Psychiatrists From Italy

"I have never believed that a fat person is more unhappy than a thin person, unless they are on the payroll of a fashion company."

"Excessive protection prevents maturation, thus also blocking emotional development and happiness."

"A teacher does not train; they educate and elevate."

"I see a great desire for conformity around me. Young people have breathed this air and tend to reproduce what adults have been developing for some years now: an antagonism towards anything that smacks of risk. And the bad thing is that many young people are likely to apply this to their life plans."

"The puppy must learn that a rule is a rule and does not change according to the mood of the person holding the leash."

"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."

"The anthropological change in parents and grandparents therefore risks weighing on an already dramatic identity crisis among educators."

"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."

"In the United States, no economic magnate has ever left this world without first naming a foundation, university, museum, or theater after himself. Here, multimillionaires rush to hide their money in some tax haven to keep it available for their children (who will thus grow up to be boors and multimillionaires)."

"The first and most immediate response that a parent tends to give when faced with an episode of obvious intemperance on the part of their child is to defend them, contravening the most basic rule of educational common sense."

"Reins are not coercive tools, but fundamental pedagogical instruments, just like a rider's spurs. Reins control the most exuberant impulses, while spurs encourage the rider to dare to overcome obstacles, or rather, their own limits."

"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 ritual of giving is complex; sometimes it is done spontaneously, other times the gift masks a need for blackmail: giving is not free, it always requires something else in return."

"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."

"The word “[work] flexibility” has become synonymous with “exploitation.” The laws that created it have been used by public and private managers to have thousands of young workers at their disposal at low cost, who can be blackmailed on a daily basis simply by waving the specter of termination of their employment contract."

"School should teach us how to be alone, to live our passions, to put emotions at the center of our lives."

"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?"

"It is not television or the Internet that causes discomfort to children and adolescents, but rather a certain unwillingness on the part of adults to be there for them."

"If you give a child everything, you take away what is essential: desire, the fundamental feeling needed to build passion."

"Without culture, there is no freedom, no choice. There is no social growth, nor real well-being."

"Perhaps, in these years of prosperity, what has been most lacking are lofty figures and examples, such as the magnificent ones that past generations knew."

"Many of us thought, or deluded ourselves, that certain words, certain achievements, could be forever, imperishable, carved by our fathers on the stone of our most glorious history. One of these, the most important, we even took for granted: freedom."

"As long as Western man lived in poverty, he needed to know that he was not alone, and the network of relationships and mutual dependencies was a necessity; but as soon as development distributed some small economic privileges, complicity and solidarity—that is, the awareness that alone we are nothing—became obsolete words, symbols of submission, relics of a time that must be erased from the present, in which the most radical self-sufficiency is exalted. And with it, the never truly dormant sense of one's own superiority."

"This is why the manipulator, today as yesterday, must use simple but effective phrases, words that excite the gut and numb the freest minds."

"How can we fail to understand that when children are not taught from an early age to respect any rules, once they become adults they will suffer from a form of “psychological AIDS” that leads the individual to not recognize (not possessing “specific psychic antibodies”) any form of frustration because they are completely unprepared for failure?"

"I wonder what could be more demeaning for a father or mother than to abdicate their role and responsibilities as parents in order to avoid the headaches inherent in any educational effort."

"Identity, including national identity, is therefore a much broader and freer concept than what many today prefer to tailor for themselves and, claustrophobically, decline. It does not indicate rigidity, but a perpetual flow."

"Even today, for many people, their freedom is built on and based on the non-freedom of others: this has been the case for centuries when slavery was useful for economic development, and it continues to be the case today in new and more hypocritical forms, perpetuating the same arrogance and barbarism as always."

"A two-stage illness, disorder-disappearance of the disorder (normality), focuses attention because it is closest to demonic possession: when the demon possesses the body, the possessed person exhibits behaviors that disappear immediately when the demon leaves as a result of some therapy (exorcism). Dr. Seward's interest in Renfield probably stems from Kraeplin's discovery of manic-depressive illness in 1895: in the same patient, a phase of mania can be followed by a phase of depression in temporal sequence."

"While Renfield represents psychosis, Lucy represents neurosis. The hysteria that Bram Stoker uses in his novel is what we would today call “dissociative,” leading to a split personality. And with this form, he brings us back to the theme of antithetical behavior in the same personality: Lucy's hysteria is expressed through sleepwalking, which manifests itself in actions that the young lady performs in a state of unconsciousness, of trance, even if it is a trance in motion. This is an extraordinary condition, as it allows one to have experiences and encounters without remembering them when one returns to a waking state. And it is during her sleepwalking phase that she falls prey to Dracula."

