ABSTRACT
A. Freud’s name is indivisibly bound to the fundamental concept in psychoanalytical research: the unconscious. Freud himself feared that, in effect, because of its fast diffusion in the USA, psychoanalysis could suffer “a great deal from being watered down”. The International Psychoanalytical Association, in effect, has frequently become the jealous guardian of an orthodoxy that, in the manner of the magisterium of the Church, preserves “the sacred deposit of the faith”. The relationship between psychoanalysis and most of the rest of the world of psychology has not been too good. The diversity of material, orientation, and methodology offered by present psychology is such that it poses the question of whether any psychological knowledge is at all possible. Psychology, in order to position itself as a science, had to make a huge sacrifice, giving away the metaphysical context in which it was born and where it remained for centuries.
