Events

Books to work on 4.

‘Mes gentils animaux’ is the title of the book for children aged four to six, from which the above page has been taken. (‘Le Livre Club’ Edit. LLC Caramel 2004, Nimes / France).

“The reduction of psychology to generically animal psychology is nowadays a general conclusion, held back just out of prudence and residual modesty, or of competition which is not opposition, of computer psychology, called cognitivism… Science is what it is by ‘virtue’ of its constitutional psychological incompetence.”[1]

Animals intrigue children because they are so different from humans, yet they often live with them.

But it is not worth burdening the curiosity, which children can still have at their disposal, of Theories which, as educational, are in the hands of adults and with the prerogative of exempting them from being the subject of questions that lead to a completely legitimate judgement by a  child.

One thing is reactive formation that threatens ones’ thinking with punishment once repressed, another thing is the unconscious that legitimately suggests the question and, sanctioning, judges.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – July 12, 2024

[1] Cited from: ‘Una psicologia amica’, by Giacomo B. Contri pp. 15-16 in ‘La Città dei malati’, Maria Antonietta Aliverti, Raffaella Colombo, Giacomo B. Contri, Maria Delia Contri, Marina Massimi, Giorgio Moretti – SIC Edizioni 1994

'Tutorsalus.net' is now presented as an authorized periodical[1] of a professional nature, welcoming the entrepreneurial initiative[2] of that Journalism to which Freud dedicated himself throughout the course of all his work.

Does turning to Antigone[3] today, as a patient and anti-economic companion, sound remote ?  

However her : “I act for love” still risks, at least initially, confusing us with that passionate opposition  to a ‘juridical’ civilization which doesn’t defend us until we cross it : the heart to think for yourself, who knows something about this.

It’s difficult to escape the insistence of Antigone, who so often still comes looking for ‘I’, a civilian inhabitant and worker indeed but not fully aware of the profit he, or she, produces and that is also socially affected like a light and precious fabric, and not only to those who are close to us : because Antigone fears the recognizability of her action – that can instead slide onto the goals with equally deceptive sublimity and she juggles in the mists she doesn’t like to escape from, hating the work she even acknowledges the richness.

It’s her body, her mistreated body even in the most meticulous applications, that faithfully supports a sincere motion that leaves no doubt and that without uncertainty reveals her purpose about which she remains reticent with malice, because laziness seduces and makes proselytes, it’s massive indeed!

Quick theft with desterity, here is Antigone’s purpose as she, lying, complains having nothing… And she stands, still in front of the mirror, as if she didn’t notice : what makes her ultimately and, provocatively, even moving.

That ‘deathly’ jouissance that Jacques Lacan reported just after Freud, does not satisfy in fact : but Antigone demands it, holding in hatred the work that others produce without any possibility of a real transfer. 'Quelle tristesse pour Antigone...!'

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – April 14, 2019

Original painting by Gianni Russomando.[4]

[1] 'TutorSalus.net', online magazine of Freudian journalism, registered in the Court of Milan, n°4731/2019 of April 10th, 2019 – Director : Marina Bilotta.

[2] 'THINK !', by Giacomo B.Contri www.giacomocontri.it is the first online newspaper of Freudian journalism.

[3] The editorial takes up 'Quid amor ? Quid ius ?', speech by Giacomo B.Contri presented at the ‘Colloquio Università di Patti’/ Messina, November 16th 2018 and reported on www.giacomocontri.it

[4] Gianni Russomando was born in Vercelli (1956), graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’ : he describes himself as an ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter) and far from expositions and competitions.

In the photo, gardens at the ‘Università Bocconi’ of Milan, where ‘NEXT Milan Forum’ 2024 helded on last March 18 and 19.[1]

Flash on a recent, complex and rightly ambitious event, intended to involve young people in citizenship, as a privileged area for the implementation of favourable and enriching projects : AI and business, sustainability and the reconstruction of prosperity beyond the Crises, disabilities and wounds from wars, cooperation and security were the topics touched on, starting from thinking over Europe. Analyses, reports, interventions presented by world-class speakers and not only from Europe, have identified the indispensable crossroads - and perceived first and foremost individually - between cost and investment : to develop a progressive awareness of this crossroads and the possible initiatives allows us to empower humans, discouraging deviant manipulations.

