Through the analysis of extreme phenomena such as those concerning hikikomori, young people who shut themselves away at home, or cutters, young people who cut their skin, psychoanalyst Laura Pigozzi questions the continuity that exists between them and the “lifeless” status of contemporary adolescents.
The bond between sisters, which is fundamental to every woman, is one of the most intriguing and mysterious, yet it is also one of the least explored, a blind spot in theories about the family. Laura Pigozzi, a psychoanalyst who has always been attentive to family issues, sheds light on this topic in her essay and, through clinical and literary cases, news stories, and films, reconstructs a unique cross-section of sisterhood.
Never before have the family models that surround us seemed to have expanded and become more dynamic, calling into question the very principle of the “natural” family and revealing its ideological nature. Yet, on closer analysis, even behind reconstituted, extended, single-parent, and same-sex parent families, there is an alarming image of the family conceived and preserved as an inclusive and exclusive nest: a closed entity, like a sort of uterine body, which believes it contains everything its members need.
What remains of a woman when motherhood occupies all her space, both intimate and social? Why, today as yesterday, is the reassuring figure of the mother still preferred to the more complex and uncomfortable one of a woman as a desiring subject? “A mother cannot be everything to a daughter or son without losing much of herself and without taking away a great deal from them,” writes the author. Yet, today more than ever, mothers are immersed in an idealizing narrative that exalts them precisely because they are sacrificial.
Laura Pigozzi, a leading figure in new psychoanalysis, explains how the hatred and love we experience in childhood determine the degree of independence and balance we will enjoy as adults, freeing us from the toxicity of many claustrophobic relationships.
While the United States is sounding the alarm about fentanyl, in Italy too, the spread of drugs among adolescents, from cannabis to psychotropic drugs used to get high, is triggering an epidemic of addiction. There have never been so many patients suffering from drug-related disorders as in recent years, and the age at which the first pathologies develop is now as low as pre-adolescence. Falling into the vicious circle of satisfaction-abstinence-craving is a dangerous and paradoxical game that pushes us to crave what is harmful to us.
Contemporary society has evolved from a smaller nucleus, which still constitutes its nerve center today: the family. In the past, families were the place where new citizens were formed thanks to the guiding role played by parents, in which a system of values was transmitted and dissent was exercised. The ability of young people to create their own identity in opposition to that of their parents and the need to find an impetus to move outward have always been fundamental steps in becoming responsible and aware adults.
With this anthology, of which an augmented edition has just been published, Antonio Prete provides a global map of a modern feeling: nostalgia. The starting point of the inquiry is a dissertation which Johannes Hofer presented to the University of Basel in 1688, where the term nostalgia appears for the first time. Hofer uses the term (derived from nostos, return home, and algos, pain) to describe the melancholy which afflicted Swiss soldiers serving in foreign garrisons.