At the origins of the Italian psychoanalytic movement: Marco Levi Bianchini’s syncretism

Abstract

Marco Levi Bianchini, an Italian psychiatrist, Freud’s translator and correspondent, is an uncomfortable pioneer of psychoanalysis in Italy. The authors introduce a short overview of his psychoanalytic works, highlighting the peculiar blend of very different theoretical positions - sometimes even irreconcilable - such as Freudian meta-psychology and Lombroso’s criminology. The authors report several passages taken from the medical records compiled by Levi Bianchini when he was the Director of a psychiatric hospital, underlining the use of several psychoanalytic categories and their interpretation. This report shows the equivocal quality of Levy Bianchini’s interpretation of metapsychology, radically transformed by a syncretistic attitude.