ABSTRACT
Retrospective introduction This chapter is the English version of an article that was originally published in Italian, in the journal Neopsiche (Tudor, 2008b). The published article was an expanded version of a speech I had given in December 2007 at a conference in Turin, Italy, hosted by two Italian associations of transactional analysis (TA): L’Istituto di Analisi Transazionale (the Institute of Transactional Analysis) and L’Associzione Italiana di Analisi Transazionale (The Italian Association of Transactional Analysis). I wrote the original paper in English; it was translated into Italian by Emanuele Milceri and Gaetano Sisali, and revised with the help of Pietro Cardile and Sylvie Rossi, to all of whom I am very grateful. I had lived in Italy in the mid-1980s (see introduction to Chapter 3), and at the conference, I read the paper in Italian, which I have to say, was one of the highlights of my career to date. The conference itself was overshadowed by the death, only a few days before, of Carlo Mosio (1945-2008), a leading Italian transactional analyst and a lovely, generous man. I had been hoping to see him at the conference, was enormously saddened by his premature death, and still miss him. I had met him some 20 years earlier during my training at Metanoia when, at a workshop he was leading, he had challenged me, kindly but firmly about not “trying hard”. It was a significant moment in my training, as a result of which he became something of a mentor, and later a colleague and friend, to whom I dedicate this chapter with great affection.
