Economics, talent of thinking

“Jokingly I asked Hans if his horses happened to wear glasses, to which he responded negatively, then if his father wore glasses, to which he responded negatively again, against all evidence, and if, with black around the mouth, he didn’t mean the moustache : then I revealed to him that he was afraid of his dad, precisely because he loved his mom so much… After this consultation I received almost daily reports on the changes in the little patient’s condition… As it turned out, now the possibility of revealing his own unconscious productions, and of having his phobia expire had opened up to him.”[1]

“Oedipus is completely unusable, except for that crude reference to the character of obstacle, constituted by one’s mother towards the investment of an object as the cause of the desire… Yes, this recourse to Oedipus mith is truly formidable. It’s worth pausing for a moment.” [2]

The perception of reality triggers one's unconscious : not at all innate[3] and not yet collected, it remains silent, even conflicted, but it is already an assessment.

The perception itself of reality can be collected as a matter of fact, or instead suspended, slowed down, even inhibited : and all this, well before learning a verbal language.[4]

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – March 8, 2024

[1] ‘Il piccolo Hans’, by S. Freud (1908) / Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore - ‘Univ. Econom. Feltrinelli’ (2010) translation by M. Marcacci, pp.123-125

[2] ‘Al di là del complesso di Edipo’ – ‘Il padrone castrato’ in ‘Il seminario Libro XVII – Il rovescio della psicoanalisi 1969 - 1970’, by J. Lacan with J.A. Miller’ afterword / Bibliot. Einaudi (2001), p.120

[3] “Elsewhere I have already formulated the hypothesis that the real difference between a ‘inc’ representation (or thinking) and a ‘prec’ representation consists in the fact that the first one is produced in relation to some materials which remained unknown, while in the second one (‘prec’), a connection in addition with verbal representations occurs.” Cited from : ‘L’Io e l’Es’, by S. Freud (1923) in OSF Bollati Boringhieri - Vol 9, p.483

[4] “ ‘Father’ is the name of a legal law… of hereditary benefit : it establishes the Subject as beneficiary of all Others. The pair of terms Subject / Other, both Subjects as a matter of facts, is the legal concept of a legal inequality of places – not other real inequalitiy – as a condition of benefit. In this distiction, the beneficiary is a child by definition : ‘heir’ to the real of nature but a heir who is such by adoption… In other words : the law is posited, not presupposed… This is why it is a law ‘of’ nature : not because of the delirium by which such a law would be written in nature… but because of – a practical reason that is a legislative one indeed – an adoption of nature, starting from that privileged point of it which is man… The law of nature Freud encounters in its crisis… because permanently alive in the possibility of the so-called killing of the Father. Being excluded from the beginning that this is about killing a real person… it’s about killing the concept, that is the ‘thinkability’, in everyone’s thinking, of such universal legislation, that is of a killing-disauthorization of the subject’s thinking. Which is the very conceivableness of a law of satisfaction, or of benefit that, if it were and to be, it would and should be the law of the subject as a child, unequal in position with respect to every Other.” Cited from : ‘Cap. III ‘I sessi nella legge - 1. Padre come norma della legge di beneficio’ in ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, by Giacomo B. Contri - SIC Edizioni (1998), pp. 153-154

An excellent economist, Professor Mario Draghi seems to understand plumbing too. His presidency at the ECB (2011-2019) was characterized as a matter of fact by measures designed to encourage the marketability of European government bonds, and so their liquidity to move outside Europe : in this, proposing not a secondary role for the central banking body, traditionally responsible only for monetary policy, but with the realistic aim of an accredited presence of the currency, and of European Union itself, in the world.

“If some countries can use their fiscal space but others cannot, then the impact of all spending is lower, as none are able to achieve climate or military security.” [1]

Specifically it is about this accreditation  - let’s just say reliability – of all Countries, as well as individual economic entities and up to the citizens of the European Union themselves, where Mario Draghi spoke again after his lecture in U.S.A.[2] last July, with a recent intervention in ‘The Economist’ that was carefully listened to by the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in view of the next commitments, not only European but also of the individual member states, to the point of deciding to entrust Mario Draghi with an indicative, and therefore planning, synthesis as regard the maintaining of the competitiveness of the European Union in the world.

“If Europe were to federalise some of the investment spending needed for today’s shared goals, it could achieve a similar balance (to U.S.A. – editor’s note). Federal borrowing and spending would lead to greater efficiency and more fiscal space, as aggregate borrowing costs would be lower. National fiscal policies could then be more focused on reducing debt and building up buffers for bad times.”

