An Italian psychoanalyst and raconteur reflects insightfully on life and the common experiences that make us human.
"The brief pieces collected in this volume are as much short stories as they are essays as they are psychoanalytic studies. In every chapter, the stage is set for consideration of large matters--the nature of passion, the crucial role of illusion and disillusion in life, what constitutes heroism--but always in relation to a very particular story from the author's life, and always a story told with the kind of charming humor that points us toward tolerance for and...

For the psychoanalyst, there exist certain rare and special moments when emotion, imagination and thought combine to enable both patient and analyst to reach a profound understanding of what is happening between them. Such subjective, relational and clinical experiences are perhaps as rare as they are unforgettable. Over the past twenty years, Stefano Bolognini has concerned himself with empathy, one of the most significant yet hotly debated and difficult to define concepts in the recent history of psychoanalysis. In this book, the author traces the philosophical origins of empathy and its...