Counselling University Students: A Psychoanalytic Approach

The authors describe a psychoanalytic approach to the counselling with university students, as it is proposed at the University of Naples Federico II. On one hand, the focus is on the specific evolution phase of counselling students, which is late adolescence; on the other hand, it is on the specific aspects of the approach at issue. The authors particularly carry out a description of three characteristics of psychoanalytic counselling with university students: the specific space-time of the setting, the functioning through the free association/freely floating attention, the transference/countertransference dynamic. The authors support their theses, by presenting the clinical case of a student, who consulted the Psychological Counselling Centre for University Students (CCPSU). Clinical excerpts of four counselling sessions are then briefly commented on the basis of the theoretical-clinical paradigm of reference