"Blood is life; without blood, one is exhausted, close to the end. After sucking blood, Dracula has strength and even becomes young. Without it, he cannot live among the dead. Even in the present day, there are countless references to this symbolism, which take on religious expressions: Christ transforms bread into the body and blood of the Lord and thus gives life to men. He transforms it into blood because the body cannot live without blood. Moreover, when he dies on the Cross, he gives all his blood, so much so that the evangelist notes: water flowed from his side. He had given everything."

"Sucking is the gesture of life, the way in which a newborn baby lives. It attaches itself to the breast and devours it. Life passes from the mother to the child, who sucks it in. It remains a gesture full of charm, and in adult erotic games, sucking plays an important role: once again, it is a symbol of vital force. Dracula has none of the oral aggression of those who eat; on the contrary, he never eats, he only sucks. And in this, he has remained at the gesture of newborn life, the primary movement par excellence: if the child did not know how to suck, it would die."

"Among the possible metamorphoses of Dracula, the most significant, so much so that it has become known to all, is into a bird, a bat. The symbolism of the bird is boundless and is also part of life. The penis is popularly called a bird: precisely because it rises and in that flight gives life, the seed. The bat is a strange creature, we might say perverse: both because it belongs to the mammals and not to the bird species, and because it is nocturnal and at night becomes a bird of sin, of the forbidden. It also has the characteristics of attracting and repelling. During the day, it has no life and remains hanging limply in a cave, while in the dark it is reborn and continuously searches for its prey in that unstoppable flight. Blood therefore recalls the bird-penis, and the image of the ‘baptism of blood’ with Mrs. Mina attached to Dracula's chest, in a position reminiscent of fellatio, is evocative."

"We must now have the courage to say that the count even manages to soften us, to make us feel sorry for him. After all, he is not the monster with superhuman and unstoppable strength, one of those who appear on today's screens of stupidity. Dracula is still a man, he was one while he was alive, in the historical sense of the term; he was a hero, one who saved his people from the Turks, and at that time, the word ‘Turk’ brought to mind evil and extreme violence. A dead character yet full of needs: during the day he must return to a coffin hidden in the ground of the cemetery where he was buried, so much so that he must always carry it with him. He is terrified of good or signs of good: the silver crucifixes and consecrated wafers that Professor Van Helsing uses as his weapons of defense. He is a monster who is afraid and who can be defeated, so much so that this is the conclusion of the story."

"The strength of this novel, however, lies in the great and ever-present theme of the struggle between Good and Evil. A titanic struggle that moves from the everyday scene to the tragedies of the classical period and throughout literature with a capital L. After all, Dracula is Evil, even if he has a charm that sometimes captivates, and the group of characters who eliminate him represent Good, not least because they act in the name of Good."

"Professor Van Helsing is the priest of Good who, given the times, does not wear the robes of a monk or priest, but the garb of science. And so he interprets well the period in which the action takes place: positivism. A priest, therefore, who uses reason, the power of science, but who does not forget the sacred, magical instruments."

"Interviewer:Exhibitionists Andreoli: Of course, this is the mask that hides masochism. And keep in mind that, generally speaking, exhibitionism is a sexuality disorder. Showing off one's organ, but not because it is powerful. To compensate for impotence."

"[Second symptom of Italy's mental illness] Ruthless individualism. And mind you, I mean this adjective. Because a certain amount of individualism is normal, one must have one's own identity to which one attaches esteem. But when it becomes ruthless..."

"[The British] never talk. Instead, we talk even when we listen to music or read the newspaper."

"Interviewer: You can't joke about faith. Andreoli: Not faith in God, let's leave that aside. I'm talking about believing. Thinking that tomorrow, at eight in the morning, there will be a miracle. Then whether it's God, Saint Januarius, or anyone else, it doesn't matter. In short, to be clear, we live in a disaster, in a sewer, but we believe that tomorrow morning at eight there will be a miracle that will change our lives. We're waiting for Godot, who isn't there. But try explaining that to Italians."

"Interviewer: Hidden masochism, ruthless individualism, acting, belief in miracles. We're in a terrible state, Professor Andreoli. Andreoli: That's right. No psychiatrist can save this patient that is Italy. I can't even take away these symptoms, because without them you would feel dead."

"All it takes is a hundred people willing to die as suicide bombers, strapping explosives to themselves, to render ridiculous the system of certainty and the certainty of power on this earth, of the potentates of this world."

"Well, if I have been, and am, a good psychiatrist, if I have helped my crazy patients, it is because of my fragility, because of the fear of a madness that lurks within me, because of the fragility that I feel capable of splitting me in two, of taking away my will to live and making me like a depressed person who only wants to disappear in order to erase the pain that shapes him."

"The Song of Songs speaks of necessary love: being two makes it possible to exist for those who separately would not have made it, would have broken."

"Pain is a quality of being fragile."

"Pain is the primary source of fragility because it breaks you and you feel shattered, unable to put the pieces you see in yourself back together; indeed, you are a pile of fragments, grains of sand that should come together and shape, sculpt a man."