<An authorized performance in a not European square>

How do they get to the option of a ‘social standard’ to assent which silence is enough? Can we talk about a ‘society’ default ? With which prototypes and reference models ? Introduced and spread, how ?

“The system 1 is wonderful in a particular specialty : it automatically and effortlessly identifies the causal connections between events, sometimes even when the connection is spurious.”[1]

It’s difficult to acknowledge ‘automatism’ when the goal is individual, as it is in every human act : more understandable is to acknowledge an individual direction, which may be also very very fast – as it is in any intuitive synthesis which captures what is already within one’s mind – in coordinating and leading to their own goal a number of conscious and unconscious representations, and whose multiple capacity to spend itself maybe has already been experienced.

We’re interested then in what Kahneman[2] states, because his underlining “even when the connection is spurious” indicates that there’s some thinking able to start ‘non causal connections’ for one’s own intellective synthesis, and with a level of effectiveness that can be well assessed by the subject : and more, we’re interested in that ‘non causal’ because it directly and exclusively addresses to the subject of direction, without almost referring to one’s own ‘conscience’, which first of all checks – we know that – the access in social life.

Kahneman’ statement, while aknowledges and keeps only ‘the non spurious connections’, also points out the existence of a remnant of thinking which, even if latent to awareness, however is not absent because can stop that specific frame, escaped from the conscience, which opens to consider the construction of a crossroads not existing before.

Here it is that latency-not-absence interrogates and questions again the distinction – not at all granted, but    to a great extent by now used as a reference of social life too – between a ‘mnemonic self’ and an ‘experiential self’[3], opening then to the comprehension of why no memories are automatic, ever.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 26, 2022

[1] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci’ (orig.: ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’), D. Kahneman (2011), Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA, p.146

[2] Daniel Kahneman (Tel Aviv, 1934) is a psychologist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, has been studying for years the decision-making processes together with Amos Tversky. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics because he integrated the results of psychological research into the economic science, with special regard to the human judgement and to the theory of decisions in conditions of uncertainty.

[3] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci’ (orig.: ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’), D. Kahneman (2011), Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA, p.508

“Such is the man of the Institution of the Object, whose uneconomic behaviour I describe according these three kinds of damage : 1) ceasing profit, 2) emerging damage, 3) non-emerging profit”.[1]

That a benefit passes into surplus value, makes that headword - introduced by Freud[2] - an inevitable crossroads of thinking : that is what I called ‘ceasing damage’[3].

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – October 21, 2022

Illustrazione originale di Gianni Russomando[4]

[1] Cited by : ‘Economia’, Giacomo B. Contri in ‘A chi non ha sarà tolto. Economia e psicopatologia’, by Giacomo B. Contri with Ambrogio Ballabio, Alberto Colombo, Raffaella Colombo, Maria Delia Contri, Luca Flabbi, Glauco Maria Genga, Maria Gabriella Pediconi – ebook SIC Edizioni Collana ‘Il pensiero di natura’ (2010) Reference book for the Course of ‘Studium Cartello’ 2010-2011 ‘La perversione al bivio’. 

[2] ‘Aldilà del principio di piacere’, S. Freud (1920) ‘Bollati e Boringhieri’ Vol.9 p.242

[3]  https://www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/it/events/233-born-in-a-used-frame-costantino-nivola-fra-salvatore-fancello-e-le-corbusier

[4] Gianni Russomando, biographical note : “I was born in Vercelli in 1956, graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti’ of Vercelli, I describe me as an ‘amanuense’ (that is a Middle Ages painter), and a long way from exhibitions, competitions and shows.” 

Mazurka, couple dance born as a community dance from Poland, has a ‘tempo’ of three four with a rythmic accent which, falling on 2nd time of three four musical fraction, gets the typical trot step of well trained horses : that allows therefore a large number of vaults to the dancers, which can so remain into a set of choreographic figures. A high rewrite, by famous musicians allowed a large diffusion of it in XIX century. Here : Claude Debussy (1880) ‘Danse bohemienne’.

“You can feel my rush in coming out from so many cautions I’ve been bringing back psychoanalysts to their less debatable certainties.”[1]

The needs of a scientific nature more and more pressing, the multiplying of his own contemporaries, ambitious of stands, the loving slownesses of sorrowful psychopathologies : what then was pressing Jacques Lacan when he called ‘many’ the ‘cautions’ which until that moment he obeyed ?

“… this inspiration came to me : that when on the way of Freud you see the unusual getting lively of an allegorical figure, almost trembling in a new skin it dresses with the one coming out from the well, I was giving her a voice.”[2] Unconscious however is no longer un-conscious when becomes representation, no longer a dark ‘well’ : and ‘the new skin’ with which the ‘bareness’ ‘is dressing herself’ offers a verdict to the defence.

That ‘reduction’ indeed, as Lacan cried, and “sometimes so long to be fulfilled, but ever crucial, for the birth of a science”[3] it is not for the science of thinking, because that reduction is already ‘removal’ and does subtract, rather than bearing fruit the drive start-up.

