Correspondence: Franco Borgogno, Ph.D., Via Cavour 46, Torino 10123, Italy. e-mail: borgogno@psych.unito.it; Massimo Vigna-Taglianti, M.D., P.zza Statuto 11, Torino 10122, Italy. e-mail: vignataglianti@fastwebnet.it

¹Ph.D., is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Psychology Faculty of Turin University, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana (International Psychoanalytical Association), Chair (for Europe) of the IPA Committee "Psychoanalysis and University," and Member of the "Sándor Ferenczi International Foundation."

²M.D., is Child Neuropsychiatrist, Full Member of the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana (International Psychoanalytical Association), Lecturer at the School of Specialization in Clinical Psychology at Psychology Faculty of Turin University and Member of the "Associazione Culturale Sándor Ferenczi."

Abstract

Within a clinical–theoretical framework focused on transference–countertransference dynamics, the authors reflect on role-reversal and on the reasons it has been neglected for a long time in literature. This primitive inter- and intra-psychic process, often at the forefront in our practice, will be discussed in its principal aspects (patient's unconscious identification with parents' psychic culture and concomitant dissociation of the infant part of the self), signaling how the enactment can be an inevitable element which, putting into play the past dissociated object relationships, becomes a source of mutative understanding.