Economics, talent of thinking

Eros without body[1] ?

Original painting by Jacopo Ricci[2] and an excellent interpretation of Freud lesson in “Humour” (1927). Just for a moment – the time of a flash in thinking – conscience lets itself be represented as clung like an octopus on a skull that falls apart, then showing to the Subject how copable really is the anguish, as it doesn’t allow thinking. Humour is, by Freud, the willingness of a Subject to find an opening to a supposed ‘lack’, while when you fixate on a lack, you incur the disease, so weakening and disabling.

(Lou Andreas Salomè) : “…it is an exquisitely human fact that the man is - and at the same time is not - his own body, i.e. his body, despite it all, is a part like any other of the external reality. He can so externally be referred, with the help of his sensory organs, driving him back to an addiction which makes any other almost insignificant, like a children’s game, and lacking in tragedy. For that reason it is precisely the disease that makes us remember all that is innocent and touching in a man; but also, for the same reason, all this gives rise to feeling that someone is suffering because of all of us, and his own way of suffering becomes for us a symbol of what man is capable of.

(Sigmund Freud) : …Thinking over the interesting, but not always acceptable, observations you made on the relationship between man and his own bodily support, I wonder how you conceive the same relationship with such a surrogate which tries to be ‘I’ and yeti t may not be; an existing problem for our glasses, or dentures or wig, but not as intrusive as in the case of a bone prosthesis.”[3]

(Lou Andreas Salomè) : “…For example, in the erotic sphere, which touches a woman closely, I feared just about that my old age could enter too late (…) and that, as a consequence it could have deprived me of what most specific it has to give us, precisely as old age. …Because, together with the erotic experience, strictly speaking, we leave behind a dead end… where there’s only room for two people side by side, to enter an immeasurable expanse…”[4]

(Lou Andreas Salomè) : “…On the other hand, your essay on ‘Humour’[5] doesn’t convince me as much : I’ll briefly try to explain why. The reason is that the issue of relatives, whose backdated effects would condition the superiority of humour, basically is the same issue which trained us to take seriously all the data of reality which we, when children, preferred to bypass and which, due to all its rules and prohibitions, awfully deprived our connection to the reality of humour[6]…”

(Sigmund Freud) : …”Our mutual disagreement about humour, reminds me that I couldn’t solve one of your puzzles : why women much less nourish, and appreciate, humour than men.”[7] 

                                                             Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 14, 2020

[1] Quotes by “Eros e conoscenza. Lettere 1912-1936”, Ed. ‘Universale Bollati Boringhieri’ 2010.

[2] Jacopo Ricci, short biography. “Independent painter in Valenza-Alessandria (Italy), Jacopo Ricci is born in Milan in ‘80s (1988). He loves painting since he was a child but does turn on coloured pencils and brushes just at his Superior degree. He nowadays cooperates with online magazines, also for on demand commissions. In 2018 he illustrated ‘Dottor Tremarella’  and ‘Guarda Oltre’ (published by the author himself). In 2019 began also working on  serigraphy.”

[3] “Eros e conoscenza. Lettere 1912-1936”, Ed. ‘Universale Bollati Boringhieri’ 2010 – p.135

[4] “Eros e conoscenza. Lettere 1912-1936”, Ed. ‘Universale Bollati Boringhieri’ 2010 – p.163

[5] ‘L’umorismo’, S. Freud (1927) in “OSF” Vol.10 pp.499-508 B.Boringhieri is a short essay following ‘Il motto di spirito e la sua relazione con l’inconscio’ (1905) : Freud proved the result of his observations on patients, also anticipating his more precious what his most fruitful legacy really is : the individual competence in the care of one’s thinking, and the strenuous resistance to it.

[6] The letter by Lou Andreas Salomè is dated November 6, 1927 : the essay ‘Humour’ was read by Anna Freud during the Congress at Innsbruck in the same year, in September; it was published on ‘Almanach des Internationalen Psychoanalytischen Verlags für das Jahre 1928’.

[7] “Eros e conoscenza. Lettere 1912-1936”, Ed. ‘Universale Bollati Boringhieri’ 2010 -pp.167-169

“The Case of Matilde”[1] in n. 1/2017 ‘Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane’, Franco Angeli Editore.

“My written intervention here[2] just offers a feasible path where – in the ‘Case of Matilde’ as introduced by Marta Angellini and Monica Ceccarelli – focuses on ‘the ridge between psychomotor skills analytically oriented and a psychomotor psychotherapy’ (n. 1/2017, p.143).

