Thinking as a partner

‘Dora’ was less than eighteen in 1898[1] when his father – worried about her daughter sudden being moody, and also annoyed by her being in strong and unexplainable opposition to him - decided to call doctor Sigmund Freud who was living and working in Wien and about whom they knew some successful among patients of the incoming psychoanalytical method.

‘The Case of Dora – Fragment of an hysteria case’ was edited by Freud only in 1905, more than four years after the conclusion of that Case and without any reference to the young woman whose father asked and financed the therapy : the text refers without resistance how Freud decided to work in defense of the young patient, realizing she was the principal.

The father of ‘Dora’ pretended the daughter would become quiet and obedient and at first Freud accepted that but, as far as the analytical work went on, he began to seriously consider what her patient was asking for :  and he realized also that ‘Dora’ was diligent also about the rules in analytical work. Defending ‘Dora’ became then the real goal of the so named ‘psychoanalysis’, i.e. a respectful work between the two, patient and analyst : that professional position Freud was having did show a cross-road in the care of neurosis as the women were generally lead by husbands or fathers due to their not acceptable behaviours among people.

Freud realized that the way ‘Dora’ was leading herself would be enough to justify her defence – also towards her father as an external principal – and up to a hopeful recovery.

Publishing the Case was a formal step as regard as the analytical profession and towards Freud colleagues : in that Case you can see how neurosis make poor any individual defence, also worning out good chances in favour of someone.

It seems so suitable indee the title “The client” of a well known novel by John Grisham where Mark, eleven, decides to get to a lawyer on his own : he was present  - together his eight year brother – at a suicide which, when trying to foil, that got the boy into the violence of the man and his own previous crimes not be found out.

Mark realizes very soon – while calling Police to indicate the corpse and also when being informally  interrogated – that his defense can’t stand up. And the lawyer which seemed favourable when Mark was appointing her with some ingenuousness, will also be affordable ? But the boy hadn’t so much time.

Mark still doesn’t know that his position won’t meet the favour of Law : a witness infact, notwithstanding he is a minor and evidently exposed to reprisals,  can be easily condemned as ‘justice obstacling’[2] if he doesn’t say everything he knows about an investigation in progress.

“There was something absolutely not right in a Court system where a kid could be lead in a Law court, with lawyers quarreling while the judge observed them as an arbiter, among a number of laws, penal code paragraphs, sentences and legal uncomprehensible words, and finally the same kid had to know what was happening. It was irrimediably unfair and not at all acceptable.”[3]

That ‘unfairity’ has been correctly perceived by Mark, then : that is the same for any human ‘capable of understanding’.

However, being ‘capable of understanding’ is only a first access when structuring a defence where ‘capable of willing’ can honoraubly be linked, when that capability has come up down, lost or otherwise absconding, in a man, or a woman.

                                    Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio February 27, 2021

[1] ‘Il Caso di Dora – Frammento di un’analisi d’isteria’, S.Freud (1901) in “Sigmund Freud. Isteria e angoscia. Il Caso di Dora e altri scritti”, Edizione integrale di riferimento – Introd. by Cesare L. Musatti, Bollati Boringhieri editore (2014)

[2] p. 238, “Il cliente”, John Grisham (1993) – Mondadori editore (2016).

[3] pp. 285-286 “Il cliente”, John Grisham (1993) – Mondadori editore (2016).

Books to work on 2.

Does need more heart to conquest the space or the classmate girl ?

It isn’t a nonsense item nowadays when the sex difference is bending to a taboo : but, if also a conquest can begin by curiosity, is the curiosity itself to be charged with in all the human history and nowadays too.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant[2], who raised bureaucracies and organizations to government itself, was stumbling in curiosity as an obstacle, even when profitable but irremediably and only individual, so that not able to be systematized; but he was, on the opposite, obliged - while when building a theory - to generalize what humans cannot like, or choose. In any social field by now, those theories seem to be unproductive indeed, as they have been drawn out ‘tout court’ from physical sciences.

