Thinking as a partner

To benefit from one’calling[1] /23.

Original painting by Gianni Russomando[2].

“That day I found out that the flight instructors were trapped in an unsuccesful contingency : because they punished student pilots when performance was poor, they were mostly compensated by a following improvement, but the punishment was actually ineffective… Because we tend to be good to others when we like them, and bad when others dislike us, we are statistically punished for being good and rewarded for being bad.”[3]

When introducing the ‘regression to the mean’ of a statistical prediction – Daniel Kahneman admits it has no causal explanation – he comes across indeed human laziness which is every time secondary to the ‘drive’ - or ‘moving law’[4] - that removed, with prejudice, any possibility for work[5], and then for fruit.

How do you remove laziness ?, Kahneman wonders over and over.

That’s a very good question, that I will pick up on.

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

[1] www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/pensare-da-partner-2/358-psychoanalyst-and-profession-1

[2] Gianni Russomando, biographical note : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956), graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I describe myself as an ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter) and far from expositions and competitions.” 

[3] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci’, Daniel Kahneman – Translat. by Laura Serra / Mondadori Libri SpA (2022), p.236 ‘Regressione verso la media’.

[4] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), p.115

[5] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), pp.19-34

Flashes from ‘Lisistrata’[1], 2023 final performance of III year students from ’Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ at Siracusa (Sicily, Italy). Video by Franca Centaro, shared with www.youtube.com.

No doubts for the young student girl of the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ who comes from the Classical high school and acted in ‘Lisistrata’, 2023 final Academy performance of III year students. She has just left the Greek Theatre where she acted as one of Ocean’s daughters in ‘Prometheus chained’ by Aeschylus : I cannot take any of her time, she’s literally gobbling down a small sandwich before moving to the ‘Scenography workshops’, just a little distant, of I.N.D.A. Foundation for the rehersals until late at night in ‘La Pace’ by Aristophanes[2] which also will go on stage in days.

Lisistrata’s project "just doesn't work today beacuse sex is not essential", the student girl says without any hesitation and rush : a coalition of women determined not to make love with their husbands any more couldn't  stop wars, it wouldn’t have the power.

As a matter of facts the coalition is already a declared war between the two sexes, the old goal of a supremacy – phallocracy, it has to be said – where either man or woman wants dominate and, taking possession of partner qualities, maintain hegemony : however the outdated argument – somehow always revived – of that society from 411 b.C. Aristophanes hides in the thousands double meanings of the text where men and women look so much alike that barely the features allow us to differentiate them.

How to communicate it and to make it debatable nowadays ?

Here it is the function of the Theatre, which first of all goes, individually, ‘ad socium’ and only then also ‘ad civitatem’ : and this is also the competence required of the actor’s professionalism.

So that a final Academy essay is mainly a test of the relationship between any student and the director – not a father not a teacher not an employer – and cannot fail to pass through the thought of a friendship, fruitful -or not – and connected to a more solid professionalism, which in the actor’s case is acting, as a matter of fact.

No Peace then, though rightly coveted and sometimes even gladly touched, can accompany what will in the time prove to be a partnership – real profitful productive – but only in hard-working respect for the other. And here, at last, the keen judgement of the Academy graduating girl sounds unexpectedly decisive and present : in love does it really matter to make love ?

This shouldn't surprise us too much because the 'qui pro quo' is widespread, also among the specialists who deal with the Freudian drive.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio June 21, 2023

[1] ‘Lisistrata’, by Aristophanes March 31 – April 1-2,  2023. Translation by ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’, sezione ‘Giusto Monaco’ / Director: Mauro Avogadro / Choral singing head : Simonetta Cartìa / Characters III year students of the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ sezione ‘Giusto Monaco’ : Vanda Bovo, Sebastiano Caruso, Gaia Cozzolino, Althea Iorio, Domenico Lamparelli, Federica Leuci, Emilio Lumastro, Carlotta Messina, Edoardo Pipitone, Jacopo Sarotti, Mariachiara Signorello, Flavia Testa / With the participation of II year students of the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico, sezione Giusto Monaco : Caterina Alinari, Andrea Bassoli, Alberto Carbone, Sara De Lauretis, Carloalberto Denoyè, Enrica Graziano, Ferdinando Iebba, Moreno Mondi, Matteo Nigi, Marta Parpinel, Alice Pennino, Francesco Ruggiero, Elisa Zucchetti / Sets and costumes by the ‘Scenography and tailoring workshop’ of I.N.D.A. Foundation https://www.indafondazione.org/

[2] ‘La Pace’ is a comedy by Aristophanes, staged in 421 a.C. after Nicia Agreement, which was signed in the same year, as a wish for a lasting peace that however it was not possible.

To benefit from one’s calling / 22[1].

“Freud, or Freud-thought, is when you think that the disorder of the world, as well as of body and thought (pathology), goes on from hostility to Order, the one that would be produced by ‘not’ omission and ‘not’ systematization (censorship)… The psychoanalytical technique obeys the rule of ‘not’ omission and ‘not’ systematization, which abolishes the co-incidence, in the disorder, of pathology and world, or Culture… I’m not holding back on supervision, which is subordinated to the same considerations.”[2]

Freud intervened at the right time – and it is already a century ago – setting up the only possible crossroads : the one between forming, or de-forming.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – April 1, 2023

[1] www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/pensare-da-partner-2/358-psychoanalyst-and-profession-1

[2] “La formazione dello psicoanalista” – Paragrafo IV ‘Certezza della tecnica’, by Giacomo B. Contri in ‘THINK !’ May 2014, Saturday 17 – Sunday 18.

To benefit from one’s calling[1] / 21.

“Perceivings with a pleasure character don’t have anything of propulsive in themselves, instead the perceptions with a character of displeasure have this propulsive element at highest level.”[2]

“… Removal induces displeasure up to pain, which asks to be cancelled. It is the anguish.”[3]

Slippery behaviour the one put in place by removal, because stopping the frames of unconscious which tell the difference between anguish and ‘motus’ – motion – is entrusted only to individual thinking.

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio 23 marzo 2023

Original painting by Gianni Russomando.[4]

[1]  www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/pensare-da-partner-2/358-psychoanalyst-and-profession-1 

[2] ‘L’Io e l’Es’, S. Freud (1922) in ‘OSF – Vol. IX’ Bollati Boringhieri 2020, p.485

[3] Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no ?, Marina Bilotta Membretti (2014) Isbn 978-88-91081-63-6  p.23

[4] Gianni Russomando, biographical note : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956), graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I describe myself as an ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter) and far from expositions and competitions.”