We are interested in the fact that reliability of individual states in managing their public spending – involving their spending objectives and financing too - is becoming subject of a sanction that we can call a ‘reward’ if this can first and foremost be the credit obtainable by the European Central Bank, and in general with reference to a shared European economic policy.

“More automatic fiscal rules would become feasible, and member states could credibly fail. Such reforms would mean pooling more sovereignty, and would therefore require new forms of representation and centralised decision-making.”

If, as we know, the system of sanctions in a fiscal policy is highly indicative of the level of civilization of that state, or Federation of states, Draghi’s proposal opens up a novelty in the political landscape.

While the base of the European Union is expanding with new member States - and it is certainly good news – it could be infact a mistake from the past not recognizing the authority of that economic entity already engaged with innovative tools for growth, in a global socio-political environment where the ability to deal with new shocks can make a difference, with the opportunities and social costs that such shocks would entail.

It is maybe convenient then that the ‘reliability’ of a State, when recognized as a merit to be rewarded, includes this new political and economic ability, which on the other hand also needs new instruments to collect and analyze the data.

It is an ability that the individual in his or her health – psychic as well - already tests and applies.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 18, 2023

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3].

[1] All the quotes here reported have been drawn from : ‘Mario Draghi on the path to fiscal union in the euro zone’, by Mario Draghi upon invitation of ‘The Economist’ - September 6th, 2023. This intervention follows the lecture held by Mario Draghi on July 11st, 2023 at Cambridge (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), as an ECB invited guest. 

[2] As an ECB invited guest at the 2023, 15th ‘Annual Feldstein Lecture’ (Cambridge/ Massachusetts, U.S.A.), professor Mario Draghi held on last July 11 the lecture entitled : ‘The next flight of the Bumblebee : The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone”. The ‘Annual Feldstein Lecture’ is organized in U.S.A. every year by NBER ‘National Bureau of Economic Research’, of which the economist Feldstein – careful EU observer - was president from 1978 to 2008.

[3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at the ‘Politecnico’ in Turin he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’. He created the character ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the magazine ‘20 Minuti’ in Switzerland of which he also published two collections. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the Swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

“A special function is established to periodically explore external reality…, and that is the function of attention. This activity meets sensorial impressions rather than waiting for them to appear. An annotation system was probably established at the same time, whose task is to store the data of this periodic activity of consciousness : a part of what we call memory… An impartial pronouncement of the judging activity took over, whose task was to establish whether a given representation was true or false, that is whether it was in agreement with reality or not and that decided about it by resorting to comparison with the memory traces of reality… Thinking was probably originally unconscious.”[1]

 “Now, it is extraordinary that for as long as there have been economists no one, coincidentally, has observed… that wealth is the property of the rich… When it comes to wealth, why not start with the rich ?... The rich has a property. He, or she, buys, buys everything, well let’s say he, or she buys a lot. However… the rich doesn’t pay. We believe he or she pays, for accounting reasons concerning the transformation of the more-than-jouissance into surplus value. But first of all we know well that the rich adds regularly the surplus value to himself, or to herself. There is no circulation of the more-than-jouissance. And above all, there is one thing that the rich never pays – learning… Why, since he or she, becomes rich can buy everything without paying ? Because the rich has nothing to do with jouissance. But that is not what the rich repeats. The rich repeats his - or her - purchase… the rich buys back everything that comes his or her way.”[2]

The 'rich‘ by Jacques Lacan is not the master at all, as he or she has given up one's envy[3]  that characterizes failure, and can free himself - or he‘rself - from masochism, as a pathological submission to the binary of sadistic repetition : here, this involves the vocational forming a psychoanalyst.

But, how removing the fog of sublimation which discards one’s removed thinking, and so one's law – only individual – of ‘learning’ ?

The issue was formally open, as we know, and does not like repetition.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 30, 2023  

[1] ‘Precisazioni sui due principi dell’accadere psichico’, S. Freud (1911) in OSF Bollati Boringhieri (2012) Vol. 6, pages: 454- 456.

[2] ‘I seminario. Libro XVII - Il rovescio della psicoanalisi 1969-1970’, Testo stabilito da Jacques-Alain Miller – Edizione italiana a cura di Antonio Di Ciaccia, Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (2001) pages: 98- 99    

[3] “…what occurs as ‘psychic occurrence’, ‘psychisches Geschehen’,  in this second time… occurs because the parents, or whoever on their behalf, are there, in the child’s sensitive experience : who applies to them, as Others like every Other, the law already established in 1st. This second time hasn’t autonomy from the first one : ‘Oedipus’ is the law in crisis, as it became partially independent from 1st. Therefore, it has nothing to do with an archetype nor with a more or less elementary ‘kinship structure’… : here, as a cultured thinking, there is the dramatic individual development of the Subject’s competence in one’s law, and as a natural one there is the nature of one’s individual thinking.” Cited from : ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), pg. 189 in ‘2°. Secondo tempo. Costituzione giuridica del desiderio’.