Referring to well-known cases treated by Freud can lead us to a re-reading maybe fruitful and also practicable nowadays.

It’s meaningful that Freud decided to publish only few cases among all those ones he was treating, maybe because the innovation which just some of them got to the rising psychoanalysis showed a fruitfulness which could be repeated time by time.

Freud himself was modifying by logic, and step by step, the original ‘setting’ to which, however, an unbeaten profit has to be ascribed in the analytical work by anyone recognizes himself, or herself, heir.

In the Case offered we hear that Matilde[3] introduces herself with a ‘not certain’ query : she offers her body ‘as she didn’t live in’ (n. 1/2017 p. 134) and that she was moving ‘round around the room with an uncertain pace and with a very unsteady balance’ (p. 133). 

We face a youngest patient who has difficulty in recognizing herself as the leading part of a care made up by her adults – parents, teachers as the Author says – whom however Matilde informed  about her uneasiness. Matilde is proving then a cooperating patient : better, she begins and undertakes a specific initiative that is ‘the play’, so replying her psychomotorist offer, but adding her specific work that is her analytical work indeed, asking her partner nothing else but replying her subject and her thought. A play which is ‘the play of Matilde herself’ – ‘a very rich play’ and ‘careful and punctual’ (p. 135) which, as the Author explained, ‘has urged her’.

Matilde easily gets her help, puts on the table and on the subject what she couldn’t start out of the therapy room and that induced her to escape any demand or offer by other partners. 

Marta Angellini has informed us that Matilde was already establishing an alliance with mom, but opposed by her grandmother who banalizes also humbling mom, not very able indeed to defende herself – ‘her pregnancy has been spangled with fits of jealousy by grandmother… and Matilde has been looking at furious arguments between mom and grandmother’ (p. 134). Better, I’d say ‘envy’ as pathogenic indeed, by grandmother towards mom, and mainly toward Matilde as the-subject-of-envy.

Nothing we know about the father, as a partner himself : however he introduces himself together with mom, then cooperating into a ‘parenting support path with Adriana Grotta’[4] (p. 134). It’s interesting that since the second year of therapy, around four years old, Matilde experiences her sister birth, as a goal of satisfaction for both parents.

Matilde happily utilizes that birth becoming herself partner of her father, without any evident conflict with mom –‘she is staging the marriage… also assuming often feminine roles… she has more tune… with mom’ (p. 137).

Finally is in the unknown play of the swimming-pool and of the threatening snails (third year of therapy), into which she also acknowledge the convenience of words, and in the following conclusive play of the acrobat (fourth year) that Matilde comes at her satisfaction, and any further offer of intervention is in excess from now on.

We can cite Max Graf, father of little Hans, as reported by Freud and confirming the overcoming of a pathology claimed by the child : ‘It is two days I notice that Hans disobeys to me, determined but not impudent, with some even cheerfulness.

Does it mean that he doesn’t fear me, the horse ?’ (Sigmund Freud, ‘Analysis of a fobia in a child of less than five years’/1909)…”[5]

                                                                                              Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – October 18, 2020

[1] ‘The Case of Matilde’ has been introduced by the psychomotorist Marta Angellini, with a supervision of Monica Ceccarelli for the column ‘Clinical cases’ on n. 1/2017 of ‘Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane’/ Franco Angeli Editore, (pp. 133-142).

[2] The text is citing also my written intervention to the ‘Case of Matilde” and published on n. 3/2017 of ‘Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane’ (pp. 475-476).

[3] Matilde is less than three years old at the beginning of the Case.

[4] Adriana Grotta is psychologist and psychoanalyst : she is editing with fellows the column ‘Clinical cases’ into the magazine ‘Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane’, by Franco Angeli Editore.

[5] In the Case ‘The child Hans”, Sigmund Freud describes, through the analytical method, a phobìa and its recovery in a child of less than five years,.

To invest in talent.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[2].

“Never again a ‘Sonderweg”[3].

It’s the assertion I’ve valued the most in public speeches of Angela Merkel who can comdemn  Hitler, as he cynically swapped a core value of dignity and honour for deutsch citizens, already involved into a hardest post-war reconstruction, to justify a policy of aggression and abuse : the word literally is translated with ‘particular way’, referring to the aristocratic attitude not accepting any agreement or alliance, but so evocative for impoverished people also favourable to authoritarian simplifications.

