Another basic characteristic of the text is Neri's dual definition of "group". He does not limit himself to placing his subject within the "human condition", but also carries on a dialogue with colleagues of the past and the present; it is not a "dutiful" (and therefore perhaps also boring) series of references to the more or less sacred text of well-known or half-known authors who have already written on this subject, but a lively conversation at a distance, which weighs what has been said by the one and compares it with similar - or opposing - concepts of the other. From the exchange between authors Neri's own argument gains depth and richness, without any pedantic heaviness, leaving the reader with a feeling of belonging to an ideal group of scholars.

But there is another sense in which the book itself becomes a group; not in the contents, but in the way in which they are bound together. The structure of the text refers back to the network - or rather networks - which develop on many levels within every group. We can take the various parts of the book, which by the force of events are printed and joined together one after the other, as though they really belonged to a building with many floors; we can walk around on a single floor, or we can take the lift. In the book these "lifts" are the copious references to later chapters, the task of which is to amplify ideas which the author has earlier introduced only briefly, or to tell the reader, who has by then come to grips with take up again for a moment the discussion at the point at which a new concept has been introduced for the first time.

Besides these references, the book has been endowed with two other instruments which make reading considerably easier: the panels in which some concepts are treated in very short historical and critical notes, panels which are a decided improvement on the usual footnotes, because they can be read or skipped after a very rapid glance to decide whether the reader in question needs the information contained in them at a particular moment. These panels constitute something analogous to the "digressions" which may be found in a conversation between a group of friends, and do not distract attention from the main text. The last instrument is the excellent glossary, extremely useful again as a reference point to clarify the most thorny points of the text.

Because, despite the fact that this is a decidedly user-friendly book, it is nevertheless not an easy read. When Claudio Neri very kindly asked me to write this short preface I felt not only honoured, but also very worried, because of the multiplicity and density of the arguments - even though relieved by the technique of writing and of the physical structure of the text - and because of the complicated way in which they are linked together. I do not think it is possible to do justice to a text of this sort in a few words, so I shall limit myself to giving an indication of what I think is the problem which the author's thoughts are seeking to elucidate, and I shall leave to the reader the pleasure of discovering the details of the heuristic instruments which Neri, with all the accoutrements of his human and professional experience, has decided to use in this great task.

Neri introduces two series of concepts (field, semiosphere, protomental system on the one hand, and community of brothers, commuting, trans-personal diffusion, and natural disposition on the other) which are intended to describe and throw light on everything pre-verbal, non-verbal and ultra-verbal which we meet when we study the group as an entity and wish to produce an account which is not limited to staying within the group, but must in some way transcend it (a metapsychological account, in fact, which may limit itself to being theoretical or may (also) be therapeutic). The first series of concepts refers to theorisation on the state of the group, on its conditions, while the second refers to the way in which the group behaves when certain conditions are fulfilled. These two levels are constantly interwoven, both looking from different angles for the answer to the problem of what nonverbal or extra-verbal phenomena occur in human communication, and how they occur in practice.

And above all, behind the concept of "field" we feel intuitively the presence of the great problem of extra-verbal communication: the "field" seems to be introduced so as to be able to speak of this problem in a different way from the American theory of micro-communication (facial mimicry, posture, etc.), but there still remain difficulties in knowing how they "travel", how they communicate with each other, for example with projective identifications.

In this book Neri has tried to make us understand how we can think of all this, how to acquire instruments adeguate for our need, and what type of use to make of these instruments when we have them. One of the difficulties we have certainly met when setting about this task is a cultural fact: human beings in general tend to speak, and psychoanalysis in particular has valued (and possibly overvalued) speech, not considering it therapeutic means - and this is one of the basic concepts of psychoanalysis, and a part of its structure and definition - but, under the surface, taking into consideration as "good" or "valid", verbal communication to the detriment of non-verbal. I do not mean that psychoanalysts do not take other forms of communication into account, but the terms used to define them tend to be vaguely denigrating: acting, acting out, projection, projective identification are all terms which are regularly accompanied not by an odour of sanctity, but rather by disapproval.

By the way, why do we say "odour of sanctity"? This is not exactly one of the cases in which the original communication, even if transformed later into a verbalisation, was not at an auditory level, but rather at an olfactory one. None of us really thinks that all valid human communication is verbal or verbalisable; the visual arts, music, etc. cannot be reduced to words. But the tendency of analysts to assume that all mental activity of any value is potentlally verbalisable, and especially that communication occurs at a verbal level, has made more difficult the study of all those phenomena which not only draw strength from non-verbal substrates, but which remaln of right in those regions. One of the great merits of this book of Neri's is that of bringing to light a series of illustrations of the richness of human interaction, leaving words out of consideration, phenomena which are before words and after them.

These same characteristics of the contents of "Group" mean that the book can be read with much profit not exclusively by professionals (group and individual psychotherapists, sociologists, philosophers of communication) but by "persons", anyone, that is, who knows that to be part of a series of groups is a pillar of "human" existence itself, and wants to know more about it.