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The pre-industrial towns were surrounded by walls: the administration and power boundaries generally coincided. Only the economic boundaries exceeded the walls. The opposition town-countryside was clear-cut. The towns belonging to the net-like system (according to the definition by P.M. Hohenberg and L.H. Lees) was not the rule, but the exception. In our times the oldest opposition town-countryside is growing weaker. The town boundaries, likewise the districts’ and regions’, are losing the old meaning. The public utilities like health, education, water supply, public transport and so on are more and more overcoming the administration boundaries. Thanks to the spread of information, today every town can have world wide connections, thus belonging to the global system of towns. So life is no longer local because it develops in a manifold space. In Italy a great difficulty is represented by the inadequate size of the town hall which is, however, the only public body people rely on.

Can we talk of a Roman hinterland across 19th and 20th Centuries? What are its borders and what did the link with a diverse, peculiar city like Rome mean for the surrounding territory? The article starts with a discussion about the relationship between Rome and the area of Castelli romani a model where interdependence and autonomy coexist, in a combination that appears quite unusual in contemporary age then extending the analysis to the first belt of municipalities surrounding the wide area of Agro (which constitutes the territory of the municipality of Rome). The emphasis is on breaks in time and space, sources, methodological choices and directions for further research.

In the work carried out by the statistician and demographer Ugo Giusti (1873-1953), the concept of territory reading in its urban and rural dimensions is fundamental. From the early 19th century onwards, Giusti particularly concentrates on turning two unquestionable principles into an absolute must in the statistical and demographic research method: 1) The territory, in the interaction of its geo-morphological characteristics and its anthropic stratification, having the role of matrix of phenomena which show up on it. 2) The demographic and statistic survey which relates the data of a phenomenon to a specific territorial context can only be considered a valid scientific result if the identification of the context in relation to the given phenomenon has also been carried out . The latter applied takes on a particular importance in the study plan system for demographic research and more generally for statistics. Giusti identifies in the circumscription the dynamic dimension of the dividing up of the city and the static dimension, which identifies the resulting physical status, maintaining homogeneity in the physical, social and economic characteristics, yet distinguishing them from neighbouring circumscriptions. With this method we can obtain a useful application on various scales like the distinction of city boundaries and the identification of homogeneous districts on a regional scale.

Throughout its history of independent city, the limits of Venice were traditionally corresponding to the water fully surrounding the ancient insula. During the XIX century, such a notion of insularity would be radically transformed by a growing number of factors. First in 1846, during the Austrian domination of northeastern Italy, the new railway bridge was built up in the perspective of a long-distance connection to Milan. In the 1880s, a planning scheme was laid out, mostly suggested by the sanitary engineers as the basis of a radical process of modernization. The idea of the planners was also to lessen the urban density and to transfer a large quantity of population to the outskirts. Brought about in 1874, the first enquiry on slum areas had revealed about 35.000 inhabitants living in unbearable conditions. In order to enable the clearance of dilapidated and overcrowded areas, the plan contemplated to resettle a number of people roughly corresponding to one fourth of the total community of the insular Venice. The municipality was looking about new peripheral settlements, such as the Lido, the old island of Giudecca and the new area of Sant’Elena as possible places of destination. Such a concern implied an enlarged notion of city. In the next decades, another problem affected new possible overviews of the city and its limits, that was the proposal of enlarging the port and the area at its backs – the so-called Marittima. New room had to be found elsewhere in order to exploit the opportunities given by new networks of communications. Starting from 1917, a fully equipped industrial port was realized in the area of Marghera, the other side of the lagoon. Together, they created a new residential suburb suitable to the needs of an increasing number of working men. The entire settlement was considered as a new pole within a system of larger connections which has not existed before 1933, when a vehicular link to the mainland was built-up. That was the so-called Littorio bridge, named after one of the masterpieces of Mussolini’s propaganda. Just at the beginning of the Fascist regime, in 1926, a new local body was officially created (the so-called Grande Venezia) including the new settlement of Marghera and the old one of Mestre. The new dimension of Greater Venice was also intended to encircle the insular and maritime sections –the proper Venice and the Lido. The vast industrial area around the new port emerged as the major propeller of the new regional area. Second, some strategic knots were shaped, such as new terminals for cars, ships, airplanes and railroad. Finally, the process started dealing with community facilities such a framework of new poles and networks, the notion of insularity was doomed to an inexorable decline. Venice and its sacred stones had to be theoretically absorbed into the major body of a greater metropolis. In the lagoon, like elsewhere, the traditional urban center is called to give name and significance to the entire conurbation. What makes the difference is the weight of an unchanged idea of Venice strictly connected to the notion of “diversity”. After 1970, the crisis first and the collapse of traditional industry later put aside the role of production in the process of metropolitan configuration. Particularly over the last two decades, the Greater Venice has lost its grounds the commercial port and the industry were moved to the backside area whereas what is centered on the urban core what could be called an Erlebnisstadt has gained a larger room. Due to the change of economic and social perspectives, the whole question of city limits has been once again placed under discussion. Such a story is common to most of the western European countries, but in Venice a particular role has been played by local factors. Both water and outstanding features of the old center have increased and sharpened the divisions among different areas.