So that, the handshake with which Angela Merkel welcomed the election of Ursula von der Leyen on July 16, 2019 as president of European Commission[4] does remain a flash subverting the historical problem of ‘pink shares’ : and, on the other hand, speaking about Angela Merkel[5] - now at her second mandate as president of European Council – is acknowledging that ‘pink shares’ made, and make also today, smile those who can manage power.

“…For long time they went on saying : women must have courage, women must change, women must obtain jobs, sometimes you have also to give up jobs in favour of women. All of this is great. It was important and we did obtain a lot. But we can take the risk that woman has to become some ‘super human being’ who, from intellectual features up to the exterior looking, from caring family keeping in mind the needs of each up to an organizational capacity, she has to come as close to perfect as possible… We must encourage more women to dare to go out into the open field, to expose themselves to social criticism, to be able to resist that and to not lose heart…”[6]

As a matter of facts, a constant in the policy of Angela Merkel is her referring to an individual capacity of orienting which characterizes the human being, since their childhood : except to withdraw even only occasionally, as we know, and under the pressure of anguish.

“…I remember a gardener in the courtyard of the house where I grew up – my father was an evangelic pastor – a church hospice for mentally disturbed people, managed by the deaconry. The gardener’s collaborators were psychically disturbed too. Of course even other people could come to him, both as they had nothing better to do and as they had questions to ask him; among them was me.

As a child I had a lot of free time, I didn’t go to kindergarten yet. That gardener, an old quite strong man, gave me great basic confidence and great calm.

He had always time for me, which I greatly appreciated, because my mother always didn’t have time, not to mention my father; this man however, who had a lot of work to do, always made time for me. From him you could learn a lot of things about practical life. For example, I’ve learnt how flowering plants are repotted, and to recognize a good cyclamen. From him I learnt how to talk to mentally disabled people.

It was an incredibly hot environment, trusting, good where I could eat soiled carrots, where I could laze, and where I once even received a sip of black tea. It was beautiful. This man aroused in me the feeling of being connected to the earth, to the soil, to nature…”[7]

Born in Hamburg in 1954, at six months she left with her parents for Templin, at eighty kilometers from Berlin where her father had been transferred and where her younger brother and sister were born. In 1961 the construction of Berlin Wall upset the life of the family, as she herself tells about[8] : for that, maybe, in 1989 the falling of that wall appeared to her as a crossroads, and decided to give up her reserch job at the University Department of Physics, to go into politics.

“…With Michael Schindhelm[9] we’ve been working together, our desks were adjacent to the ‘Academy of Sciences’. But above all, we have been talking and talking and talking, about why in DDR[10] wasn’t possible to explore one’s borders, about why everything was so cramped, small, modest… When exactly did he give me the book I don’t remember… The dedication was decisive… He wrote : “Go outdoors!” It was one of the nicest things anyone could say to me in those years. And when I decided to leave, me like many others have gone outdoors, towards the new… Don’t ask yourself what’s not working, but ask what is working. That was the attitude with which, we East and West German people, faced the turning point of that period.”[11]

Elected to the German Parliament at the age of thirty-six, since 2000 Angela Merkel is president of Christian-Democratic Union (CDU). Appointed Chancellor[12] in 2005 she was then elected again, with a nonstop government which is today in its fourth term. But it is with involvement in European Union politics that Angela Merkel rightly entered among the founding fathers of Europe.[13]

Former president of G8[14] in 2007 and in 2015, her policy has been characterized as a matter of fact by substantial reforms in the economic and social fields, which transferred power from central government to local initiatives and authorities : a revolution which Angela Merkel describes ‘peaceful’, recalling the personal memory of the Wall destruction.

Her own guide lines immediately leveraged an increased reliability, in politics as well as in economics, starting however from human value which, until then, it had not found a hearing from the centers of Power in Germany and in Europe.[15] “…We, and this is the truth, have been living for some time consuming our heritage.”[16] “…Future cannot become the dustbin of the unsolved problems of today.”[17]

Last September 16, Ursula von der Leyen gave her first State of the Union address confirming, as a matter of fact, Angela Merkel policy in all these years of mandate : she outlined as ‘historic’ the decision of a ‘common debt’ which can even anticipate a policy of financial integration, still to be defined. This time, however, the president of the European Commission introduced the theme ‘work’ and  ‘apprenticeship’ in Politics too.

