rose violently in the stern of the boat, spouting
water like a public fountain. For what seemed to him like an eternity
Rodney Spelvin had ducked and spluttered and writhed, and now it
came to him abruptly that he was through. He bounded from his
seat, and at the same time Jane swung with all the force of her
supple body. There was a splash beside which all the other splashes
had been as nothing. The boat overturned and went drifting away.
Three bodies plunged into the stream. Three heads emerged from
the water.
The woman on the bank looked absently in their direction. Then
she resumed her book.
“It’s all right,” said William Bates, contentedly. “We’re in our depth.”
“My bag!” cried Jane. “My bag of clubs!”
“Must have sunk,” said William.
“Rodney,” said Jane, “my bag of clubs is at the bottom
somewhere. Dive under and swim about and try to find it.”
“It’s bound to be around somewhere,” said William Bates
encouragingly.
Rodney Spelvin drew himself up to his full height. It was not an
easy thing to do, for it was muddy where he stood, but he did it.
“Damn your bag of clubs!” he bellowed, lost to all shame. “I’m
going home!”
With painful steps, tripping from time to time and vanishing
beneath the surface, he sloshed to the shore. For a moment he
paused on the bank, silhouetted against the summer sky, then he
was gone.
Jane Packard and William Bates watched him go with amazed
eyes.
“I never would have dreamed,” said Jane, dazedly, “that he was
that sort of man.”
“A bad lot,” said William Bates.
“The sort of man to be upset by the merest trifle!”
“Must have a naturally bad disposition,” said William Bates.
“Why, if a little thing like this could make him so rude and brutal
and horrid, it wouldn’t be safe to marry him!”
“Taking a big chance,” agreed William Bates. “Sort of fellow who
would water the cat’s milk and kick the baby in the face.” He took a
deep breath and disappeared. “Here are your clubs, old girl,” he
said, coming to the surface again. “Only wanted a bit of looking for.”
“Oh, William,” said Jane, “you are the most wonderful man on
earth!”
“Would you go as far as that?” said William.
“I was mad, mad, ever to get engaged to that brute!”
“Now there,” said William Bates, removing an eel from his left
breast-pocket, “I’m absolutely with you. Thought so all along, but
didn’t like to say so. What I mean is, a girl like you—keen on golf and
all that sort of thing—ought to marry a chap like me—keen on golf
and everything of that description.”
“William,” cried Jane, passionately, detaching a newt from her right
ear, “I will!”
“Silly nonsense, when you come right down to it, your marrying a
fellow who doesn’t play golf. Nothing in it.”
“I’ll break off the engagement the moment I get home.”
“You couldn’t make a sounder move, old girl.”
“William!”
“Jane!”
The woman on the bank, glancing up as she turned a page, saw a
man and a girl embracing, up to their waists in water. It seemed to
have nothing to do with her. She resumed her book.
Jane looked lovingly into William’s eyes.
“William,” she said, “I think I have loved you all my life.”
“Jane,” said William, “I’m dashed sure I’ve loved you all my life.
Meant to tell you so a dozen times, but something always seemed to
come up.”
“William,” said Jane, “you’re an angel and a darling. Where’s the
ball?”
“There she pops.”
“Playing eighty-four?”
“Eighty-four it is,” said William. “Slow back, keep your eye on the
ball, and don’t press.”
The woman on the bank began Chapter Twenty-five.

Contemporary Perspectives On Relational Wellness 1St Ed Edition Floriana Irtelli Full Chapter

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Contemporary Perspectives on

Relational Wellness 1st ed. Edition

“Floriana Irtelli highlights the contradictions of modern human beings; contra-

“The world is in continuous transformation. Will psychoanalysis keep up with the

“This is an intriguing book on contemporary relationships. Each chapter

ISBN 978-3-319-91049-9 ISBN 978-3-319-91050-5 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942205

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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Printed on acid-free paper

1 Introduction: Society, Family, Subjects 1

3 Marriage and the Parental Bond? 57

4 Fidelity, Jealousy and Betrayal 79

4.3 The Bitter Cup of Betrayal 88

6 Relational Well-Being 123

Introduction: Society, Family, Subjects

Individuals. Families. Society. We are faced with an image drenched in

© The Author(s) 2018 1

“relational” and “cultural” being: he cannot be conceived as abstracted

Perhaps there is a need for an overall, comprehensive vision that goes

1.1 Family and Psychoanalysis: From Freud

2 For further details, see Losso, R. (1984). El Psicoanalisis y el grupo. El Psicoanalisis, a

theory grupal. Rev. Arg. Psychological y Psicoaterapia de Grupo, 7(1), 52.

Controtransferencia y contraidentificatiòn proyectiva en el Psicoanalisis de familia y pareja.

London: Hogarth Press.

a “non-problematic” child, but once the child is restored, he goes his

de partida para therapy y el estudio psychoanalytic de la familia. Monograph, Instituto de

of detailed knowledge of the growth and structure of the child’s mind,

“structures the Self”: if the mother responds to the child in a construc-

of the ego considered good is related to rewarding experiences with the

According to Kohut, the unavailability of real objects for the child is

(a London pediatrician and psychoanalyst who has greatly influenced

The term “attachment”, in itself, has a general meaning and refers

When I took up this work in 1956 I had no idea of the enterprise in

a signal, to an underlying implicit state represented by a particular mode of interaction to

Paul-Claude Racaimier14 distinguishes family secrets into two types

n. 2. Paris: Éditions du Collège de Psychanalyse Groupale et Familiale.

apy with the family. Northvale, NJ: Janson Aronson.

sexual abuse in families. London: Karnac Books.

and family therapy. London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge.

the analytic treatment of families, 38° Psychoanalytic International Congress. Amsterdam

David Scharff (1989, 1991).20 In Germany, the Stierlin group (1977),

York: Janson Aronson.

family fits into this framework. As Karen Horney states,23 we must

In the nineteenth century there was little knowledge regarding cultural

1.2 The Concept of Proximity Has Changed

human bonds. Cambridge: Polity.

“technological being anywhere and nowhere” could replace a “real and

embarrassments. We can detect a certain ravenous “orality in relation-

Not only psychoanalysis, but also sociology, recognizes that today

The Europe of abundance guaranteed by freedom and freedom guaranteed

One wonders if, in Western civilization, social structure and a certain

York: New York University Press.

We can say that we often encounter a difficulty to really love (a bal-

radical upheaval of family structures. The subject is then caught by both

homogenization33; at the same time, there is the fear of impersonality, a

1.3 The Contemporary Paradoxes

33 Equality as a condition of the development of individualism was the meaning proposed

(1956). Towards a theory of schizophrenia. In G. Bateson (1972). Towards an ecology of

This issue recalls the experiments conducted by researchers Neal Miller

The close correlation between economic growth and increase in happiness

welfare. Milan: Rizzoli.

Indeed, as fast as subjective well-being was promised and expected to rise