Psychoanalysis to the People! Alienation, Anguish and the Unconscious in a Review of the Italian Left, 1961-1969

MAURO PASQUALINI

Psychoanalysis and History

Edinburgh University Press

Lugar: Edinburgh; Año: 2013 vol. 15 p. 45 - 67

1460-8235

This article explores how the Italian filmmaker and novelist Lorenza Mazzetti(1928?) has appropriated psychoanalysis. By looking at her novels and basically ather column of personal advice within the Communist weekly Vie Nuove during the1960s, the article shows her increasing use of psychoanalytic insights as a form ofdefending a secular sexual morality and changes in gender relations as well as wayof analysing the relationship between youth and politics. The article highlightsMazzetti?s initial distrust towards psychoanalysis, and contrasts it with herincreasing enthusiasm for psychoanalysis as a necessary companion ofrevolutionary activism. It takes Mazzetti?s case as evidence of the receptivitytowards psychoanalysis among Italian Communists.