Addressing to young people, and not only to them, she referred to ‘Next Generation EU’ and to the ‘2021-2027 EU multi-annual financial framework’, which will have to make efforts to provide Europe with help needed for ‘environmental’ and ‘digital’ issues[18], crucial indeed in the next months.

What if these were real news for those who aspire to govern as an honorable and productive profession, instead of deluding themselves that there is a ‘special way’ ?

                                          Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – September, 30 2020

[1] “THINK !”, by Giacomo B. Contri January 31, 2020 

[2]Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. 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’. In 2022 he published  his first anthology, ‘35mq: 2012-2022 Dieci anni di inettitudine’.

[3] “Never again a ‘German Sonderweg’”, has been cited from her speech at the Bundestag on February 13, 2003 during the debate on Iraq war : Angela Merkel confirmed Germany joining to NATO and the consequent agreements, even at the cost of providing their own military contingent when required. Here she says ‘Sonderweg’ as  an ‘indifference to the agreements’ but she did know the negative accent that listeners will have perceived.// “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, at care of Robin Mishra. Edizione italiana a cura di Manuel Kromer, ‘Claudiana editore Srl’ 2012, p.186.

[4] Ursula von der Leyen, physician and member of ‘European People’s Party’ was elected president of ‘European Commission’ by the European Parliament on July 16, 2019 and she has been in office since Decembre 1, 2019 (she was preceded by president Juncker). She will act according to the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ (2007-2009), or ‘Reform Treaty’ of the previous ‘European Commission’ – project however abandoned in 2007 – which regulated the ‘transfer of sovereignty’ between Countries and Union, and vice versa. To the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ they could come thanks also to the work of those who have committed themselves to a rewriting of the Constitution : the ACED ‘Action Committee for European Democracy’, or ‘Amato Group’ from the name of the coordinator and former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, was supported by the European Commission with an unofficial mandate, and the concluding text (2007) kept the previous Constitution with the criteria that emerged during the consultations with Governments of each Country, thus remaining a reference for the negotiations on the future Treaty. 

[5] Angela Merkel is graduated in Physics and was University Researcher, before devoting to politics. Married, she is daughter of a theologian and Lutheran pastor : in 2011 she was elected Chancellor – a public office corresponding to our Italian Prime Minister – after a gradual political career in local administrations. 

[6] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.86-87. The assertion comes from Angela Merkel’ speech in Berlin, on January 26, 2009 for the 90°anniversary of granting the right to vote to women.

[7] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.199-200, from Angela Merkel’ speech in Hamburg on June 17, 1995 at  Kirchentag – biennal meeting of the Evangelical Church, promoted by lay persons and held in a number of cities in Germany.

[8] “I spent my first 35 years of life in the former DDR. I experienced on my skin that values like freedom and democracy are not at all obvious. And I also experienced how much movement can arise from the yearning for freedom…” p.165 in “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above from the speech of May 1, 2008 at Aachen.

[9] Michael Schindhelm, Angela Merkel’ colleague at the University ’Academy of Sciences’, and quantum chemist.

[10] ‘DDR’, an abbreviation for ‘Deutsche Demokratische Republik’ : after the demolition of Berlin Wall in 1989, the Republic was governed by the Christian-Democratic Union CDU in which Angela Merkel enroled herself, and then elected up to the office of Chancellor.

[11] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above cit., pp.134-135, from Angela Merkel’ speech at Kiel on October 3, 2006 for the anniversary  of German reunification.

[12] Federal Chancellor is the Chief Government in Germany.

[13] “…That’s not a secret : the negotiations for ‘Lisbon Treaty’ did not always go smoothly… It would be not natural in a community of 27 Countries. However, the fact that when it comes to closing – as it happened last year – we always find unity, is a vital force of Europe. Sometimes we should ask ourselves : where does this force come from, as in any difficult moment we can agree ?”, in “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, p.163 cited above from the speech held at Aachen on May 1, 2008 after the first semester of Angela Merkel’ presidency at the European Council, characterized by conspicuous work for the ‘Lisbon Treaty’, or ‘Reform Treaty’, because it would have replaced the previous UE Constitution.

