ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the importance, from a psychoanalytic point of view, of taking into account the historical context, across generations, in which the emotional lives of analysands take shape. Franco Borgogno concludes with his belief that early pathogenic relational experiences must be relived and reworked in the relationship with the analyst. References to the war are also present in the analyst’s associations but the meaning of these references is not developed in the direction the author suggesting. Before addressing directly the interesting clinical observations that Neil Altman and Alina Schellekes have put forward, the author wish to introduce the present response by making explicit some personal motivations that guide his work. Altman is, however, right to warn that the authors have to consider the outcome of the traumatic conditions one by one, that each of them must be explored in its specificity without assuming the same effect on every patient.
