SINCE 1983
SCUOLA di PSICANALISI FREUDIANA
Where psychoanalysis is treated as Freud intended it to be: an independent scientific discipline.
School of Thought and Training
We have existed since 1983 to fill a gap in the Italian intellectual and educational landscape: the absence of an institute dedicated to research and training in psychoanalysis and for psychoanalysts. We will never tire of saying it: psychoanalysis is not a psychotherapy, but an autonomous discipline, a natural science.
The School was therefore founded first and foremost as a School of Thought, with the primary aim of recovering and making explicit the naturalistic and rationalist foundations that constitute the indispensable presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory and practice.
From this basis, it became possible to develop and structure a School of Training of excellence, where those who truly wish to engage with the discipline can train as psychoanalysts or simply deepen and enrich their intellectual profile.
Research, in any case, always remains at the heart of all our initiatives.
Psychoanalysis for what it is (and what it is not)
Psychoanalysis is neither an initiatory technique of self-realisation nor a poetics of the concept, but a science like any other, without this leading it to renounce its own specificities.
Psychoanalysis is an autonomous science
The most precise and detailed definition of the term is to be found in Freud’s preface to Max Marcuse’s Dictionary of Sexology (1922), according to which “psychoanalysis” is:
- firstly, a method for investigating psychological processes otherwise inaccessible;
- secondly, a treatment against neurotic disorders, which is based on such investigation;
- thirdly, a body of psychological knowledge obtained in this manner, which gradually accumulates and converges into a new scientific field.
As a science, therefore, it is called upon to develop its own internal epistemology, capable of accounting for the distinctive features of psychoanalysis. This entails both the methodological dimension, which makes explicit the prescriptive elements inherent in the experimental framework specific to psychoanalysis, and the gnoseological dimension, that is, the one concerning the construction of the objectivity proper to psychoanalytic theory.
Psychoanalysis is not a psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic treatment and psychotherapy have incompatible goals: in psychoanalysis, as established by Freud, the goal is cognitive and ethical, whereas in psychotherapy it is medical—the so-called “well-being.” The problem is that this “well-being” remains an objective with an undefined content, and this vagueness has concrete consequences for the very effectiveness of the treatment, which becomes indistinguishable from a mere suggestive effect. Psychoanalytic treatment avoids this ambiguity: consisting of a progressive recovery of self-knowledge through a method of intra-clinical control, it offers an internal criterion of evaluation that allows for the recovery of the subject’s psychic freedom. It is therefore not a matter of curing or healing in the first instance, but of enabling the subject to do so on their own, and it is precisely in this that the necessary precondition for authentically developing one’s inner life lies.
Psychoanalysis, defined as a natural science, takes as the object of its inquiry the subject, the one who thinks. Freudian metapsychology consists in the construction of a veritable physics of the thinking being. Whether considered from a biological, physical, physiological, or ethical point of view, the subject expresses itself through a dynamic of internal forces and their relations with the objects of the external world. Describing these phenomena is the aim of our research.
Since there exists – at least in Italy – no training programme in which all the disciplines required for a psychoanalyst to be equal to the task are taught together, our School has found itself compelled to remedy this lack by every possible means.
For SPF, it is not possible to speak of training except in light of the scientific status of psychoanalysis; for this reason, a foundational formation is required.
Through our editorial publications, our multimedia content, and public events such as seminars and conferences.
The journal Metapsychologica is the official publication of SPF. Its volumes contain the finest results of the School’s internal research, as well as external contributions received on a regular basis.
Why Join
“Here, then, is what one can find at the School of Freudian Psychoanalysis: a theory conceived as a natural science, defined by a specific type of object, and a practice conceived as an experimental investigative device that coincides with the treatment of neurosis, aimed at opening up to the subject the possibility of an ethics.”
Franco Baldini, Founder and Scientific Director of SPF
Other valid reasons to join the School
OPEN AND DIVERSE TRAINING
The only institution that welcomes candidates from all backgrounds, understanding psychoanalysis as a foundational formation.
A VIBRANT INTELLECTUAL CIRCLE
Ongoing exchange with a network of scholars and professionals from diverse disciplines in a stimulating and fertile environment.
ACCESS TO UNIQUE RESOURCES
A rich physical and digital library available to all members.
EDITORIAL OPPORTUNITIES
The possibility to publish research and scientific contributions in the journal Metapsychologica.
MENTORSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL INITIATION
Concrete and free support for beginning a career as a psychoanalyst.
PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
Support and promotion of members’ activities through the School’s channels and initiatives.
Talking about us