Hence the ‘experience’, “what Descartes opens and that is named ‘cogito’ …défilé of the rejection of any knowledge, but at the same time pretends to establish for the subject some sort of splashdown in the being, which we believe is the subject of the science” does confirm that the Cartesian ‘cogito ergo sum’ is individual and then legal, not at all an objective ‘cause’ and “…paradox of an imperative urging me to to undertake my own causality.”[4]

If anything, an imperative press the key, and whom with it but without any transport : the urge[5] which Freud ascribed to the drive is not an imperative indeed, it is a ‘benefit’[6].

“Say the subject on whom we operate in psychoanalysis cannot be than the subject of science, maybe seems a paradox… For our position as a subject we are always responsible. You can call that, everywhere you like, terrorism.”[7]

Right here, however, Freud distances himself from Lacan theory, as psychoanalysis doesn’t ‘operate on a subject’, but by the same subject is required in favour of an individual competence and better defence : ‘rushly’, then, is marching in place who is occupying that place without any logic, because not an “epistemological drive”[8] was the one discovered by Freud : but Lacan does insist that “any attempt, or temptation, when the current theory is ceaselessly recidivous in further emboding a subject, is wandering – always prolific in mistakes and as such guilty.”[9]

Lacan never explained why he didn’t appreciate when Freud wrote : “… Everything which has been removed will remain unconscious; however it is our intention to clarify from the beginning that what has been removed doesn’t exhaust the whole of unconscious. The unconscious has a larger extension; what has been removed is a part of unconscious. How can we get to know the unconscious ? Naturally we know the unconscious only in a conscious form, after a transformation or translation in something conscious. Psychoanalytical work makes us experiment every day that such a translation is possibile.” [10]          

For “the birth of a science”[11], Lacan quickens, “some reduction needs… which constitutes its proper object… A position of any science justifying its radical change in the ‘tempo’ of its progress …”[12] : and that ‘tempo’ – which Lacan keeps in Italian in his original document – is, as a cut and reduction, the music ‘tempo’ of any neverending psychopathology which comes back and begins again at a rythmic consolation.

At the crossroads with the individual competence and with an analytical work as proposed by Freud, there is the ‘time’ – unavoidable indeed – of a ‘psychic occurrence’[13] that becomes the goal, the aim and the satisfaction of whom has been working.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - June 26, 2022

[1] ‘La scienza e la verità. Lezione di apertura del Seminario 1965-1966’ in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002) Vol. II, p.862

[2] Ivi p.871

[3] Ivi p.859

[4] Ivi p.869

[5] ‘Pulsioni e loro destini’, S. Freud (1915) – Bibliot. Bollati Boringhieri (2011)

[6] ‘Aldilà del principio di piacere’, S. Freud (1920) OSF Bollati Boringhieri Vol. IX, p.242

[7]  ‘La scienza e la verità. Lezione di apertura del Seminario 1965-1966’ in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002) Vol. II, p.863

[8] Ivi, p.873

[9]  Ivi, p.863

[10] Here cited from the ‘Premise’ to the essay ‘The unconscious’, in “Gesammelte Werke” published by Freud in 1915 / Bibliot. Bollati Boringhieri (2011), p.69

[11] ‘La scienza e la verità. Lezione di apertura del Seminario 1965-1966 ’ in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002) Vol. II, p.859.

[12] Ivi p.859-860

[13] ‘Precisazioni sui due principi dell’accadere psichico, S.Freud (1911) in OSF Vol.VI Bollati Boringhieri

Original painting by Gianni Russomando[1].

“Beware of despising one of these little ones…” Mt 18, 6-10

What does connect “Law, Science, Trust”[2], headwords otherwise in a loose order ?

We know about unconscious just when sanctioning – and quite rightly then – our conscience and a few of her awkward expressions.

It is just in the sanction, alert and never depressed, that unconscious is turning out as ‘science of thinking’ and conscience cannot ignore that : amnesias infact are only of conscience[3], while unconscious is free and does intervene indeed recovering that essential connection, put out of use by the faint - or forgetfulness - of our conscience.

It is still an urged thinking, or unconscious, to recognize a start up by an other one, otherwise said imputability of that urging which makes of any affection an unavoidable judgement, which most of the time has been diverted however, or silenced : and we have to say that, as the years go by, the temptation to dilute everything we were beginning to understand since newborns, is less and less resistable.

But, as the science of thinking goes hand in hand with the reliability on someone else who begun,  starting the affection of whom is so becoming his, or her partner, when one of the two deviates the sanction banalizing that affection, the competence of a healthy and cared for[4]  thinking can dispense with anguish.

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio March 1, 2022

[1] Gianni Russomando, biography : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956). Graduated at ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I can describe me as a simple ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter). Far from expositions and competitions, it’s not a long time I’m on social media with a very personal aim : to give just a flash of quiet to anyone watching at my simple works.”