How then any ambition begins, as it is also an area (‘ambito’, in Italian language – n.b.e.) which usually refers to something exceeding one’s own  daily life ? Each one of us can find convenient the sources of his - or her - own ambition, also when connected to a catchable ‘taking a distance’, even from the Earth and from its colourful pedagogies : but don’t let us laugh too easily, just because we can represent that.

Surely, not so fit to be generalized would be the ambitions which lead a youngman Paolo Nespoli – here the leading character of a fantastic space mission and also, at the actual age of sixtythree years, the oldest space man in the ‘European Space Agency’/ E.S.A. – to get to, in 1988, a Bachelor of Science in ‘Aerospace Engineering’ at Polytechnic University of New York, a Master of Science in ‘Aeronautics and Astronautics’, up to a degree as ‘Mechanical Engineer’ at Florence University (Italy). Between 2006 and 2015 Paolo Nespoli has already been carrying out three space mission, more than dealing with training for E.S.A.

It is challenging, time by time, to undergo the trials required by any space mission, notwithstanding the space men are aware of : and a very long and accurate training is demanded to them, but the outcomes of which are logically not predictable[3]. However, both challenges and goals which can be involved by a conquest of space are already opening to never before experienced alliances among Countries which were competitors, both from an economic and political point of view.

“C’è spazio per tutti” is finally a call to nourish one’s own ambitions, by working on, and even hard : but it is also a warning to whom those ambitions would like to censor, or even to ‘systematize’, that is to banalize their goal.

                                                          Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio February 3, 2021

[1] “C’è spazio per tutti”, is a graphic novel by Leo Ortolani (2017), ‘Panini Comics’/ Panini SpA in cooperation with E.S.A. European and Italian Space Agencies : with the contribution of Paolo Nespoli, engineer and spaceman for ‘European Space Agency’ and ‘Rat Man’, character created by Leo Ortolani and leading part in many of his stories. Leo Ortolani is born in Pisa in 1967, studied Geology at Parma University, town where he is also living and working : he began at ‘Lucca Comics 1990’ winning as the best scriptwriter. Paolo Nespoli i salso the author of ‘Dall’alto i problemi sembrano più piccoli’ (2012), ‘Mondadori’.

[2] Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the greatest philosopher of ’Enlightenment’, wrote – among many other works - ‘Critic of pure reason’ (1787) and ‘Critic of practical reason’ (1788).

[3] Paolo Nespoli remembers on his Facebook page the ‘Challenger’ shuttle tragedy in 1986 when seven spacemen died : he himself flew as a training on that selected but unreliable engine. Notwithstanding heavy responsibilities after the tragedy, Nespoli says that one’s own ambitions support an individual wish to go beyond one’s own limits, and that is also a benefit to human race : “paving the way” is exactly that, he recently remembered. In “C’è spazio per tutti” Leo Ortolani points, one by one, the animals, as not conscious about their mission and preceeding spacemen, but sacrificing themselves as the first space passengers.  

Not properly an exchange.

The child waiting to be questioned by Police. Screenshot from ‘Changeling’ (2008), directed by Clint Eastwood.

Not for all the actors that special test-bench which is a transition to the direction makes it a success : it is, however, for Clint Eastwood who doesn’t deny his many experiences in the western and action genre.

I’d like to briefly comment “Changeling”[1], a word which doesn’t exist into the Italian language, but it is clear in its original English language : a disappearance with stealth replacement, and also that mental procedure by which someone deceives, or let himself be deceived. And the quiet title does not deceive on the real event which reports and refers – beyond the chilling news – how any deceit and the deceiving itself can hurt, often cruelly, by taking possession of someone else’s life, as if it were just an ‘object’ to collect and to get rid of when is too much.

The deceive is so described by Clint Eastwood as an obvious arbitrariness which the social position allows : whether it is a representative of the institutions or a socially integrated homicidal maniac, or even a desperate woman when they introduce to her a child who is not her missing son.

