Stthere is simply a right time to do things and this was to talk about the meaning of life and the fact that the latter, beyond any psychopathology, remains just a story. It went like this for Vittorino Andreoli, a well-known psychiatrist who touches on the points that lead to meaningwith a series of 23 books that focus on patience and kindness, but also on trust and imagination.
«It was necessary» he says, «because we live in a moment of great confusion, we are all very attentive to single actions rather than to the meaning of existence». The title Telling life – Emotions, feelings, thoughts there is nothing paternalistic about it, quite the contrary. We talk about ailments, about literature but also about love.
A series of iO Donna – Corriere della Sera
The first volume is dedicated to courage.
That’s right, it is at the basis of the evolution of the species in fact. Then, beyond the etymological imprecision whereby the root of “courage” refers to “heart”, in reality its seat, like that of love, is elsewhere: in the brain. Courage is in fact a psychic function that allows us to make our actions effective.
And that today it would be more necessary than in the past?
No, please. We are victims of the senseless principle that, since life is full of difficulties, it is necessary to erase the limit of fear with a perennial invitation to courage. In essence, we push young people towards an off-limits education when instead courage also needs prudence. The result? We have turned what should be an exception into a way of life.
Basically we all want to be a little heroes.
Eh, blessed are a people who don’t need heroes, said Brecht. Today’s hero believes that every action he makes is special and that it should serve more to show himself than to give meaning to what he does. The affective dimension of man should instead be guided by balance and not by the jolts of grandiose episodes.
“There are no heroes without fear, and all human events must take into account this drive aimed at defending one’s life,” we read.
Courage, in order to be defined as useful, must always respect this imperative of Darwin’s. Do you know that Russian soldiers at the beginning of the conflict didn’t want to fight because they didn’t see the Ukrainians as an enemy to fear? Fear is a defense mechanism that anticipates danger and makes evolutionary sense. However, there must be a proportion between fear and courage. Sometimes there is the former without courage and it is that of those who have denied the Covid 19 virus out of fear of the virus itself. Sometimes there is the fearless second, that of the heroes of nowhere, the boys waiting on the platform for the train that arrives to escape. Or die.
Vittorino Andreoli: «Women are more courageous»
Are women braver than men?
Sure, and I don’t know if Ulysses who fights in Troy for ten years and takes another ten to return is really a hero, or Penelope who waits for him safeguarding the kingdom and fidelity. A pregnant woman, for example, has the perfect knowledge that an extraordinary phenomenon is taking place within her whereby a life will be born out of nothing: she has a courage that man dreams of. If I knew tomorrow that I could father a child, I’d be willing to do it in two days, not in nine months. The courage that the male lacks is also another.
Which?
That of hope. The woman has the strength to continue. During the New York attacks in 2001 many people jumped from the windows of the twin towers and among these there were no mothers with babies in their arms but only men. Danger and fear were the same but the women took the lift: risking, some were saved. The woman has the courage to live. Even within the family.
You mean the one in crisis?
Yes, he’s in crisis because it’s the man in general who blows everything up and he does it because he’s a little man, a child who hasn’t learned to live and throws tantrums. The woman goes on instead, she sometimes says she does it for her children but in reality it’s her because she understood everything. Her courage corresponds to the imperatives of the continuation of the species.
Vittorino Andreoli: «Understanding who we are»
Even if divorces increase.
Obvious. It takes more courage to build than to destroy. The first follows the fatigue of Pavese’s life, is that of those who resist and live to dedicate themselves. You know what? The real question is not facing problems but one’s vision of the world: understanding who they are and where they are. Think of the beauty of a relationship where two boys grow old together: love changes over time as we do. No one is just “me”: we are a story, we are relationships.
We are lost behind something else that makes us brave.
Success, power, money. Long live well-being, please. But what is the use of a purposeless economy? Power is the greatest social pathology and is one of the three disorders linked to excess courage. The others are amentia (a form of delusional psychosis) and paranoia. The world today suffers from wars unleashed by great paranoids but has no idea how many “little paranoids” exist around us: I cure them.
What can we do?
Concentrate on the little things, look closely at the faces of those who share the passing of time with us, observe the needs that are answered precisely by those around us. We will thus discover a new structure of existence, made up of bonds.
And then?
Learn to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous. We hardly know the first anymore because it has been possible for us to forget the three Darwinian imperatives, namely the need for food, that of defending the territory in which we live, and finally that of the drive to generate. We have replaced survival with the quality of life that we have embroidered with often harmful fantasies and oddities.
The last antidote he proposes in the book is to forget the “I”.
Yes, it is necessary to leave room for “we”, going beyond loved ones, to extend to the community. We are more fragile than weak. But fears cannot be overcome without each other: true courage comes when you understand that some problems can only be overcome as a group.
His models of courage?
Seneca, the one of De tranquillitate animi, and Schopenhauer who wrote The fifty rules for happiness.
Vittorino Andreoli: “Forgiveness eliminates fear”
Does forgiveness make you bolder?
Yes, it eliminates fear and removes dangers: it is more effective than justice.
We live in the time of chronic fear or the age of courage. How has she fared so far?
I’ve always lived among crazy people who are much more numerous than normal people, the latter boring people because they only think about money. I dealt with a mental asylum but I never used force. Did you know that today, out of about six hundred hospitalization and treatment wards in Italy, only 23 do not use methods of coercion?
What did he discover?
That we use so much courage that we don’t need and we have fears that don’t exist. When I examined Donato Bilancia, a man who committed seventeen murders in six months, I decided to create a bond with him because I wanted to understand him. My position was clear to him from the beginning and he has in fact received 13 life sentences. But he always sent me Christmas and Easter greetings. He graduated and committed suicide.
Were you brave, professor?
Yes, I have learned to overcome fear from those who should have frightened me.
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