[14] ‘G8’ – preceded by ‘G6’ e ‘G7’ and now again ‘G7’ due to the exit of Russia (as EU required in 2014, together with economical sanctions, due to the illegitimate annexation of Crimea and then made definitive by Russia themselves in 2017) – is a political Forum in which Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, United Kingdom, United States of America participate : they meet also annually as an economical forum. Since 1999 ‘G20’ began to meet and, in addition to the heads of governments, also the finance ministers and central bank governors participate, with the aim of favoring an economic and international agreement : part of it are, besides ‘G8’, all the more industrialized Countries, as ‘G20’ represent more than 80% of world GDP-Gross Domestic Product.

[15] The reform of companies taxes, independently from the corporate form of companies themselves, the expansion of childcare facilities and the introduction of an income subsidy during the absence due to the birth of a child - as offered either to the father or to the mother - are political news introduced in Germany in the first government of Angela Merkel. 

[16] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.134-135, from the first Angela Merkel’ big speech, she held on October 1°, 2003 at the ‘Deutsches Historisches Museum’ in Berlin. Between 2008 and 2009, facing the financial crisis which put in difficulty also some of the biggest deutsches companies, the Chancellor Merkel approved a substantial refinancing made by the State to the companies in crisis.

[17] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, p.105, from Angela Merkel’ speech held on June 13, 2006 at Köningwinter.

[18] Source : I.S.P.I. ‘Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale’, Milan.

Fresh news.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[1].

“…’Do you know, doctor, that today is the last time I’m here ?’

She admits that nothing angers her more than hearing someone who believes that the scene on the lake is just a figment of her own imagination.

Dora had been listening to me without contradicting, as she used to do. She seemed moved; in the most amiable tone she took leave of me with her warmest wishes for a happy new year and… she never came back.

Her father, who came and visit me some more time, was assuring she would return as she clearly wished to continue the treatment. But her father was never quite sincere. As long as he had hoped my chatter could persuade Dora that between he and Mrs. K.  there wasn’t anything else than a good friendship, he had been in favour of the treatment; but when he had seen that among my intentions this purpose did not figure, his interest in the cure was diminished a lot. I did know that Dora would not come back…

Could have I kept the girl if I had supported a part ? If I exaggerated the value I attached to her return ? I don’t know.

…Despite all the theoretical interest, all the professional wish to assist a patient, I tell myself that any psychic influence must have limits and I respect as such also the patient’s will and perspicacity.

…The psychoanalytic cure doesn’t set up a traslation, it only reveals that, as well as all the hidden  psychic processes… In psychoanalysis – due to the different factors on which is based – all the impulses, also the hostile ones, are awakened and utilized by making them conscious, and thereby the traslation itself is continuously undone…

Only fifteen months after the end of the cure and the drafting of my report I could be informed about the state of health of Dora and therefore about the result of the cure. April first… she came to me in order to complete her story and to ask again for my help; but it was enough for me to look at her face to understand that her request was not to take serious…

Years passed since that visit. Dora got married, and precisely – if all the clues don’t deceive me – with the young man about whom she was speaking in those associations at the beginning of the analysis of the second dream… so this second dream was then announcing that she would break away from her father, returning to life.”[2]

                                          Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - July 11, 2020

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

[2] “Il Caso di Dora. Frammento di un’analisi d’isteria”, by Sigmund Freud (1901) ‘Edizione integrale di riferimento’ – Bollati Boringhieri 2014, Cited : pp.179-196.

Not only on darnel we humans live.

A welcoming garden is a favourable habitat where also a young resourceful oak tree can find to grow.

Ironically commenting the undoubted discoveries of ‘artificial intelligence’ which are based on the possibility to describe thinking thanks to a rational manipulation achievable by computer, the physicist Roger Penrose[1] could conclude : “…Often we say that it is our ‘conscious’ mind to behave in a ‘rational’ way we can understand, while it would be the unconscious mysterious indeed.”

The Freudian unconscious infact, still remains a prerogative for those who get the ‘rational’ as a process following, i.e. ‘secondary’, that ‘primary’ process, absolutely personal, and then not repeatable nor transferable, only ‘identifiable’ by the subject : thanks to these healthy flashes of our thinking the analytical work can find the links – otherwise darkened by our conscience – in which consists the essential competence in care, i.e. the solutions neglected by a subject. In short, this is the ‘knowledge’ and the ‘science’ tout court, without which no minimum or maximum discovery is made possible : however it is hampered in every way, even by the subject himself, or herself, who is always tempted to delegate someone of the ‘community’ in which he recognize himself, or herself.

