Elvio Fachinelli — Psychoanalysis of Dissension in Italy

Abstract

I recently wrote a chapter on the book _The Years of Alienation in Italy_ (Barbetta, 2019) focusing on the persona of Elvio Fachinelli (1928-1989). In this essay, I will outline Fachinelli’s thought and clinical practice from the 1960s to the 1980s, up until his premature death at 61, in 1989. Fachinelli was a prominent exponent of the critical psychoanalysis in Milan; he was a peculiar type of psychoanalyst, not the kind of person easily to be enrolled or framed into a mainstream – whether it be Freudian or Lacanian. But this is not Fachinelli’s main highlight; during the years following 1968 in Europe, there have been many left-wing dissidents, or libertarians, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts: Ronald Laing, Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro, Franz Fanon, Felix Guattari, just to mention few. Fachinelli is important for three main contributions to the field: 1. the way he shaped the connection between psychoanalysis and historical materialism; 2. the issue concerning the possibility of a different kind of psychoanalysis for the working class; and 3. his singular approach concerning what I call _corporeal turn_ in psychotherapy. The arguments with Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan are at the center of the following essay. The years of Fachinelli’s work have not had the same influence and popularity as Lacan’s in Italy. However, Lacan was interested in involving Fachinelli within his movement, yet Fachinelli refused Lacan’s proposal and advanced theoretical and clinical reasons – that I will mention and analyse in this paper - for such said refusal.