Psychoanalysis Listening to Love: Passion and Bonds , by Simonetta Diena, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 206 pp
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Book Review Psychoanalysis Listening to Love: Passion and Bonds, by Simonetta Diena, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 206 pp.
Simonetta Diena lives and works in Milan, Italy, as I do. As Francesco Barale says in the Preface (p. xv), Diena’s clinical practice ‘‘is starred with a rich repertory of literary, poetic, artistic, and musical references’’ to the theme of love. On the front cover, this theme is synthesized by a picture by Chagall of a couple of lovers floating through the air. Barale then reveals his orthodox Freudian orientation when he speaks of ‘‘the combination between libidinal and aggressive components’’ (p. xvi). In the Introduction (p. xl–xlii), Diena lists the twelve chapters of the book. The first concerns the theoretical psychoanalytical contributions to the subject of love. The second discusses the earliest mother-child relationship. The third deals with adult love. The theme of the fourth is abandonment. The fifth explores the question of ‘‘fatal love,’’ to which death is the final solution. The sixth is on transference love. The seventh concerns the early loss of the first love object. The title of the eighth is ‘‘Love in old age.’’ Chapter Nine concerns adultery. The tenth chapter concerns ‘‘The incapacity to love.’’ Chapter Eleven is on homosexuality. Finally, in the last chapter Diena discusses the theme of love in several films. In each chapter there are one or two case histories. In connection with the early mother-child relationship, in Chapter Two, ‘‘Ways of Seeing: the role of vision’’ on p. 18, the author describes a prototypical scene. On a beach, a small child wanders away from his mother towards the water, then turns round and says: ‘‘Watch me.’’ The author compares the mother never losing sight of her child to the analytic situation where the patient says to the analyst: I feel relaxed here because I know you are looking at me; even if you don’t see me you’re always keeping an eye on me. . . you hold me together, you prevent me from falling to pieces. . . . In both situations, the mother-child and analystpatient were in mutual contact, in which the role of vision took centre stage. Being in contact with someone, really seeing them, means being completely connected to the feeling of being alive, both for the person looking and the person being looked at. (pp 18-19) In almost every case, the analyst reacts to some communication of the patient with a feeling or association of her own, which she then communicates to the patient, who in turn reacts. One of the most striking examples is in Chapter Ten, on p. 133. The analyst realizes she tends to doze off during sessions. On her side, the patient, Antonella, describes coenaesthetic misperceptions: she feels as if she were hovering in the air, or glued to the couch. ‘‘One day I suddenly wake up, totally
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lucid. I think I dreamt that the lid was being taken off a coffin and that I was free to get out. In that very moment, I hear Antonella say: ‘I feel as though they have taken a lid off a coffin, I feel freer now.
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