Who would then guess that two young athletes, with their very personal unexpected recovery, represented perhaps the most convincing goal of an event designed for Universities ?

Be aware of an experience that you would like to remove, but that leads inextinguishable marks on your body and mind : what could be more difficult, more provocative, more challenging in the life ? The absence of friends, that’s what there is : it is the response of those who - very young - only formally accept the category of ‘Paralympic Athlete’.

Mourning is allowed but not melancholy, is it ever possible ? In a strong experience of pain you have focused on someone who knew how to make himself, or herself, reliable[2] : it certainly wasn’t immediately possible but it is unreliability that constitutes a truly destabilizing trauma with unpredictable consequences.

How much courage does it take to say ‘mutilation’ about your own body?[3] Until another courage – rare indeed – which is that of recognizing as destabilizing your lying that you no longer love life, your wounded, damaged, violated body.

And pain also attracts social and generic empathy, pain can make you malleable to external surrogates, provided you betray the original alliance with your body : accustomed as they are to training over time and with work, these young athletes were not satisfied.

Furthermore, reconstruction is an investment to which resources - perhaps already committed - can be allocated with foresight, but whose effects are a safe, individual and social                   surplus, therefore very precious and crucial for the crossroads they entail between cost and investment.

The novelty of a, of any strong restart, opts first of all to discard the word ‘resilience’, as this doesn't concern one's own thinking, and instead collect everything that takes on a specific weight in the new life : there is no longer your solid reference group[4] and many fall, their image fades but those who are confirmed present come in to team up, even time suddenly and definitely takes on a conspicuous specific weight. Therefore ‘recovery’ is truly available to everyone but it’s not for everyone to 'team up’ rather than to ‘do group’ where no recovery lasts long.

How do you prepare yourself to for a critical spirit, when even University often doesn’t help ? This question, came from the audience, seemed destined to remain suspended but the answer came from an unexpected elsewhere – those athletes who, who knows why, climbed onto an ambitious University stage : an answer so subtle and light that it could even have been missed by those who were already moving away without cathartic resolution, and yet waiting after hours of patient listening.

Too ‘easy’ – another word that should be banned in any recovery - is waiting for an artificial intelligence able to replace us : decisions that are made more and more quickly may prove formally correct in the short term, but risk causing that delicate balances, such as political ones -  interconnected, global and therefore very close to us - then collapse.[5]

‘Emergency’ will perhaps regain the original sense of something-that-emerges because it wasn’t there before and now it is there[6], without arrogance and without pretension : something that needs to be studied – without academicism and also appointing new places – because ‘I care of it’, then out of budget.

Baton therefore offered to those who know team up.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – May 10, 2024

[1] ‘NEXT Milan Forum’ 2024 - Empowering Future Leaders’ included an integration of different sections : the section ‘Get inspired’, in which world-class speakers provided insights and  analysis to grow awareness and positive change; the section ‘Make your voice heard’ in which the audience expressed its views and dialogued with the invited speakers; the section ‘Idea slam’ proposing a competition among the future selected leaders (20-35 years old) for new ideas to be shared with G7 leaders on key global challenges. (The event was organized under the patronage of ‘Regione Lombardia’ and the Municipality of Milan; co-hosts : ISPI ‘Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale’, ‘Università Bocconi’-Milano, OECD 'Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development', Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, KPMG Italia, Fondazione Cariplo).

[2] From the speech given by Martina Caironi, paralympic athlete.

[3] From the speech given by Simone Barlaam, paralympic athlete.

[4] Again from the speech given by Simone Barlaam, paralympic athlete.

[5] From the speech given by Peter Maurer president of the Board, Basel Institute on Governance; former president, International Committee of the Red Cross.

[6] From the speech given by Bo Viktor Nylund director, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight

Conversation with… Tiziano Olgiati.

“I think that investing the elements in common with one’s mother tongue, or with the languages you already know, promotes the learning of a foreign language, to have a basis on which to fasten the memory of what you learn.”