Probably was this arbitrary passage from an individual rationality, able to connect actions and facts which seem not linked to third parties, to a rationality pre-judged as ‘collective’ – i.e. submitted to  cultural imperatives unduly neglected – which distanced the apprentice Karl Gustav Jung[2] from the scientific work made by Freud, up to appreciate those ‘new’ claims asserted by Jung to the academic communities which landed to the first ‘Game Theories’[3] and to the manipulation of the individual values, essential if a ‘game’ can work.

It is the manipulation itself of the individual values, absolutely ‘soft’ in otder the subject can accept but also necessary to the predictive Theories – then not so ‘scientific’ indeed – the imperative to which only barely the subject can escape, unless you collect the ‘individual science’ which Freud named ‘unconscious’ and that is translated infact with a ‘not yet aware’.

Einstein explained, when solving the photoelectric effect which earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921, that he could be thinking thanks to any “more or less clear images which can on request be combined and reproduced”[4]. Then, what parameters preceed that mythical ubiquitous ‘random behaviour’ in the algorithms ?

Daniel Kahneman[5], one of the greatest theorists of the ‘behaviourism’ asserts that only the ‘highly accessible impressions produced by the system ‘1’ rule our judgements and preferences…” : and infact has been proved that also the ‘logically isomorphic’[6] problems highlight paths absolutely individual in solving.

We owe to Alfred Marshall[7] and to his non-Marxian criticism of the crisis occurred at the Ford phase, the identification of an unexplored path : the human skills and a ‘local share capital’ which literally made look up again those people who were still bent – politicians, economists and researchers - over a destiny menaced by Marx and due to the separation between workers and production tools.

It was, and it is, an essential correction of the prevailing Culture : as increasingly large and concentrated companies shall be necessarily side by side with agglomerating geo-localized small and medium size companies, able to modulate conveniently their own production structure in order to support their own development and of others, not only for survival.

I would like to cite the economist Giacomo Becattini[8] and his agile essay “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale” reporting an important subtitle, ‘The course and defense of an idea’: “ …In the district you produce capital”[9], understood as “possession of the knowledges and social relationships with a production relief in any specifc historic context”, and you produce ‘widespread capital’, i.e. “an environment in which the know-how is widespread and the personal knowledge allows relationships of differentiated trust.”

In short, a production district “continuously opens up, here and there, to new possibilities of access to the entrepreneurial activity…”, and specifically that “business risk…” for which the investment – path of thinking which is first of all representative, and then individual – can give value to a very likely success, because it fastens to realities already experienced by the subject.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato[10] does recognize to the State an essential governance, more today than in the past, in assuming a bigger risk that is also a long-term investment, the one to favour an entrepreneurial innovation environment, not only a technological one : through, for example, the promising ‘banks for development’.

Let us hope therefore that – only as far as any State is concerned, the Governments representing it and the Bureaucracies which are responsible for the delicate task to make credible Laws and Decrees – they can take into due account the experienced reality of an ‘unequal risk’.

                                                                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio May 16, 2020

[1] Sir Roger Penrose (1931), is mathematician and cosmologist, Cambridge University graduate and  emeritus professor at Oxford University : he received, together with Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), with whom also they were staying in debate on different hypothesis, the Wolf Prize in 1988 for Physics. Here I cite his book “La mente nuova dell’Imperatore”, Rizzoli Editore  1992, p.520.

[2] Karl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalist Freud’s student, inventor of that ‘analytical psychology’ that moved away him by Freud himself after publishing “Libido” in 1912.

J The theoretical reference remains “Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour”, by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern – 1947 ‘Princeton University Press’.

[4] “Il valore della scienza”, Henri Poincarè / translat. into Italian 1992, Ed. Dedalo Bari : from “The Value of Science”, by Henri Poincarè 1913 ‘Science Press’.

[5] “Mappe di razionalità limitata : indagine sui giudizi e le scelte intuitivi”, by Daniel Kahneman in “Critica della ragione economica. Tre saggi : Kahneman, Mc Fadden, Smith” a cura di Motterlini – Piattelli – Palmarini, Ed. “il Saggiatore” 2012, p.126.

[6] “Calcoli morali”, Lazlo Mèro - Ed. Dedalo Bari 2012, p.286 : “two problems are said logically isomorphic when their formal logical structures are exactly alike”. Lazlo Mèro is Hungarian mathematician and psychologist, his essay “Calcoli morali” received in 1999 the prize as best science book in Germany.

