Abstract

The author reflects on the meaning and limits of psychoanalytic healing, a path littered with obstacles, including the idealization of care and the maniacal demand for a restitutio ad integrum. Based on particularly significant clinical material, the work specifically investigates the way in which healing can be understood for serious and difficult patients, discussing the purpose of analysis, end-of-analysis criteria, the relationship between healing and disappearance of symptoms and the elements that make psychoanalytic treatment an authentic form of reparation. The author put forwards proposing the idea that psychoanalytic healing, especially with serious and difficult patients, constitutes a perpetually ongoing process, open to progressiveness and development, but also painfully aware of the limits to full recovery.