Table Of ContentBUILDING BRIDGES
BUILDING BRIDGES
The Impact of
Neuropsychoanalysis
on Psychoanalytic
Clinical Sessions
edited by
Rosa Spagnolo
First published 2018
by Routledge
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CONTENTS
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS vii
FOREWORD: Making the best of a bad job xi
by Silvio A. Merciai
PART I
NEUROPSYCHOANALYSIS FROM DREAM TO
CASE STUDIES
CHAPTER ONE
Gateways into the dream 3
Rosa Spagnolo
CHAPTER TWO
Foundations of addiction: dysregulated SEEKING 23
and PANIC processes
Maggie Zellner
CHAPTER THREE
Depression in neuropsychoanalysis: why does 39
depression feel bad?
Mark Solms
v
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
The case study in neuropsychoanalysis: a bridge 55
between the objective and the subjective?
Christian E. Salas, Martin Casassus, and Oliver H. Turnbull
PART II
IMPACT ON CLINICAL SESSIONS
CHAPTER FIVE
Psychoanalytic treatment of panic attacks: listening to 87
the emotional system
Rosa Spagnolo
CHAPTER SIX
What does a patient with a gambling addiction 105
“really want”?
Tiziana Bastianini
CHAPTER SEVEN
Going through grief to move away from depression 117
Paolo Chiari
CHAPTER EIGHT
What can neuroscience contribute to the interpretation 127
of dreams and their working through? A clinical case
Francesco Castellet y Ballarà
CHAPTER NINE
Conclusions: bridging the gap 135
Claudia Spadazzi
INDEX 145
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
The editor
Rosa Spagnolo is a child neurologist and psychiatrist, a child and
adolescent psychotherapist, a psychoanalyst, Full Member of the
Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI), and IPA Member. She is Chair
of the IPA Task Force “Freud Legacy”, a project to map the Freudian
Heritage and register his Legacy in the UNESCO list. She works in
the National Health Service on the rehabilitation of deafness, learn
ing/speech disabilities, and developmental disorders. She is primarily
an expert in the treatment of cognitive delays, autism, and child
psychoses; she has been working with neuromotor and rare diseases
in newborns. She is the co-founder of the Italian Psychoanalytic
Dialogues. She is a passionate scholar of neuroscience. She has par tici
pated in conferences, and lectures on topics related to neuropsychi
atric developmental disorder and various other psychoanalytical
topics. In 2007, she published a novel, Chantal (Maremmi Editore,
Florence), on scientific ethical issues, and has numerous professional
publications to her credit.
vii
viii ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
The contributors
Tiziana Bastianini is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, training and
supervising member of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI-IPA)
who lives and works in Rome. She was past Scientific Secretary of SPI.
Past President of the Psychoanalytic Centre of Rome (CPDR). She was
Editor of the journal Psiche, a member of the SPI Committee on
Research, and a member of the SPI Committee on Psychoanalysis
and Neuroscience. She was Clinical Director of clinical services for
psyc hotic patients in the public health service. She has directed many
training projects for mental health workers and has published several
papers on psychoanalytical topics.
Martin Casassus is a psychologyst graduate from Universidad Cen tral
de Chile. During the first years of his career, he worked with autistic
spectrum condition (ASC), pervasive developmental disorders, and
was involved in several research projects. Currently, he is a PhD
student in the Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology,
University of Manchester, where he is working as part of the body,
eye, audition, and movement (BEAM) laboratory, the time perception
laboratory, and autism@manchester group. In addition, he collaborates
at the Head Forward Centre. This mix of activities allows him to create
bonds between the academic world and professional practice.
Francesco Castellet y Ballará is a neurologist and psychiatrist who
trained in the Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI). He is a Full
Mem ber of the SPI/IPA. He has a great deal of experience of interna
tional organisations, having served in IPSO and the IPA as committee
board member. He is also one of the organisers of several editions of
Festival dei Due Mondi di Spoleto: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Art
and Psy choanalysis sections. His main areas of interest are: psycho
analysis and neuroscience, early relational trauma and adult psycho
pathology, pornography, and money. He is currently the psychiatric
and psychoanalytic consultant at the Italian site of the European
Space Agency (ESA). He is co-founder of the Italian Psychoanalytic
Dialogues.
Paolo Chiari is a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, Full Member of the
Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI), and past Scientific Secretary of
the Milan Psychoanalytic Center (CMP) “Cesare Musatti”. He is the
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ix
editor of several books: Il cerchio magico (2009), with Andreina Robutti
(Milan: quaderni del CMP); Navigando l’inconscio (2014), with Marco
Sarno (Milan: Mimesis); La via milanese alla Psicoanalisi (2016) (Milan:
Jacabook).
Silvio Arrigo Merciai is a psychiatrist and a Member of the Italian
Psychoanalytical Society (SPI/IPA). In the 1990s, he dedicated himself
to studying the thought of W. R. Bion, in partnership with Parthenope
Bion Talamo, the daughter of the great psychoanalyst (on this subject,
they co-edited, with Franco Borgogno, two Karnac books: Bion’s
Legacy to Groups and W. R. Bion: Between Past and Future). The fil
rouge in all his professional life was to keep psychoanalysis alive by—
so to say—debugging it. That is why he was involved on several occa
sions in the analysis of the opportunities opened up by the availability
of new internet tools (such as online psychotherapy). The natural
alliance between neuroscience and psychoanalysis has been the main
focus of his studies in the past twenty years, in co-operation
with Beatrice Cannella (Merciai & Cannella, 2009).
Christian Salas is a clinical neuropsychologist and a psychoanalytic
psychotherapist. He works as a lecturer and researcher at the Cog nitive
and Social Neuroscience Laboratory (Diego Portales University, Chile)
and the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Unit (J. H. Barak Psy chiatric
Institute, Chile). He is also the Director of the Diploma in Adult
Neuropsychological Rehabilitation at the same university. His main
interest is in understanding changes in emotion and personality after
brain damage and how psychoanalytic theory and technique can be
adapted to facilitate emotional adjustment. He is actively involved in
the development of private and public neuropsychological rehabilita
tion services in Chile, in order to provide adequate short- and long-term
care to individuals and families with acquired brain damage.
Mark Solms is the Director of Neuropsychology at the University of
Cape Town. He is President of the South African Psychoanalytical
Association and Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and
American Psychoanalytic Association. He is Research Chair of the
International Psychoanalytical Association, Director of the Science
Department of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Co-
Chair of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. He was
awarded the Sigourney Prize in 2012, and Honorary Fellowship of the
