Psychiatrists From Italy

"Good ideas in education cost nothing, except the courage to have them and want to implement them."

"Music, as Maestro Claudio Abbado said, is not important for children to become musicians, but to teach them to listen and, consequently, to be listened to."

"Fill your computer screen with your own ideas, not those of others."

"[...] what the crisis teaches us is that now more than ever we need to go back to thinking, planning, and experimenting."

"Believing in oneself means having faith in others, and therefore in the possibility of relationships, love, help, and solidarity."

"As long as there is thought, there is dignity, and as long as there is the courage to be concerned, there is freedom."

"The teenager does not know who they have been and fears that they will not be able to become what they dream of being: self-awareness is the result of a long, complex confrontation between precarious stages of one's identity, and the group allows one to reflect oneself in others, to learn to recognize oneself and others."

"Mediocrity annihilates, flattens, makes everyone the same. Imagination and dreams highlight our inner resources, that is, our very secret of living."

"I wonder: is it possible that no entrepreneur has ever reflected on the simple fact that temporary work produces a temporary identity, which is the opposite of the idea of a profession based on passion and merit, which is the only guarantee of quality performance and high productivity?"

"We sell them weapons, because the disease of power has spread everywhere, and they throw away every resource, even human lives, to wage and win wars, wars of misery."

"Sometimes you lose because you didn't choose the right field of trial."

"An adult man cannot be reduced to an active and productive man."

"Those all-black clothes smack of defeat, they reek of collective mourning."

"Thinking up and broadcasting a program means contributing to the construction of the culture and language of the younger generations, so television cannot exempt itself from playing a primary role in education."

"The courage to educate, which is so greatly needed, lies precisely in the ability to take away, not to add."

"The idea of limits—and its intrinsic, unfortunately persuasive, pedagogical force—was created to control people, to force them to grow up within a fence, to live in mortification: it constitutes the pedagogical path to frustration, a progressive annihilation of expectations and the most basic existential ambitions."

"Paul Feyerabend described science as a place of anarchy based not on logical-rational method but on protocols, the tools of the trade. Science is, therefore, a ‘relative’ discipline, capable of affirming truth only in relation to data conventionally compared: a truth-error. (Requiem per la verità, p. 334)"

"New technologies bring with them new responsibilities for adults."

"Every magnificent man has a weakness that makes him precious."

"I have always thought that a nursery school works well when a child arrives in the morning clean and returns home in the afternoon dirty: it means that an emotion has passed through him that may have the taste of flour, the color of a marker, the shape of a magnificent plasticine sculpture."

"Falsification is a term that has entered everyday language. It was introduced by Karl Popper. Every scientific result must be questionable and, therefore, imperfect, the starting point for new experiments for progressive, but never definitive, perfection. Scientific research is the never-ending story of corrections to previously obtained data, a story that has the limits of Tantalus. The definitive is dogmatism; it can be asserted but not proven. The great system of Bacon and Galileo has been decisively destroyed, precisely in the method that founded it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 333-334)"

"Sexuality is also dying. Once upon a time, the penis had great significance and could be an ideological foundation. Today, it is an appendage of the body without qualities. No plans are made for the penis anymore. It is an intriguing and dangerous organ. It can generate in an overpopulated world. Better the power of an engine. Impotence has never been as high as in the contemporary world. You are male because of your motorcycle, your tattoo, your abdominal muscles, and your beard; the penis has nothing to do with it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 335)"

"Vittorino Andreoli, I miei matti, Rizzoli, 2004."

"Vittorino Andreoli, L'uomo di vetro, Rizzoli, 2008."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Lettera a un adolescente, Rizzoli, 2004."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Preti di carta. Storie di santi ed eretici, asceti e libertini, esorcisti e guaritori, Piemme, 2010."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Preti. Viaggio fra gli uomini del sacro, Piemme, 2010. ISBN 9788856615197"

"Vittorino Andreoli, Tra un'ora, la follia, Rizzoli, 1999."

"Vittorino Andreoli, Un secolo di follia, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milano, 1998. ISBN 88-17-11838-9"

"There is a psychological problem, not a legal one: you are mothers, and I don't need to tell you that those nine months are not just a matter of biological growth. There are thousands of studies that show that an emotional bond is established between the mother and the baby in her womb. [...] Women who ask others to carry on with the pregnancy for them? Horrible, Nazism, pure Nazism. You talk about the rights of adults and not the rights of children."

"(About Romanzo criminale) It contributes significantly to helping people not to think, to turn their attention to other things, and that is why the literary and then cinematic product is successful."

"We must give children back their playtime, not put smartphones in their cribs to distract ourselves. I am tech-savvy and in favor of technology, but not as a tool to relieve us of our responsibility for education. Andrea Camilleri wrote a wonderful book a few years ago, L'enciclopedia dei giochi per l'infanzia (“The Encyclopedia of Children's Games"), and Sicily, in its essence, could be a great pedagogical laboratory that bucks the trend. I say this about Sicily, but I could say it about Venice or Naples, about all those places that have an immense cultural heritage."

