ABSTRACT
In recent decades the subject of Sigmund Freud’s lifelong love for Italy, and particularly for Rome, has been at the centre of a great number of books and essays, many of them written by scholars outside the psychoanalytical profession. To name just a few: the study by Gerard and Antoinette Haddad, Freud et l’Italie (1996); the letters from Italy collected by Antonio Gnoli and Franco Volpi, Il nostro cuore volge al Sud (Our Heart Turns South, 2002); the monograph by Laurence Simmons Freud’s Italian Journey (2006), the collection of English essays on Freud and Italian Culture (2009), the study by Ellen Oliensis on psychoanalysis and Latin poetry—Freud and Rome—and most recently the beautifully edited research by Mary Bergstein, Mirrors of Memory, published in 2010. 1 All of them were exploring not only the ways in which Freudian Italian passion affected the origins of psychoanalysis but also how ancient culture was interpreted, absorbed or contrasted by modernity at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of these studies focused mainly on the relationship that Freud established between Italian art, landscape and photography as key elements at the origins of psychoanalysis. Within this context, Italy, and Rome in a very special way, are seen as a permanent source of inspiration and reflection.
