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| To whom do we tell our dreams?
A chi vanno raccontati i sogni? in Giornale Storico del Cenro Studi di Psicologia e Letteratura, nr 3, 2006
To whom do we tell our dreams? Ferenczi's theory is sufficiently well known a propos of this. We tell our dreams to those to whom the dreams refer. Freud considered that dreams were egocentric, bound to the ego of the dreamer. Nonetheless, since Freud's time, Laplanche - among others - has pointed out the communicative element of dreams. In Hebrew mystical literature (Zohar) we read that the dreamer must tell his dreams exclusively to the person who loves him - a thesis which introduces the question as to the manner in which dreams find their place in the analytical setting. And it is precisely with this that this article deals: a dreamer (the patient), who recounts his dream and a psychotherapist (the one who listens), who must prove himself worthy of that narration - a situation in which what is at stake is precisely the person of the psychotherapist, and not only his interpretative capacity.
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| Television
Televisione, in Giornale Storico del Cenro Studi di Psicologia e Letteratura, nr 4, 2007
The medium is the message. With television, the viewer is the screen. Television is the most spectacular extension of our central nervous system. This well-known concept of McLuhan’s is here examined in the light of religion (Genesis, orphic mythology, the Gospel according to St. John, the cabalist Luria), philosophy (Democritus, Aristotle, Al Kindi, Ibn Arabi), and psychoanalysis. The attempt here being establishing the significance of “seeing”, “medium”, and “screen”, concepts which retain something of the unforeseen, the unexpected. As regards “seeing”, reference is made to two poets fairly representative of Western tradition -- Cavalcanti and Wordsworth, and the classic work of the latter, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, is analyzed. As regards the “medium”, attention is focused on the studies of Bergson of the Aristotelian concept of “place”. And, finally, as regards “screen”, the psychoanalytical constructions of “setting” and “dream screen” are redefined. The result of this re-visitation is the paradox of a place, the medium of television, which precedes the homo videns. And it is that paradox which constitutes the fulcrum, or heart, of this article.
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Das erlösende Wort, in Giornale Storico del Cenro Studi di Psicologia e Letteratura, nr 5, 2007
Wittgenstein’s statement that philosophy attempts to discover the liberating word (das erlösende Wort) – that is, the word which permits us finally to conceive or comprehend that which has up to then weighed, ever elusive, on our consciousness – constitutes the leit motif of this article. That concept is commented on and interpreted in the light of what occurs in the analytical setting and in relation to the existing relationships between philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The psychotherapist, no less than the philosopher, attempts to discover the word which liberates. It is a matter of establishing what the object of that liberation is. What does the liberating word liberate? That word liberates place. But how does this occur? By transcending confines. The article then places in discussion the opacity of the term consciousness itself, both as it appears in Wittgenstein’s text, as well as its consideration in psychoanalysis. Thus, the liberating word liberates consciousness, while remaining however within consciousness. Finally, on the basis of Heidegger’s consideration, Wittgenstein’s statement contributes to liberating the sense of the choice made in Freud’s time to call the new discipline he invented “psychoanalysis”.
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Psycho-philosophical Genealogical Sketches, in Giornale Storico del Cenro Studi di Psicologia e Letteratura, nr 6, 2008
These genealogies concern the history – or, one might say, the recounting – of the difficult and controversial relationships between philosophy and psychoanalysis, beginning with the invention itself of the term “psychology” (an invention, incidentally, produced by a philosopher) up to the present. Reference is made to Montaigne, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Freud, Jung, Sartre and Lacan, the phenomenological-existential psychotherapies and, lastly, philosophical counselling. The history is also illustrated by its fundamental nexus: Cartesianism, as recognized by Foucault, the invention of the unconscious, the invention of psychoanalysis, the moving away from philosophy by Freud, the moving away of philosophy and philosophical counselling from therapy. The questions which subsequently arise and which appear impervious to any satisfactory responses are: what do philosophers, psychoanalysts, philosophical counsellors really want? What is there at the basis of their controversy? At the basis of their anxiety of influence?
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