Enzo Bonaventura and psychoanalysis. Interview with David Meghnagi by Rita Corsa.

Enzo Joseph Bonaventura (Pisa, 1891 - Jerusalem, 1948) was one of the most authoritative figures of experimental psychology in Italy between the two World Wars. Bonaventura was also a pioneer of the Italian Psychoanalysis. Born in Pisa to a Jewish family in Pisa, in 1913, Bonaventura graduated from Florence University with a degree in philosophy, with Francesco De Sarlo, who had him hired as an assistant in the University Laboratory of Psychology. Bonaventura was a poliedric figure with interests spanning a variety of fields, such as philosophy, theology, developmental psychology, psychology of motivation and education . Expelled from the University of Florence because of the Italian “Racial Laws”, he moved to Jerusalem where he played an important role in the development of academic psychology research in Israel. Before the expulsion from the University, Bonaventura wrote a summary of Freudian ideas (La psicoanalisi. Milan: Mondadori, 1938), which can be considered a classic, and which is revisited in this paper also in order to reconstruct a painful historical period that has been partly forgotten.