Giampaolo Sasso is a practising psychotherapist and psychoanalytst living in Milan. He is a member of the Italian Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, which forms part of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. He is also an linguist and has had a number of books published in Italy.

• Series Editors' Preface -- Introduction -- The cultural inheritance of Project for a Scientific Psychology -- Recent progress in the field of neuroscience -- The current idea of a child's mental development -- A new model of brain development -- Drive dynamics and maternal modulation -- Normal and pathogenic development of mother-child interaction -- Defence structures and the development of consciousness -- The origin of language -- Child development and the integration of psychoanalysis and neuroscience -- The unresolved problems of Freudian metapsychology -- Conclusion