In a little more than 10 days I'll be away, without my Apple, and my background files- for almost a month. It may be that I'll be able to post something once in a while, and read/send email sometimes, but anyway the blog's operativity will be reduced, in all likelihood, to almost nil.
So it seems the times are ripe for some reconsideration.
The blog is firmly entrenched, has a consistent audience both in Italy and outside (see the chart below). Some of these people I know (more on this later), the greater part not.
The first thing to say- already mentioned by me- is that my goal at the start was different from the way things turned out; it all began from a series of formal and informal exchanges of psy professionals from Parma, my colleagues- and from our diffuse grievances not just about the well known funding problems which beset public services in Italy but, more, about:
a) the public/political indifference in which, at least apparently, our work (in the public sector mainly) was going on;
b) the vast influence of purely bureaucratic/organizational attitudes, of standard (and dubious) versions of of a technicized but substantially watered down version of dynamic/behavioristic psychology, the omnipresence and fetish character of pharmacotherapy, the pervasive influx of what I have called the DSM universe (see for example the APPENDIX in my writing on Ellen West etc) ;
c) another constitutive aspect of the situation is the whole array of social-political-cultural-ethnic transmutations which are constantly taking place: from the pervasiveness of substance abuse in very young people to the 'economical crisis', to war, to the diffusion of social networks (which, among many other things, have proved themselves capable of taking on a DIRECT political role), to the changes in ethnic composition to the very scientific-technological revolution per se;
d) all of this is very little debated, not just in the general public but also among mental health professionals and decision-makers; and the residues of transformative psychiatric movements, attitudes and ideologies seem to have been since a long time watered down to 'trying to do best what little we can', or to a populist/catholic attitude of pure help to and acceptance of the most destituted (sometimes in the most honest terms- at times with unconfessed aspects of self-promotion and moral entrepeneurship in Szasz's sense); and, worse, all of our praxis is inserted into the complexity of the general power structure and the power conflicts of the power elite- POWER being not just a recursive element in psychiatric/psychotherapeutical discourse but rather an unconfessed, removed, substantial determinant (or hidden signifier) of much of what is actually going on. On the whole, one could say that there is a global policy of deziformacija (regarding this social area as well as so many others).
e) correlative to all of this, the blog was to have a local target, and its primary aim was to reactivate communication lines in loco, help operators and not-operators go beyond passivity, plant seeds and give ideas for a new debate (and, maybe, a new social mobilization).-
This has not happened. The audience is there, perceived local feedback (apart from isolated- not inconsequential- moments) and new elements of organization have not so far materialized. The reasons for this may be of some interest, and debatable.
2. So, it was a go for the city of bits and the different worlds.
3. I had at my disposal (and loooked for and found) a lot of files and links in different languages, often of relevant interest; I began bringing them in. So it's been the three language edition of Debord's Commentaires, as well as of Pasquinelli, text- portions of Heidegger and Max Weber in German, English/Spanish installments about Tijuana, French texts about the banlieues, and so on. Wherever I could I used Italian texts or versions. I personally translated into English a sort of position paper. There was a moving back and forth from Breznev's Afghanistan to Orwell's gloomy Chestnut Cafè, from a still of Syd Barrett's first LSD trip to images of Patriot airplanes projecting a wall of fire. The war in Lybia had begun; elements of past and present (and future?) reality filtered variously through. There turned out Binwanger and Laing and Foucault and Talcott Parsons and Jung and Lacan. There were Louis Wolfson, 'Aimée', Roussel, Breton's Nadja, Sylvia Plath's last poem, Philip K. Dick, a German dirge on Bin Laden's death. Van Vogt, William Gibson, Gérard de Nerval, Blake, Burroughs, Bernward Vesper (my study on him), Sartre (the same),and texts I'd written in other times and contexts. A lot of music. Images I collected with care and (I think I can say) love. I always tried not to give a naked element (apart from shock purposes), but to try to offer references, evaluations, possibly multiple viewpoints. The LINKS section is much thought of.
Basic work instruments were, as always, the search engines (Google book search and Google advanced scholars search included) and the different Wikipedias.
I think I have made a rather complicated intellectual journey these 3 months: working with an audience and with interlocutors in mind is completely different from the silent heroism of thought (as, I think, Hanna Arendt called it). I made discoveries (sometimes re-discoveries) I'd never have taken into consideration. And many ideas came from others' comments, hints, criticisms.
I'll make a few names (forgetting many); Emilio Franti, Jacopo Valli, Marina Nardi, Mariapia Quintavalla, Bruno Gulli; of course Antonio Chiari and Maria Inglese; Matteo Tonna; and, still of course William Michaelian, Tenzin Nanette Miles, Will Miller; Nemanja Nemus Medic, Bruno Gulli, Giovanni Dursi, Matilde Marchesini, Francesca Alletto; Simonetta Melani, Caterina Nizzoli, Lorena Catania and Giulio Fabri Poncemi and Vincenzo Tradardi; Dr. Theodor Itten (S.Gallen), Leonardo Montecchi (Rimini), Matteo Pasquinelli (Berlin), Dr. Bruno Meroni (Milano), Tom Poljansek (Tubingen), Steven Shaviro (Detroit), Dr. Anthony Stadlen (London),Dr. Pietro Barbetta, Emilio Valtellina, Marco Baldino; Antonella Moscati; Ennio Abate and Attilio Mangano (with all of their activity and ideas and dedication); sundry colleagues and friends; my wife (who is a remarkable psychotherapist, besides being a remarkable person in the whole); almost 8 years old Edoardo (terribly smart, and witty too); many patients, from whom I learned many many things (and who helped me forget some others); Michael Hemmingson, with his multiform genius; Antonio Caronia (the 'Enciclopedia dickiana' is absolutely great); the BOLOGNA CITTA' LIBERA network...
So it's all been like a making a trip: 'where do I go today?' Including exotic/ ominous places like Kefar Malek, Cherokee (North Carolina), Grozny, the Walden Pond, Aulnay-sous-Boi, Ettedhamen (Tunis), L.A., Tijuana and so on.
Well, that's it.
GIACOMO CONSERVA, Parma, Italy
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