title: [The individual and the collective].
abstract: The author introduces and illustrates the position of mental analysis that gives great importance to the relationship between the individual and the collective and he traces in the human mind an endopsychic collective significant structure. This statement sees the collective pressure always present around and inside the individual and we can consider him like a focusing point of a very extensive communication and relationship system. The individual, although he is a part of the collective, is also an antagonist of it: as a collective body cell he can be used or even eliminated by the same collective. Nevertheless through sexuality the individual tries to seize and obtain something favourable for himself, but on this level he meets with his biological and collective dramatic fate. The little family collective is of intermediate structure between the developing individual (child) and the big collective (society). In this sense regarding their own children parents are a filter or a membrane who can let or not let outside stimulus pass through and this can be unsuitable and in consequence harmful. The author vividly shows how in analytic therapy the analyst, as well as reestablishing the filter function that is often lacking in the patient's mind, will struggle together with the patient to obtain differentiation and individualization. The author to end with, refers to simplified quotations of the dreams of patients undergoing analysis, showing how these dreams are tinged by our submersion in the collective or by our relative emersion as individuals.
authors.affiliation: Associazione Italiana Analisi Mentale, Roma.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lo Turco
mesh_terms: D004325:Dreams; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008399:Mass Behavior; D010553:Personality Development; D011572:Psychoanalysis; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy
vernacular_title: Individuo e collettivo.