La tentazione del muro

Does a civilized lexicon still exist? At a time when borders have been transfigured into walls, hatred seems to destroy every possible form of dialogue, fear of the stranger dominates, fanaticism exalts fantasies of purity to erase the experience of difference and contamination, freedom aspires to have no limits, is it still possible to think about the meaning of being together, of the plural life of the polis? With the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis Massimo Recalcati traverses with great synthesis the fundamental junctures and paradoxes that characterize the psychic life of individuals, human groups and institutions. In the foreground is a division that runs through each of us: to defend our lives from the encounter with the unknown or to aspire to the freedom of this encounter; to live in the enclosure of our own identity or to inscribe our lives in a relationship with the Other. It is these two tendencies that, with equal force, define human life. In five short and powerful lectures, one of our country’s most original psychoanalysts offers his readers a new reading of our togetherness.

“My heart is the stranger’s first name.”