In the period of Turin’ major urban development between the two World Wars a period in which Turin is considered both a laboratory city and a leading industrial city the financier and industrialist Riccardo Gualino, also a renowned art-collector and patron of the arts, plays a major role as the promoter of modern architecture (ranging from urban buildings to stalls, from the offices by Pagano and Levi Montalcini to the Villa-museum built at the end of the 1920’s). Of particular importance, the industrial and residential complex Snia-Viscosa was created by Gualino in 1925. It is a large building area, including the industrial plant and the workers’ quarters, which required an enormous effort both in terms of financial resources, design and planning. Both public and private sectors were involved in the project, which is part of the new infrastructure system to be built in the northern part of Turin towards Milan area.

The article examines the discussion connected to the formation and approval of new extension plans for Turin in the mid-19th century. It shows that the issue of the limits of the city played a crucial role in many of these discussions. Institutions and landowners were involved in debates about both the new spatial limits of urban extension and the limits of public control over building activities. The intensity of the discussion may be read as the effect of a peculiar phase in the history of Turin, marked by strong institutional change and the emergence of private initiative in a land market previously controlled by the public sector. But the study of these discourses may also have something to teach about the growth of 19th century cities and the social and cultural forces which shaped it. Conflicts about urban growth dealt more often than is usually recognized with invisible, immaterial issues, such as the definition of a new symbolic geography of urban space.

Until the end of the Ancien Régime, the political panorama in Italy was characterized by a great number of small states which in spite of the their narrow size represented themselves as sovereigns, keeping an important role both from a political and a cultural point of view. What mainly distinguished those minor political entities from the contemporary major states was the absence of a capital city: generally, the little princes resided in minor centres, which hadn’t a bishop’s see and so were formally devoid of urban status. This handicap had heavy consequences on the political system of the small states, lacking in all those municipal structures upon which the regional states were built heirs of the ancient town communes. The differences are particularly manifest as regards to urban strategies: interacting with weakly structured societies, and in the absence of institutions capable of opposing their projects, the little princes of Italy could carry out programs of urban renewal which were comparatively much more incisive then those attempted at the same time by the major Italian sovereigns.

Esiste una potente analogia tra l’effetto placebo e la psichiatria, ovvero l’attribuzione di un autentico potere causale a un fattore mentale: da una parte alla credenza di ricevere un farmaco efficace, dall’altra agli stati mentali prodotti dalle parole terapeutiche dello psichiatra. Conferire alla mente un autentico potere causale sul mondo fisico solleva alcuni problemi filosofici. La psichiatria deve abbracciare una teoria del mentale e accettarne le conseguenze, se non vuole correre il rischio di essere implicitamente riduzionista, mantenendo soltanto l’involucro mentalista e conformandosi alla neurologia.

