COVER -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION -- FOREWORD TO THE ITALIAN EDITION -- INTRODUCTION -- CHAPTER ONE: Irony through a psychoanalytic lens -- Notes on the recent evolution of the concept of irony and on attempts at classification -- Introduction to the concept of latent irony -- The psychoanalytic viewpoint -- Historical outline -- Irony and ambiguity -- Preconscious and unconscious levels in the emission and reception of ironic messages -- Summary of main points and some expectations -- CHAPTER TWO: Ironic aspects in clinical psychoanalysis -- Some examples and a discussion of latent ironies -- Interconnections between playful and serious aspects -- "Playing" and "being played" -- Examples broadened to the problem of pairs of opposites, with particular attention to self-image -- The active/passive antithesis -- The true/false antithesis and the problem of deception in analysis -- Pairs of opposites and terminability of the analysis -- Unconscious equivalences of the psychopathologic/delinquent antithesis: ironic aspects and prospectives -- Summary -- CHAPTER THREE: Ironic aspects in psychoanalytic theorization -- The work/play pair -- Irony, insight, and the repressed/repressing pair -- Ironic work -- The analytical relationship as eirdneia -- Ironic considerations on the position of metapsychology -- Summary -- CHAPTER FOUR: Stable irony and genitality: an historical perspective -- A Jewish theme in Freud's day -- Freud as ironist -- The jüdische Witz -- A universal theme today -- The apparent disappearance of the medium of irony -- A clinical detour -- Seduction as a form of unstable irony -- Irony of seduction in the age of surrogates -- Se-duction from what? -- Are investment and "playing stakes" irreducible? -- "Unicuique suum": the renunciation of the "alibi'' and the reappearance of the space of irony.

Summary of main points -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.