“Obtained the solution described above, the mice’s delirium disappeared.”

(1909) S. Freud[1], ‘The Case of the mouse man’.

“If men arrive to think the symbolic order it is because they are caught up in their being. The illusion of having formed it with one’s conscience comes from the fact that it is on the way to a specific gaiety of an imaginary relationship with one’s fellow, that he, or she, could enter this order as a subject. However he, or she, could only make this entrance through the radical ‘défilé’ of the word, the same one of which we recognized a genetic moment in the child’s play, but that, in its complete form, is reproduced every time the subject turns to the Other as an absolute, that is the Other who can annul him or her, in the same way that the Other can come to terms with him or with her, making Himself or Herself an object to deceive him or her.”[2]

Success is ‘via’ work : here it is the indisputable talent of Freud in his diagnoses, because he acknowledges the success of that knowledge – a science actually – which he began to describe ‘unconscious’, as kept in shadow by a conscience which doesn’t  liquidate the issues, as insisting on dissembling, to no avail, the fierceness of every reactive formation.

To individual right, which is not unrelated – it is work competence, as a matter of facts – it ‘occurs’ that stops planning removal.[3]

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – October 7, 2023

[1]  This is a success thanks to the analytical work, as Freud himself confirmed.  The quote is taken from : ‘Sigmund Freud. Casi clinici 2’/ ‘L’uomo dei topi. Osservazioni su un caso di nevrosi ossessiva’ (1909) Bollati Boringhieri 2017, pag.111.

[2] ‘Il seminario su La lettera rubata’, pp.49-50 in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ Vol. I, translated and curated by Giacomo B. Contri (1974) – Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (1974 e 2002). Original title : ‘Écrits’, Jacques Lacan – Éditions du Seuil, Paris (1966).

[3] “Say that there is no human sexual istinct, that is a natural causality of the movement of one sex towards the other – it is the first thinking introduced by Freud with the ‘Oedipus complex’ – it is to say that human desire is constituted from the very beginning, precisely, humanly, that is for the humanization of the body (Menschwerdung), and exactly as constitution, which is a legal constitution : it is a question of law, ‘natural’ like thinking of a relationship that is constituted after a first time of this constitution, ‘via’ the observation of those Others of a Subject who are the parents, also  identified, in a second time, in their own sexes of Man and Woman,  and already in relationship with each other as  S and O.” Cited from : ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), p.185.

“We’ve learned to conceive that the ‘signifier’ just stands in a shift comparable to that of the bright advertisements or of the memories of our rotary-machines-to-think-like-men, and this due to its alternating operation which is its very principle, demanding that it leaves its place to return circularly to it. That is exactly what happens in the repeater automatism.”[1]

“The details of the process by which removal changes a possibility of pleasure into a source of displeasure have not yet well understood, or in any case they cannot yet be clearly illustrated; but it is sure that every neurotic displeasure has this very nature : it is a pleasure which cannot be felt as such.”[2]

No automatism rules the principle of pleasure – to which also the displeasure up to pain conforms - remaining law, i.e. right and individual competence, which doesn’t await authorization.[3]

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – August 14, 2023

[1] ‘Il seminario su La lettera rubata’, in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, at care and translated by Giacomo B. Contri  - Vol. I Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (1974 e 2002) pg.24/  Original title: ‘Écrits’, Jacques Lacan – Éditions du Seuil, Paris (1966).

[2] ‘Al di là del principio di piacere’, S. Freud (1920) in OSF Bollati Boringhieri (2020) Vol. 9, pg.197

[3] “The freedom of active thinking, and taking cares of the law of one’s body (‘cogitans legem corporis’) is not contradicted by being preceded by the fact that the first law of motion of the body has already happened before our thinking thinks it. It is the law of motion for satisfaction by means of the relationship of the subject with the other ( ‘drive’ is a tentative name of this law). The occurrence of this law makes itself memory before any intervention of our thinking when making law (I) and of our conscience too. So it is introduced a first distinction between ‘I’ and ‘conscience’)”, cited from : ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), pg.107 in ‘Legge, pensiero’.

