This essay proposes to reconstruct the project of experimental psychoanalysis initiated by Vittorio Benussi in the Psychology Laboratory of the University of Padua between 1919 and 1927. For Benussi, the language of the unconscious never refers back to an experimental or psychoanalytical context, but always to a possible relationship between the two. From the contact between these perspectives, there emerges one of the most extreme attempts at knowledge of the mind: the "real psychic analysis." Here Benussi is at the core of the idea of measuring the psyche, and his style is aligned with the experimental psychopathology research conducted by E. Bleuler and C.G. Jung at Burgh?lzli, Zurich, with the assignment of the laboratory practice to areas precluded to the experimentalist. But the Freudian lexicon is not sufficient to explain the unconscious. Benussi summons new instruments to the center of his reflection: the "physiological unconscious," the "metric analysis of breathing," the "base sleep," and the "emotional functional autonomy." If the Benussian discourse places itself at the borderline between experimentation and depth psychology, it is within this limit that it expresses its theoretical peaks and its tragic conclusion.
Biomedical Research History, 20th Century