Tiziano Olgiati graduated in 2019 in ‘Mathematics’ at the ‘Università degli Studi’ of Milan, then in 2021 also in ‘Linguistics’ at the University of Pavia (Italy).

Today he is 27 years old and teaches ‘Mathematics and Physics’ high school : between 2019 and 2022 he worked as an academic tutor at the University of Pavia for the Courses of ‘General Linguistics’ and ‘Glottology’, within the graduate courses of both ‘Literature’ and ‘Foreign Languages and Cultures’. He is fond of teaching to the point that he enrolled, again at the University of Pavia, in the Master’s degree of ‘Mathematics’ in order to be able to enter the Competition for tenured teachers.

“I often go to work with a smile : teaching students allows me to revisit subjects I love, mathematics precisely, and students really involve themselves, I receive their stories and I recognize myself as part of their lives.” 

‘Which part did memory play in your professional biography ?’

“Since I was a child I collected foreign languages in my head, and the respective dictionaries on my desk : I’m drawn by how each language expresses the same concept in a different way, and by how every language very well succeeds in this aim, according to its own and often unique strategies. Auditory memory helped me in the languages learning process and, as a consequence, in the writing language process, or in that of translating when it comes to an ancient language.”

‘So do you also appreciate ancient languages ?’

“Among the ancient languages, considered as languages no longer spoken, I had the opportunity to study, in addition to Latin, also ancient Greek and classical Armenian : these last two infact, not being subjects of study in high school, I studied in depth, following extracurricular courses. Latin remains perhaps the ancient language I appreciated the most, it is concise : each sentence has the right number of words, not one more nor one less, allows you to get straight to the point, but also to express complex reasoning in perfectly pigeonholed sentences one after the other, as in ancient Cicerone’ masterful speeches…” 

‘Is there a relationship, in your opinion, between auditory memory, and writing as graphic memory?’

“When I was a student in high school, I wanted to get better at translating Seneca : the teacher proposed me a sentence with a particularly difficult construction, then she suggested I repeat it out loud, several times. I realized that repeating a sentence, with awareness of the meaning of each word, allowed me to memorize the grammatical construction : then I also realized I could recognize the same pattern in other different sentences too, and I must say that, as well as objectively improving in translations, since that day I apply the method every time I find myself studying a difficult grammatical element in a new language, and it has always worked.

I think that one of the reasons that hinder learning a language is the attempt to translate word for word what is said in one’s native language, but there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between sentences, in different languages : instead, it is better to try to understand how those sentences are structured, or perhaps the words themselves in a certain language, and then try to use them, combining them together.” 

‘Using one’s memory, in short, a bit like a laboratory ? Was this how your passion for mathematics was born ?’

“I was always attracted by numbers and by the concepts that arise from them, I wanted to discover more and more. A teacher of mine in the two-year period of high school said : ‘Mathematics is made of bricks. Each concept leads to another that builds on the previous one.’ Well, I like mathematics because develops coherently, and can expand continuously as new theorems are discovered.”

‘Then you discovered that Linguistics exists, even as an university subject…’

“Yes, it is a bit difficult to explain… We all encounter mathematics since elementary school, but the same cannot be said for Linguistics which is an university subject for both the Faculties of ‘Literature’ and ‘Foreign Languages’ : ‘linguistics’ generally means ‘the scientific study of language’, and I have some familiarity with languages. I always like to discover how languages come to express concepts, and then also what are the peculiarities of the cultures that use them. Shortly before my scientific high school exam I discovered that Linguistics existed, as a general science which allows us to abstract the properties of languages and to understand its role in society : I realized that it was exactly what I liked.” 

‘In your opinion a good memory is a defense for children, and why  ?’

“Certainly a good memory allows a child to have better defense mechanisms. Learning from your mistakes allows you to know the consequences of your actions, and to adjust your behaviour accordingly when you find yourself in situations similar to past experiences. Remembering experiences, or events including historical ones, and different situations, allows you to act consciously. Plus, having memory of what you have learned gives you a possibility : the one of having access to one’s own knowledge, to be able to face situations with new solutions, and therefore further learn, and progress.” 

At care of Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – April 4, 2024