Il caso dell’ulcera peptica è particolarmente significativo per comprendere l’evoluzione della medicina psicosomatica negli ultimi 50-60 anni. L’ulcera peptica è stata considerata una delle classiche malattie psicosomatiche, per la quale si riteneva che i fattori psicologici giocassero un ruolo causale nel generare la malattia. Nel corso dell’ultimo decennio, l’ulcera peptica è stata spostata dal campo psicosomatico a quello biomedico grazie al ruolo etiopatogenetico attribuito all’Helicobacter Pylori. Tuttavia numerose ricerche empiriche hanno evidenziato che lo stress psicologico gioca un ruolo importante nello sviluppo della malattia, come uno dei fondamentali fattori di rischio. La ricerca di un unico meccanismo causale nel campo infettivologo può condurre allo stesso errore commesso nell’epoca psicosomatica classica in cui si cercava una causa psicologica. L’«antico» modello psicogenetico e il «nuovo» modello biomedico dimorano entrambi all’interno di un modo di pensare per dicotomia e corrispondono ai differenti paradigmi scientifici predominanti nella storia recente della psicologia e della medicina. Al contrario, un pensiero psicosomatico moderno dovrebbe mirare a cogliere le interrelazioni complesse fra i diversi pesi attribuiti a molteplici agenti causali. Infatti, i dati empirici mostrano che lo stress psicologico e l’Helicobacter Pylori giocano ruoli complementari ed hanno pesi diversi nello sviluppo dell’ulcera peptica.

Viene discusso il nuovo fenomeno della psicoterapia e della psicoanalisi con il computer o on line, cioè tramite E-Mail, chat, e sistemi di videoconferenza. In particolare, la psicoterapia in rete viene vista come una modalità molto interessante per riflettere non tanto e non solo sui tanti vantaggi di questa potenzialità di Internet, quanto sulle implicazioni che il nostro modo di ragionare attorno ad essa ha rispetto alla psicoterapia senza computer, cioè rispetto al nostro modo di ragionare attorno alla psicoterapia «normale». Questa tematica viene inquadrata all’interno del fondamentale contributo di Kurt Eissler del 1953 sul «parametro di tecnica», che viene discusso anche alla luce della revisione della analisi del transfert, e della definizione stessa di psicoanalisi, operata dall’ultimo Merton Gill (ad esempio nel 1984). La psicoterapia on line non viene vista come peggiore né migliore di quella che si può chiamare off line, ma semplicemente diversa, così come diverse possono essere due terapie tra di loro (entrambe con o senza computer).

A partire dagli anni Venti del Novecento, nella letteratura psicologica si verifica la graduale sostituzione del termine «carattere» con quello di «personalità». Prende avvio in questo modo il percorso che porterà al riconoscimento della psicologia della personalità come settore della psicologia scientifica che ha come oggetto l’individualità. Gordon W. Allport è considerato il suo fondatore. A partire da tale premessa gli storici della psicologia hanno tentato di ricostruire il processo di costituzione di questo settore disciplinare sotto il profilo culturale, politico, istituzionale e cronologico. Nella personality psychology di Allport viene tuttavia eclissata una importante tradizione europea di studi psicologici, sviluppatasi in Francia nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento, in cui la personalità era già considerata una nozione appartenente al dominio psicologico. L’obiettivo dell’articolo è quello di descrivere questa tradizione scientifica e di discuterne l’influenza nella psicologia della personalità statunitense del Novecento.

L’autore ripercorre un dibattito ormai pluridecennale, ordinandolo sulla falsariga delle differenti strategie adottate ai fini del confronto strategie che inevitabilmente suppongono opzioni sul rapporto mente-corpo, sul metodo scientifico e su ciò che è davvero rilevante nell’eterogeneo corpus psicoanalitico. L’autore conclude, di fronte al tracollo della metapsicologia freudiana, per l’assoluta necessità del confronto, laddove si vogliano formulare leggi generali su struttura e funzionamento della mente. Tuttavia ritiene che vi siano aspetti alquanto specifici della dottrina e prassi psicoanalitiche, ad oggi non riconducibili ai modelli e ai metodi adottati in sede di scienze cognitive. Da una parte il riferimento va al tasso di singolarità e di individualità storica con cui ha a che fare l’attività interpretativo-esplicativa della psicoanalisi. D’altra parte la plurivocità del significato di un concreto comportamento, e a maggior ragione del linguaggio che lo descrive, trova illuminazioni per lo più contestuali. Pertanto le teorie generali introdotte per determinare l’effettiva motivazione quelle principalmente soggette a verifica hanno al più un valore euristico, mentre i pur duttili metodi di ricerca empirica sembrano inadeguati, nella misura in cui trascurano le peculiarità del linguaggio nella comunicazione analitica.