At the border: reflections on psychoanalytically oriented counselling in an Italian university setting

This paper analyses the ‘border’ position of counselling services in Italian universities. The concept of ‘border’ has great relevance in the work of psychoanalytically oriented university students' counsellors. Counselling is part of a continuum of interventions, from befriending to psychotherapy. This closeness encompasses the need for identifying specificities and differences among interventions. Moreover, a university counselling service occupies a ‘marginal’ position, continuously confronted with the risks of rejection and/or assimilation. The concept of ‘border’ is also useful to define the developmental phase of university students, crossing the border between late adolescence and young adulthood, as represented by Conrad's novel The shadow line (1917/1999), recently analysed by Green (2008) as the metaphoric demarcation line between youth and adulthood. Finally, most of the students referring to our counselling service come from families that for the first time crossed the border of university education.