The director doesn’t take away anything to what the onlookers can have access in order to weigh up, to participate, to judge at last; he does display, without inventing the orders of facts, only using the logic of each character. The presence of a non governmental[2] institution is proving essential to intervene where the bureaucracies corrupt a State, although democratic and Justice hands over, due to men who represent it too : and irreplaceable proves the defense of a lawyer who decides to help Christine Collins releasing her from the psychiatric hospital to where she was committed against her will.

How she could recognize Walter if he was not him ? He was dressed ‘such as’ him, but he was not him…

But if he was ‘such as’ him, why do you say that he was ‘not’ him ?

Swindled, first of all has been Walter Collins, disappeared at the age of nine years on a day like many others but of whom still remain proof in the homicides ranch. And swindled too has been the child introduced to Christine by the Police and doing everything in order to be accepted by her and to get off the road, but she is overwhelmed by her own pain, she only wants ‘her’ son back, or alternatively an admission of error : maybe by governmental representatives ? Or by the maniac himself who, from the prison sends for her just before his own execution ?

Negatively charged is the pain itself because it cannot help any solution, quickening indeed with damages and sweeping away any logic which only could allow at least a slightly favourable result.

Still decisive is finally a child, the first one kidnapped by the maniac and become himself a murderer : while he is waiting to be questioned by the Police and sit in the corridor, he relives the crossroads of his collapse, the madness very very close. By a mental path, absolutely unforeseen but reasonable the same, he asks to speak with the officer[3] who arrested him, and collaborates up to the recognition of the victims and to the terrifiant prooves : his confession can untie just a few of his persecuting memories, but anticipating a possible rehabilitation too.

It’s about an ‘innocence’, by no means taken for granted.

                                            Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - January 25, 2021

[1] Inspired by a child kidnapping and murder by a maniac in Los Angeles in 1928, ‘Changeling’ plot and sets are by J. Michael Straczyinski.

[2] Here is the local Presbyterian community and specifically reverend Gustav Briegleb who for years has been fighting against Police corruption.

[3] It is about a private detective for minors – played by John Malkovich – who collaborates with Police and who is entrusted with a report.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[2].

“…In the afternoon (Monday, March 30) father and son came to me me during visiting hours… The father begun saying that notwithstanding all the explanations, the fear for horses didn’t diminish…

But, while I was listening to Hans telling about his phobia for horses, I was watching at both of them sit in front of me, and a new piece of the solution has been flashing in my mind…

Jokingly I asked Hans if maybe his horses were having glasses, but he negatively answered, then I asked if his father was having glasses, and again he answered negatively and then if, against any evidence, by black around the mouth he meant the mustache : then I could reveal to him that he feared his Dad because Hans loved so much Mom…

Maybe he believed that the matter made Dad angry but that was not true, because his Dad loved Hans and he could tell everything to Dad…

‘Why on earth do you think I’m angry with you ? – at that point the father interrupted me – ‘Did I scold, or hit you ?’

‘Oh, yes, you hit me’, Hans corrected.

‘That’s not true. And when ?’

‘This morning’, warned the child and his father remembered that Hans had hit him surprisingly with the head in the stomach, and he as a consequence had given Hans a blow with the hand. It was interesting that he didn’t remember the detail as linked with the neurosis. However now he meant that as a hostile frame of the child towards him, maybe also as a demonstration of the need for punishment…

After that consultation, I received almost daily reports on changes of conditions of the young patient… As you could see, now a possibility opened to reveal his own unconscious productions, and his phobia took its course…”[3]

                                                     Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – October 27, 2020

[1] “Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no?”, Marina Bilotta Membretti (2014) Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso SpA (oggi GEDI Gruppo Editoriale SpA) Isbn 978 88 91081 63 6 – short essay on individual competence in the cure of thinking.

[2] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

[3] “Il piccolo Hans”, Sigmund Freud (1908) – Feltrinelli Editore Univ. Economica (2010) pp. 155-156 : when his parents turn to Freud, Hans is less than five.