[7] “Industria e carattere. Saggi sul pensiero di Alfred Marshall”, by Giacomo Becattini - “Le Monnier Università” 2010. Alfred Marshall (Londra 1842 – Cambridge 1924), has been one of the most influential economist of the last century : his “Principi di Economia” (1881) and “Industria e Commercio” (1919) are still a reference in Political Economics.  

[8] Giacomo Becattini (1927-2017) has been emeritus professor of Political Economy at Florence University, member of the ‘Accademie dei Lincei’, honorary member of ‘Trinity Hall’ (one of the oldest College of Cambridge), ‘honorary’ graduate at Urbino University and president of the ‘Società Italiana degli Economisti’ : found of Alfred Marshall and of the post-war development in Italy , he published essays also on the industrial district of Prato, and its honorary citizen too.

[9] “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale. Svolgimento e difesa di una idea”, by Giacomo Becattini – Ediz. Bollati Boringhieri 2000, p.53

[10] “Lo Stato innovatore. Sfatare il mito del pubblico contro il privato”, by Mariana Mazzucato 2013 – Editori Laterza Bari.

In the picture, details from the  glkhatun (XIII century a.C.) in the Monastery of Holy Apostles (Surb Arakelots Vank) at Kirants (Tavush, north of Armenia).

Milan - November 9, 2019. A speech by Marco Ruffilli^[1].

Surrounded, as we often are, by what have been ‘already said’, we don’t easily recognize what instead is the ‘unpublished’, that is the real novelties.

It is not only a Middle Ages singularity, and beyond, as Marco Ruffilli introduced last November 9 in Milan^[2], in his rich speech : because he himself, while working on texts and documents produced by the cultured and multifaceted researcher Giulio Ieni^[3], whom he regrets not having met in person, Marco Ruffilli singled out a significant theme, neglected so far and referring to the Armenian glkhatun (or Georgian darbazi), the “typical roofing solution of a square compartment […] through a structure of stone slabs or, more often, wooden planks and beams which, overlapping and staggered, with a progressive overhang, as arranged in parallel or rotated at an angle of 45°, reduce the shutter light through successive horizons, gradually narrowing it upwards”^[4].

It is a solution thought up by Balcan and Transcaucasian workers, renowned for their competence in building, but “very rare in the Byzantine world” and which therefore “pays a peripheral and popular fame”, Ruffilli explained.

“We want dwell here [...] on a few [...] Balcanic examples, poorly known – Giulio Ieni insists – and which even have the same roofings : the church of Agios Theodosios [XII cent.] at Panariti in Argolide, Greece, the one of Shën Gjrgji [XVI-XVII cent.] at Dema in Albany, and the typical kitchen  (magernica) [ante XIX cent.] of the Monastery of Rila, in west Bulgary”^[5].

Ieni continues : “It is an ingenious solution which well responds to that incidental functional need with a geometrical rigour and an exemplary and formal elegance.

However also here [the kitchens, note by Author], it’s not clear what could be the original prototype from which a general so advanced configuration should derive, even if isolated in local architectural production. Certainly not from the ancient Thracian tradition, which we indeed must consider objectively lost with the Slavic and proto-Bulgarian invasions in the Balcanic peninsula; not from the Byzantine or Ottoman tradition, where similar rooms were covered by a spheric canopy or a cone-shaped vault provided with an airhole in key; maybe from the Moldo-Wallachian building practice which sometimes used similar achievements, even if much more modest, as for the kitchen of Văcăreşti Monastery at Bucarest, XVII-XVIII century […]”^[6].

Where such a technical procedure comes from, quite exceptional in the Byzantine context where instead the use of spherical wreaths was generalized for any possible connection between base’s square and circle of shutter, is not easy to say exactly at the moment.”^[7]

On the other hand, the architectural object doesn’t occupy the place of a contingent solution but also of a prototype for future inventions^[8]: as human work, when taking the reality in ‘real’, that is making usable the reality, becomes an object which can be observed weighed up, got over. It is “the theme – Ruffilli explains – of the ‘depicted’ architecture, which Ieni deals with when he considers both the presence of a model for the church inside the votive scene [...], then in a meta-artistic dimension (art which depicts further art), and a practical function of the model from the maker’s perspective.”

In a recent article, Ruffilli examined the critical-philosophical origins of the ‘metaphor of crystal’, which Cesare Brandi used to illustrate the Armenian architecture^[9].