[2] ‘Tre capitoli’, Giacomo B. Contri ‘Contributo 7 gennaio 2022’ - Simposio ‘Amore’ 2021-2022 www.giacomocontri.it

[3] https://www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/it/economia-1-talento-di-pensiero/214-musicofilia-oliver-sacks

[4] ‘Il difensore della salute. Una categoria e le sue varietà professionali (psicoanalisi e altre)’- Docum. pubblico Dott. Giacomo B. Contri 25 marzo 2013 ai sensi della legge 14 gennaio 2013 n.4

 [1] Trains leaving - Central Station Milan.

Not so easy a novelist – even if successful as Agatha Christie[2] was – can release him, or herself, through the sole punctual identification also when excellently written, of the thought of someone else with whom he, or she, does keep unsolved conflicts. Why then ?

‘The mistery of the Blue Train’[3] is a tale by Agatha Christie, well interesting since the title, which is infact the crossroads of two different interpretations, where the more profitable could even refer to the author herself : but in vain, as anyone can read in the course. ‘The Blue Train’ was, first of all, the romantic luxury ‘Côte d’Azur’ train which, going down from Calais was passing also by Paris :  but in the English language ‘blue’ is not just a colour, is also the affect of excruciating and unsatisfied desperate jealousy.

To that unsolved affect Hercule Poirot, the detective made up by the fantasy of Agatha Christie, ascribes the greater part of crimes, and serial too also when committed by a woman : so that the romantic ‘The Blue Train’[4] is – for English readers only – also the ‘melencholy’ train where nothing can divert from murderous intents too.

In her novel, Agatha has been sliding in the risky pleasure of the victim, which the genre could allow but the life really not, as any revenge does literally transfer the victim in the same previous position of the persecutor : so that the original tale doesn’t persuade the reader, due to its  unlikely twists. We can add also that Agatha Christie never tried to come into an analytical work notwithstanding she could know enough about.

We wonder then that right a movie version[5] - sometimes criticized when the unavoidable shortness neglects complicated details of a novel – gets instead to perform a brilliant and crucial direction, making of someone – maybe involved into an analytical work – a successful man, or woman, i.e. come to the goal without the shortness of breath caused by impatience and rush : as,  on the other hand, Agatha Christie was not at all, notwithstanding her large audience.

To let fall that ‘melencholia’ to which the ‘mass psychology’ – or ‘group psychology’ - does submit, in favour then of a defense avoiding the homicide and using the sanction[6] is, as a matter of fact, not a clerical ability, neither ‘natural’ nor spontaneous at all.

Here is why get to conclude one’s own thinking[7] well before concluding life, is really a talent by an undoubtedly successful patient.

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio February 11, 2022

[1] I’ve found well said by Maria Delia Contri, psychoanalist intervened last January 15 at Symposium ‘Amore’ as per a proposal by Giacomo B. Contri, president of Association ‘Studium Cartello – Il lavoro psicoanalitico’ in Milan : the psychoanalist indicated that ‘notable passage to the Law’ which is the ‘real Trust in social bond’ and goal ‘of any claimed analysis’.  

[2] Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was a British writer, since today appreciated and translated. She was also contemporary of Sigmund Freud, whose works were published in English language by ‘Hogarth Press’, owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

[3] The novel, published by Agatha Christie in 1928, precedes of a few years the publication of the most famous ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (1934) with an apparent more limpid plot.

[4] Left the first time in 1922 from Calais, on French side of the Channel, the luxury and romantic ‘Train bleu’ went through the ‘Côte d’Azure’ for more than fifty years, passing by Paris up to Sanremo in Italy.

[5] ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’, directed by Hettie Mc Donald (2005)

[6] ‘Il difensore della salute. Una categoria e le sue varietà professionali (psicoanalisi e altre)’- Docum. pubblico Dott. Giacomo B. Contri 25 marzo 2013 ai sensi legge 14 gennaio 2013 n.4

[7] “…So that three are my concluding items : Law, Science, Trust”, cit. in “Tre capitoli”, by Giacomo B.Contri ‘Contributo 7 gennaio 2022’ to the Symposium ‘Amore’ for ‘Studium Cartello – Il lavoro psicoanalitico’.

<Fishermen port, Golfo Aranci-OT>

                                                                                                              “…I care to be remembered about a juridical conception of love, and about the science of thinking (i.e.  the unconscious).”

Giacomo B. Contri, cited : ‘A tutti i Soci della Società Amici del Pensiero’ - December 16, 2021.

How can be caught back that bond of relationship to which the unconscious offers the only practicable way, also if swamped by a multiple, and otherwise misleading, interpretation[1] ?

Here it is why any simplicity is then the convenient result of a complex, but not compulsory long, individual work.

                                     Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio - December 19, 2021

[1] A same sentence can in the meantime say ‘To leave for a journey’ or on the opposite ‘to divide, to separate’ : here ‘Oser partir’ is in French language.