Thinking the unthinkable: trauma, defence and early states of mind in the work of Alessandra Cavalli.

From my experience of working with her as the editor of many of her papers, this paper seeks to elucidate the late Alessandra Cavalli's clinical and theoretical approach to analytic work through a study of the editorial process her papers went through on their way to publication. This highlights a consistent theoretical synthesis integrating Klein, Fordham, Bion, Matte-Blanco and Ferrari in an archetypal structure that was firmly rooted in Jung. This synthesis, closely interwoven into Alessandra's clinical work but never fully articulated, was primarily concerned with the impact of trauma on the developing self and how this could be ameliorated through the analytic process, especially through the transformation of raw primitive affect into representational form via the containment provided by an emotionally attuned other.