Already in 1968 Brandi confirmed a historical connection between Middle Ages European architecture and Armenian architecture – reduced by other researchers in those years – on the basis “of a relationship which also historically existed at the time of the Crusades, when Armenia was the only one Christian state which aided the Crusaders”^[10].

“The metaphor [...] of ‘crystal’ [...] makes right of the particular disposition of volumes of the Armenian churches […] and certainly hast the evocative merit to recall right away the accuracy of structure and the perfections of forms”^[11]. Brandi here found an abstraction to which, moreover, in Art theory, Wilhelm Worringer already gave “the primary task to reconcile men and nature, making itself a criterion of order, of arrangement in a space, so that it leaves no room for concern”^[12].

At the same time, in order to expose the density of items posed by the khatchkar  -  the traditional stone with a sculptured cross, widespread in the areas usually inhabited by Armenians and sometimes installed in the diaspora too^[13] – Giulio Ieni says that “we need to appeal the parameters of archaic thinking which forever mark large areas of humanity”^[14].

Here is where, in my opinion, the man of science rightly draws on oneiric newborns experience, the one founding the mental constructs of later ages, and the thoughts structured by language : according paths that unconscious neglected and escaped from one’s consciousness, but not so impenetrable as they are present and usable in the goal they offer.

                                                        Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 8, 2020

[1] Marco Ruffilli has a degree in ‘Classical Literature’ at the ‘Università degli Studi’ of Milan and in ‘Mediterranean and Middle East Languages and Cultures’ at ‘Ca' Foscari University’ of Venice. He is also holding a PhD at the ‘Geneve University’and devised a Seminary on Armenian Art that takes place every academic year at the ‘Ca' Foscari University’.

[2] During the yearly (XXIII) ‘Seminario Armenistico Italiano’ of ‘Padus-Araxes’ Cultural Association.         

[3] Giulio Ieni (1943-2003), archaeologist, Art and Architecture historian, dedicated his studies mainly to Byzantine, Balcanic, Armenian and Georgian world, as well as to some monumental complexes in Monferrato (Piemonte, Italy).

[4] G. Ieni, Alcune soluzioni costruttive fra Armenia e Regione Balcanica, "Bazmavep. Revue d'études arméniennes" 3-4 (1981), pp. 412-423, then in Giulio Ieni (1943-2003). Il senso dell'architettura e la maestria della parola, a c. by C. Devoti, A. Perin, C. Solarino, C.E. Spantigati, Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria 2015 (Fuori Collana, 149), pp. 65-73: p. 65.

[5] Ibid., p. 70.

[6] Ibid., p. 72.

[7] Ibid., p. 71.

[8] G. Ieni, La rappresentazione dell’oggetto architettonico nell’arte medievale, con riferimento particolare ai modelli di architettura caucasici, in Atti del I Simposio di Arte Armena (Bergamo, 1975 June 28-30), at care of G. Ieni & B.L. Zekiyan, Tipografia Armena di San Lazzaro, Venice 1978, pp. 247-264.

[9] M. Ruffilli, Una fortunata metafora di Cesare Brandi: le «chiese di cristallo» degli Armeni, “Venezia Arti” 27 (2018), pp. 131-139.

[10] C. Brandi, Una mostra di architettura medioevale a Roma. Le chiese di cristallo. Gli edifici armeni costruiti intorno al decimo secolo presentano assonanze con l’edilizia sacra romanica e gotica – Un catalogo che stimola le polemiche,  "Corriere della Sera", 5 luglio 1968, p. 3. It is Brandi’ review about the photographic exhibition of Armenian buildings (Rome, 1968 June 10-30), set up to document the results of ‘La Sapienza’ university mission in Armenia.

[11] Ruffilli, Una fortunata metafora di Cesare Brandi..., cit., p. 132.

[12] Ibid., p. 134.

[13] In the same manner also in Milan, at Sant'Ambrogio square. These stones are a real symbol of Armenian identity, to such an extent that those ones from Giulfa graveyard, in Nakhicevan Azerbaijani exclave, were subjected, by order of Azerbaijan government, to a systematic destruction between 1998 and 2005.

[14] G. Ieni, "L’arte dei Khatchkar", introd. to Id., Khatchkar: croci di pietra armene/Armenian Cross-Stones/Croix en pierre arméniennes, catalog of the exhibition, Venice 1981, now in Giulio Ieni (1943-2003)..., cited, pp. 75-83: p. 81.