BIOGRAPHY OF MASSIMO FAGIOLI

Massimo Fagioli graduated in Medicine from the University of Rome, specialising in Neuropsychiatry. He worked for a number of years in psychiatric hospitals in Venice, Padua, in the Binswanger clinic in Kreuzlingen (Switzerland) and in a therapeutic community in Rome. During this period he began theoretical research which was documented in various publications.
After a long personal analysis and approximately 10 years of individual psychoanalytical practice, he proposed in 1971 results of his experience and formation with the volume "The Death Instinct and Knowledge" - which is at the centre of this conference. This was followed by "The marionette and the puppet" in 1974 and then by "Psychoanalysis of birth and human castration" in 1975.
His theoretical elaboration provoked a reaction from the Italian Psychoanalytical Society which in turn declared his expulsion in 1976.
From then on, Massimo Fagioli's work has been developed further through the Collective Analysis Seminars - a praxis of cure-formation-research which has been running for over 20 years - and by subsequent theoretical investigations documented in "Child Woman and the transformation of man" (1980) and in various articles.
In particular, his research on the formation of psychic images has led him to an increasingly stronger artistic expression in the last ten years: in cinema (his collaboration in "Il Diavolo in Corpo" by Marco Bellocchio, the screenplay in "Il Sogno della Farfalla" and in the areas of architecture and figurative expression (collaborating with architects, engineers, painters, sculptors and graphic designers). An exhibition entitled "The Courage of Images" was organised. After touring various Italian and foreign cities, it was held in Naples at the Civic Museum in Maschio Angioino (Castel Nuovo) in occasion of the congress.