[Dream and initial phases of analysis: history, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic remarks]. / Il sogno e le fasi iniziali dell'analisi: anamnesi, diagnosi, prognosi e indicazioni terapeutiche.

The authors underline the importance of dreams in the initial phases of psychoanalysis as an instrument of diagnosis and prognosis. In these first phases of explorative analysis or of consultation the dreams will show the structures and the deep mental dynamics of the patient, they will also show the expectations that the patient has with regard to the therapeutic prospects, and also the effectiveness of the encounter between patient and therapist. The authors underline the significance of the moment in which the dreams are told to the analyst: it is possible, therefore, to speak about anamnestic dreams, about dreams that are a consequence of the decision to start an analysis, about dreams that referred to the first contact between the patient and the analyst, about dreams that concern the consultation phase broadly. The authors, moreover, describe several examples of patients' dreams in the first phases of explorative analysis and they supply them with an interpretation and with a diagnostic and prognostic use, and they also propose indications on how and in what way and if it is the case to continue the therapy.

[The individual and the collective]. / Individuo e collettivo.

The author introduces and illustrates the position of mental analysis that gives great importance to the relationship between the individual and the collective and he traces in the human mind an endopsychic collective significant structure. This statement sees the collective pressure always present around and inside the individual and we can consider him like a focusing point of a very extensive communication and relationship system. The individual, although he is a part of the collective, is also an antagonist of it: as a collective body cell he can be used or even eliminated by the same collective. Nevertheless through sexuality the individual tries to seize and obtain something favourable for himself, but on this level he meets with his biological and collective dramatic fate. The little family collective is of intermediate structure between the developing individual (child) and the big collective (society). In this sense regarding their own children parents are a filter or a membrane who can let or not let outside stimulus pass through and this can be unsuitable and in consequence harmful. The author vividly shows how in analytic therapy the analyst, as well as reestablishing the filter function that is often lacking in the patient's mind, will struggle together with the patient to obtain differentiation and individualization. The author to end with, refers to simplified quotations of the dreams of patients undergoing analysis, showing how these dreams are tinged by our submersion in the collective or by our relative emersion as individuals.