‘Prometheus chained’[1] at Siracusa.

Gods are going on a blind track, in the foreground of the very special staging by Federica Parolini for ‘Prometheus chained’, by Aeschylous, 2023 Theater Season – Siracusa, ‘Greek Theater’.

Maybe also Prometheus the Titan thought – the solid and very capable Alessandro Albertin[2] on the stage - that gods lack sense of humour.

“It was all a hustle and bustle without light of mind”, Prometheus loudly reproaches to the audience from the top of the rocky and desolate Scythia, here a menacing but secluded silo-tower to which he has been chained.

When the humans were allowed, as a matter of facts, to to be in the presence of the gods Prometheus liked to challenge the intelligence of the greatest among gods : let Zeus first choose which part he preferred keeping for himself of the just sacrificed ox! And Zeus at once took the one that looked best packaged, but that instead had been filled with waste… So humans kept the best part.

Men too shrewd for the gods Prometheus demiurge was forging indeed, and Zeus took from humans their memory of the spark that can repeat the fire, spread evil in the world through the weak Pandora and condemned Prometheus to chains, prey to an insatiable rapacious bird.

“I will tell, not to humiliate human beings, but to fully reveal the affection that dictated those gifts to me. Even before me they looked[3], and it was blind watching; they heard sounds, and it was not hearing… Mine was, for the good of humans – open throats the hero goes on from the distant tower - the idea of the calculus, first fruit of wit, and mine was the signs system, Memory of the world, fertile mother of Muses.”[4]

The entrance of the insane Iò, de-mented virgin who allowed to be transformed into a ‘cow’ from Hera Zeus’ worthy wife, only confirms the imputability of delegating one’s memory to others, which immediately passes into a dead-end enslavement : but Prometheus[5] already knows about the following vicissitudes of the troubled Iò, as by only chance she will become progenitor of those Ionic people who, with their uprising, will get help from Athens until they break free from Persian rule, and of Heracles who, finally grateful to Prometheus will set free him, by just shooting a single arrow on the insatiable vulture.

That only human question of ‘time’, to which Prometheus refers in the exceptional monologue which is fulcrum of the text, it’s actually the question of ‘work’ that the thousands gifts from the Titan sterilized and emptied of energy, because everyone’s memory cannot do its part.

Surprisingly co-attributable with Zeus for naiveness of gods and to their own detriment, Prometheus introduced laziness among humans, as a very serious factor of unpredictable costs, and in many forms indeed.

Was this perhaps the long-awaited secret from Zeus which Prometheus hadn’t time to reveal ?

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – July 27, 2023

[1] ‘Prometheus chained’ 2023 Theater Season ‘Greek Theater’ Siracusa www.indafondazione.org Direction : Leo Muscato; Translation : Roberto Vecchioni; Scenes : Federica Parolini; Costumes: Silvia Aymonimo; Coreographies : Nicole Kehrberger; Music: Ernani Maletta; Choir leader : Francesca Della Monica; Responsabile del coro : Elena Polic Greco; Main interpreters : Alessandro Albertin, Deniz Ozdogan, Michele Cipriani, Alfonso Veneroso, Pasquale di Filippo, Silvia Valenti, Davide Paganini; with the participation of the Students girls of the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ of Siracusa.

[2] Alessandro Albertin is a professional actor and a very trained cyclist : born at Padua in 1972, he graduated in 1999 at the Scuola d’Arte Drammatica ‘Paolo Grassi’ of Milan. He worked with Virginio Gazzolo, Gianrico Tedeschi, Ugo Pagliai, Paola Gassmann, Gigi Proietti (‘Romeo and Giulietta’, 2003), Franco Branciaroli (‘Endgame’ 2005), Alessandro Gassmann, Damiano Michieletto (‘The fan’, 2012). He is author of some dramatic texts that he is bringing successfully on the stage for ‘Spazio Mio Teatro’ of Milan : ‘Lo Sbarco in Normandia, i segreti di una vittoria’; ‘Marco Pantani, il campione fuori norma’; ‘Perlasca. Il coraggio di dire no’.

[3] ‘L’acquisizione del fuoco’, S.Freud (1931), Translation by Giacomo B. Contri (1985), pro-manuscripto.

[4] ‘Prometeo incatenato’, Eschilo / Garzanti Editore SpA 2022, Translation by Ezio Savino with parallel text; pp. : 38-39

[5] Prometheus is ‘the one who thinks first’ and maybe too soon, as well as Epimetheus his brother is ‘the one who thinks later’, that is too late.