"The success of these television series, like all films about the mafia or evil in general, can be explained by one simple fact: they attract us because each of us is somehow drawn to evil, but they comfort us and lull us to sleep because they are fiction."

"We are experiencing a strange paradox: no one can say they are lonely anymore, yet we all, to some extent, feel and fear that we are."

"[...] it happened in Veneto, one of the most productive and wealthy areas of the country, in what has been called the engine of Italy. It did not happen in a suburb of the South, catalogued with the usual blah-blah. [...] It is proof that violence and prejudice against women have nothing to do with what the usual four sociologists say. Here we are in the heart of the Northeast. There are villas, well-kept gardens, a world we thought was privileged. And happy. But no. We have money, but not happiness. There are young people who cannot distinguish between feelings: how can you talk about love when you make forty phone calls to a girl?"

"They are wrong to always justify their children. Are the kids doing badly at school? Poor things. Do they get a failing grade? It's the teachers' fault. Do they fail? Appeal to the TAR. We have created children who do not know frustration, who do not know that ‘no’ also exists."

"I'm not a magician, but I don't think it all happened that night; outbursts only happen in comic books. You don't become a wolf overnight."

"People need guidance, and when they can't find it, they invent it. We need an instruction manual for life. But then the instructions are so simple and obvious that one wonders: why don't people follow them? We're not talking about Einstein's insights here."

"Instead of playing with toy trains in the attic, he plays with satellites orbiting the Earth. He's as brilliant as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Now it seems to me that something is making him a little too euphoric... But when a man, from Caesar onwards, passing through Napoleon, thinks he wants to take over the world, at that precise moment he becomes something I don't like: a dictator. Sooner or later, some actor will re-enact the scene of Charlie Chaplin kicking the globe, this time dressed not as Hitler but as Musk."

"(About the television program Belve) What's interesting about it? They've never invited me, and I would never go. Fagnani may be cute, but it's the fault of those who make the program that they have to look for the time you slipped on a banana peel: pure desperation. And teenagers see that we are ruthless. The trash TV we talked about years ago was the precursor to this; now it's animalistic television, in fact they're called “Belve” (Beasts) and “Iene” (Hyenas). There's nothing human about it."

"At the beginning of my career, I was too drastic and perhaps I didn't understand that there's an age for everything. I can afford to do certain things today because I see them from a higher hill, which allows me to broaden my view of things and bring a little more wisdom to bear. I am sometimes criticized for my excesses, my hyperactivity, and I think that criticism is fair, even if in the end it has brought good things, because otherwise I would be just one of many today. And then they accuse me of being blunt, of often taking too clear-cut positions: that too must come with life. I was born to have opinions, but at a certain age, you reach a point where you can speak your mind."

"I am afraid of the life my daughter will have. I can count young people who are great travelers on the fingers of one hand. No one cares that you went to Peru: they're much more interested in someone who takes a selfie with a heart-shaped pout. Today, artistic expression has been reduced to zero, unless you consider dipping a biscuit in your latte to be art, perhaps tagging the bakery so you can get free cappuccinos for the next three months."

"Rudeness in the age of the Internet and technology seems to know no bounds: everything seems to be permitted, respect for others is now an obsolete concept, a habit of old gentlemen resting in some country cemetery."

"Seduction begins with a mole, or rather a difference, something that distinguishes uniqueness. The actresses who have left an indelible mark on our memory are those who had some small flaw: feminine (and masculine) perfection leaves no impression and causes no disturbance; it may work for a photograph or an advertisement, but not for the construction of a myth."

"And if tomorrow our children can finally live in a world where a computer can be absolutely competitive with human intelligence, what will be their task and their destiny? To control megacomputers or be controlled by them?"

"A young talent, however innovative and creative they may be, if they remain isolated, even if connected to the world in a virtual way, will never be able to express themselves as those who have daily opportunities for real contamination."

"Parents need only ask themselves one simple question: if a boy or girl has never wanted for anything, how will they know the need to build something for their own future?"

"All children have talent, as Maria Montessori said, but not all are creative in the same way. To nurture their creativity, we need to make them confident in their abilities and not dependent on anything: a very difficult task for any educator."

"Digital technology is, and must remain, a tool, not an end in itself. With regard to the anthropological changes it constantly proposes, we need to speak words of wisdom and assert common sense. Technocrats are citizens like everyone else, not emperors of the new world."

"In 1950-51, Maxwell Jones invented, as an alternative to psychiatric hospitals, small therapeutic communities made up of patients and psychiatric and social workers, managed on the basis of collective participation and dynamics that were intended to bring out the abilities and qualities of each individual. The model of the extended family or village will go beyond psychiatry to apply to the problems of marginalization (from prisoners to drug addicts, the disabled, and the elderly). (La società o la fabbrica della follia, p. 131)"