Taking Oneself Playfully: Narrative of a Psychoanalyst
Part of New Library of Psychoanalysis series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : December 2025
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 248
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98318
- ISBN 13 : 9781032907741
- ISBN 10 : 1032907746
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Taking Oneself Playfully is a fascinating journey into the life and work of Marta Badoni, a highly respected adult and child training analyst in Italy and France.
The book is mainly formed of a collection of essays written in different moments of her life, skilfully woven together to recount Badoni’s life in parallel with the evolution of her thinking and her clinical work. Drawing on influences from Winnicott and Bion, we explore the importance of the body and of the dialogue between analyst and patient in Badoni’s theoretical and clinical development. The book offers a remarkable interplay of personal reflection and confidence with theoretical insight and illuminating clinical material. This is first book in English to explore Badoni's full contribution to psychoanalysis.
Offering a playful yet deep exploration of the making, life and work of a psychoanalyst, this is key reading for all psychoanalysts.
Reviews and Endorsements
Marta Badoni's book communicates all the vitality, originality and maturity, at once confident and courageous, of contemporary Italian psychoanalysis: speaking of children, adolescents, adults and institutions, her voice as an innovative, competent, unprejudiced and playful analyst accompanies us towards an integrative vision of our discipline. This volume conveys, in a very personal and harmonious way, something new and substantial that was missing in our specialistic literature.
Stefano Bolognini, Past-President of the International Psychoanalytical Association
The author tells different stories of psychoanalytic work with children and parents: theories are used as elements of an interactive play in session, which each time generates solutions of the technique tailor-made to each little patient. The different chapters are like pieces of a puzzle that generates a vivid and unified image of the psychoanalytic treatment in developmental age, that is, always. Special attention is given to the dimension of time, as a silent ally in the process of growth of the body and psyche.
Anna Ferruta, psychoanalyst, Full Member IPA, co-author of Extending the Psychoanalytic Listening Paradigm
It is to these pages that Marta Badoni has entrusted her illuminating experience of discovery and knowledge under the sign of the lived experience of astonished wonder in discovering, crossing the Simplon Pass, the Rhone valley, illuminated by the luminous blade of the sun.
From a story that Marta told me, I find the other essential element of her work, independence. In the evenings, after the days of study meetings with psychoanalysts from Eastern Europe, in which Marta participated with great interest and much success, the participants spontaneously settled into small groups characterized by affiliations to schools and currents. And Marta, who was not in any group, was the curiosity of everyone. Marta was a very clear example of the psychoanalyst for whom the definition of psychoanalyst is sufficient. She knows and shares all the contributions of Authors and Schools but does not exhaust herself in the streams of affiliations and does not deviate from the essence of psychoanalysis, maintaining both the ability to illuminate and independence.
Giuseppe Di Chiara, past president of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. Former training analyst at the Training institute of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society
An original, independent, thoughtful book that stays with and transforms the reader. It recounts what it means to listen to oneself while listening to a patient, to feel one's own body while feeling the other’s, to question one's own and the other’s subjectivity. Badoni’s movingly written clinical reports highlight the contribution of child analysis to psychoanalysis. The book weaves the personal and professional life and commitment to transmitting psychoanalysis of a passionate psychoanalyst, eager to learn from her patients.
Chiara Cattelan, child psychyatrist, SPI and IPA full member and training analyst, child analyst
A truly fascinating book that seems to capture the essence of the psychoanalytic experience, expertly mixing theory and personal experience. Marta Badoni's approach seems to invite the reader to a journey of introspection, pushing him to reflect on his own existence and his inner path. The tension towards complexity and the "unsaturated" suggests a dynamic and open perspective of psychoanalysis, capable of embracing the nuances of the human condition. The idea of "unexpected guests" and unexpected meanings further enriches the narrative, making it not only a theoretical work, but also a deeply human and relational work.
Cristina Saottini, Membro Ordinario Società Psicoanalitica Italiana
A book to be savored slowly, also to not blur the many precise references to psychoanalysts, both classical and contemporary, who have provided significant theoretical and technical contributions to the themes developed in the text. A book that also has the merit of introducing the non-Italian reader to the richness of the polyphonic character of Italian psychoanalysis. A personal travel notebook, dense with a vital, curious mental attitude, capable of inducing vital curiosity, that makes one think.
Laura Colombi, Supervising and Training Analyst for Child Adolescent and Adult Psychoanalysis (SPI,IPA)
Table of Contents
Part I - A time for noticing. Understanding
1. Misunderstandings, ills understood
Part II - Space for training. Becoming
2. Parents, children and analysts. Resources and challenges for the psychoanalytic institution
3. Processes of analytic work with children
Part III - Getting involved in the game. Resources and risks
4. Taking oneself playfully
5. Children and the psychoanalytic process
6. Parents and Their Children, and The Analyst in the Middle: Working with a Transgenerational Mandate
Part IV - The ingredients of care. Agreeable and disagreeable elements
7. A body, a story. Functions of the rescuing adult: the importance of a comma
Part V - A time for delivering. Generating
8. Betrayal and corruption. On the corruptive power of maternal love and the good use of betrayal
9. A problem at the origins: originality
About the Author(s)
Marta Badoni (1938-2024) has been a child and adolescent neuropsychiatrist, child analyst, full member and training analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, of which she has been national secretary and vice-president, and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
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