“[Oliverio Ferraris] rigorously analyzes this polymorphous dimension of the psyche.”
Huffington Post

Identity is a tough nut to crack. First and foremost because every time we try to define its components, we come up against something comparable to when a biologist observes a cell under a microscope: as soon as they manipulate the lens and manage to bring a structure into focus, they have to give up seeing the others as they gradually grow blurred and fall back, and eventually disappear altogether. But above all because today, in a changing world freed from the roles assigned by tradition, the family and social order, the individual has to make a new effort to realise their identity in an authentic fashion, without losing themselves. Hard to pin down and polymorphous, identity is supposed, on the one hand, to be permanent and stable, notwithstanding all the transformations, influences, and shake-ups it is subjected to. But on the other, it is irreducibly (and fruitfully) porous, permeable to the solicitations of the Other. Whether it tries to take root in the family, in the social and political community, in the body, in gender, in sexuality or in the vast terrains opened up by the virtual world, identity takes shape at once in the pursuit of a certain continuity with which we can connect and as the exploration and overriding of boundaries that we perceive, according to circumstance, as obsolete, binding and unsteady.
With vast clinical experience and theoretical qualifications, which she has continued to update in the course of time, under her belt, in this book Anna Oliverio Ferraris outlines this tough and decisive challenge and attempts to explain the ins and outs of a precious truth: namely that identity formation is similar to memory formation, with which it keeps space. A commitment that lasts a lifetime.

Anna Oliverio Ferraris, a psychologist and psychotherapist, has taught Developmental Psychology at the Sapienza University of Rome. She is editor of the journal ‘Psicologia contemporanea’ and has written numerous academic and popular essays, the most recent of which include: Non solo amore. I bisogni psicologici dei bambini (Not just love. Children’s psychological needs – Giunti 2018), Piccoli bulli crescono. Come impedire che la violenza rovini la vita ai nostri figli (Bullies in the making. How to stop violence from ruining our children’s lives – Rizzoli 2017), La sindrome Lolita. Perché i nostri figli crescono troppo in fretta (The Lolita syndrome. Why our children grow up too fast – Rizzoli 2014). With Bollati Boringhieri she has published Famiglia (Family, 2020), Psicologia della paura (The Psychology of Fear, 1998, reprint 2013), Il significato del disegno infantile (The Meaning of Children’s Drawings, 1973, reprint 2012), Lo sviluppo del comportamento (with Alberto Oliverio, Behavioural Development, 1974).