Seminar 2026/27: Foundations of Formal Metapsychology

The 2026/2027 training and research programme focuses on the theme Foundations of Formal Metapsychology. Its aim is to show how Freud’s metapsychology, far from being a speculative apparatus or a metaphorical language, possesses the logical structure of a natural science, and as such can be expressed in a rigorous formal language endowed with the precision and generative power proper to mathematical physics.

Over recent decades the post-Freudian tradition has progressively abandoned the Freudian conception of psychoanalysis as a natural science, reducing it now to hermeneutics, now to rhetorical practice, now to a system of algebraic formalisations lacking combinatorial rules and any real fruitfulness (as in Lacanian notation). The seminar seeks to restore to metapsychology its original epistemological status, taking up the programmatic analogy with the mathematisation Maxwell performed on Faraday’s empirical discoveries: just as the language of differential equations revealed physical consequences invisible to empirical intuition, a formal language for metapsychology makes it possible to generate theoretical predictions beyond the reach of natural-language formulation alone.

The lessons thus aim to show in detail how the fundamental conceptual cores of Freudian theory — psychic space, the drive, the three points of view (topographical, economic, dynamic), the theory of the object, the opposition between Eros and Thanatos, the compulsion to repeat, repression, narcissism, transference — can receive a precise formal characterisation by means of the tools of differential geometry, conformal geometry, the theory of differential equations, and the thermodynamics of dissipative systems (Prigogine). The formal models constructed will be discussed as they arise, showing how they do not replace natural language — indispensable given the nature of the psychoanalytic object, which “speaks” — but rather guarantee its conceptual univocity, theoretical coherence, and capacity to generate new models and new directions of research.

These and other themes will be the object of a study aimed at recognising the incomparable scientific value of Freudian metapsychology and at demonstrating its full formalisability, in the spirit of Freud’s original scientific programme, together with the enormous theoretical and practical advantage that clinical psychoanalysis can draw from it in terms of conceptual univocity and methodological rigour.

The seminar is open to the public and is organised as a course of 11 lessons on a mostly fortnightly schedule, held on Saturday mornings at 10.30 at the premises of the Scuola di Psicanalisi Freudiana (Via Lentasio 7, Milan).

The seminar’s itinerary unfolds in four parts — Epistemological and Methodological Foundations; The Formal Framework; Structures and Applications; An Assessment of the Formalisation Programme — and will be taken up again in part within the study group (open to SPF associates), in a critical approach aimed at testing the fruitfulness of the formal model against a full reading of the reference Freudian texts and contemporary neuroscientific research.

• Understand the neo-transcendental architecture of Freudian metapsychology and the epistemological grounds that establish psychoanalysis as a natural science.
• Master the essential mathematical tools (differential and conformal geometry, differential equations, thermodynamics of dissipative systems) to the extent necessary to grasp their application to metapsychological problems.
• Be able to recognise the formal structure of the fundamental Freudian concepts and to discuss critically the difference between the formalisation proposed here and earlier attempts (Lacan, Matte Blanco, neuro-psychoanalytic models).
• Assess the fruitfulness and scope of the formalisation programme as an instrument of conceptual clarity and scientific rigour, while also acknowledging its limits

• October: 10–24
• November: 7–21
• December: 12
• January: 16-30
• February: 13-27
• April: 3
• May: 8
• June: 5–19

NB: Other in-depth events are reserved exclusively for members. For information and membership requests, please refer to the specific section on the website.

(with the rationale for each choice)

• Baldini, F., Foundations of Formal Metapsychology. A Mathematical Framework for Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory (forthcoming) — reference text of the seminar.
• Baldini, F., Transfert. Sette lezioni sulla teoria freudiana del trattamento psicanalitico, Mimesis Edizioni.
• Baldini, F. – Dalto, S., Il navigatore. Saggio su Parmenide e le origini della scienza sperimentale, Mimesis Edizioni, 2025.
• Freud, S., Complete Works (Standard Edition) — in particular: Instincts and Their Vicissitudes; Repression; The Unconscious; Negation; On Narcissism: An Introduction; Beyond the Pleasure Principle; The Ego and the Id; Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety; The Interpretation of Dreams (ch. VII).
• Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason; Opus postumum — for the noumenon and the shift from the boundary-concept to the frontier-concept.
• Klein, F., Erlangen Programme; Petitot, J., Transcendental Aesthetic and Mathematical Physics — for objectivity as invariance under a symmetry group.
• Husserl, E., The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology — for the critique of phenomenologies.
• Denton, D., The Primordial Emotions; Libet, B., Mind Time; Chalmers, D., The Conscious Mind — for the debate on physiology, consciousness, and qualia.
• Prigogine, I. – Stengers, I., Order Out of Chaos, — for the theory of dissipative systems.
• Lacan, J., Écrits; Matte Blanco, I., The Unconscious as Infinite Sets; Solms, M., The Hidden Spring — for the critical comparison with earlier attempts at formalisation.
• Popper, K., Conjectures and Refutations; Grünbaum, A., The Foundations of Psychoanalysis — for the epistemological debate on scientific status.

Reference texts in mathematics and physics (differential and conformal geometry, differential equations, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, group theory) will be indicated during the course.

Further texts and references will be indicated during the seminar.