Memory and Memory Memory and storage *
Marina Ricci considerations that Primo Levi develops in her latest book "The Drowned and the Saved" can be considered a contribution to show some interrelationship between the processes that form a memory collective identity, and those that characterize the individual memory, not only as the ability to remember his past but as a way for the construction of identity.
In the work of Levi can be seen to approach a witness and its meanings, which is a parallel, or at least of the similarities with the modus operandi of psychoanalytic work with the individual.
There are many steps closer to ideas that are also of psychoanalysis.
As is known, in his first testimony on the inside of the Auschwitz concentration camp in "If This Is a Man," Levi recalls immediately after the liberation "pushed - as he says - by a violent and immediate need to tell others and making them partners. By a pulse of inner liberation. "
Since then, he was animated not only by the desire to tell the facts but also by the constant attention to the scenarios, from those tragic events, could determine the future of humanity.
"If this happened, though it was possible, why should not it happen again?"
His next work, "The Drowned and the Saved," written 40 years later, published in 1986, is a short, troubled book of extraordinary intensity. It 'not an attempt to give concluded as told by himself and others, knowing that would help close the process, which he saw already in place, the phasing out of its place in memory through repeated stereotypes.
"Do not said - I quote Levi - the ceremonies and celebrations, monuments and flags, are always and everywhere to be regretted, a certain amount of rhetoric is perhaps necessary because the memory hard. ... but be on guard against excessive simplifications "
Stopping would mean for him to confine the story of the camps in the past considered unique because of its horror, bending in some way, the proposed cancellation and the identity of the word, ordered by the Nazis.
Levi, the last phase of his testimony, focuses on the complexity: on the psychological mechanisms that may affect the reconstruction of memory in witnesses and individual behavior showed that the concentration camp in his memory, coming to address the issue of moral responsibility beyond the experience of deportation and extermination.
* Paper presented at the seminar in collaboration between ISEC (Institute of contemporary history) and SPC on the theme:
Memory and testimony as part of 'personal and collective identity. Sesto San Giovanni February 27, 2010
identifies two trends that contribute to change the memory of the complexity of events, reducing the flow, and which concern both the witnesses that the recipients of their memories.
They are represented by:
processes
distortion of memory processes of simplification.
First, it is due, in part, caused by physiological oblivion over time and in the other hand, substantial, modifications and removal of memory, in each case, but especially around the events of serious offenses imposed or incurred. (these mechanisms well known to psychologists and psychoanalysts). The victim can remove the memory of events because they are too painful to be overwhelmed with shame for the wrong suffered and remember to turn it into a more acceptable (See companion, lucid and uncompromising, Albert D., who disappeared after seeing his father, past the gas chambers, he will say that this probably was transferred in another field, for another job ....).
The oppressor, to remove itself from the responsibility and guilt can build alibis, justifications and invented scenarios that ultimately define a new version, completely false, made the presumption of good faith. (See the confession of Rudolf Hoss, the penultimate camp commandant of Auschwitz, subtly convincing the result of blatant manipulation).
The distinction between good and bad faith is very thin
"to separate the good and the bad faith is expensive: it requires a deep sincerity with oneself, requires a continuous effort intellectual and moral."
The need for simplification is inherent man is justified by the need to create order in the confusion, it tends to create sharp divisions and also applies to the story when it prevails the tendency to bifurcation between "friend and enemy", "us and them."
"In those who read (or write) the history of the camps is a clear tendency, indeed the need to divide good from evil, that they can take sides, to place this side of the righteous and the wicked beyond" (The Drowned and the Saved , p.25).
In the case of the camp, to produce a Manichean division equivalent, according to Levi, to place the story in an anomalous event, exorbitant by human nature, while Levi shows us that this is not. In
Lager, the world human was not clearly distinguishable in the two blocs of victims and persecutors, "only rhetoric may think that this space is empty"
Levi develops the concept of gray area. In
Lager evil was out but it was also inside. Evil was born in behaviors guilty or innocent and confused with the oppressive power generated by these (the first shots were inflicted by newcomers Kapo who were themselves prisoners).
The gray area is the class of officials-prisoners joining and separating masters and servants and confuses the ability to judge
In general the privilege and its pervasiveness.
area of \u200b\u200bambiguity and collusion that does not allow to demonize the perpetrators and the victims of beatification.
area that allows you to capture facets of human nature, unexpected, which can occur when it is given the chance. Also includes
to see the effects of power in making the subject of your project and jointly responsible corruptible
But, Levi expands the discourse, this is the area in human relations where good and evil become confused and can not do Manichean divisions.
In essence, Levi takes as the "gray area" is not just a matter belonging to the world outside but also inside the individual.
This is an idea that belongs specifically to psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis is based on the idea of \u200b\u200bexistence, in the subject instances of conflict between them that create complex dynamics, the existence of libidinal and aggressive drives, of good and evil, "whose joint action or contrasting allows to explain the phenomena of life. "
In his work of 1929 "Civilization and Its Discontents," Freud at the end of the path analysis of the instincts in the individual agents, comes to speak clearly about the existence in humans of a "tendency aggressive drive as the original provision and independent" and identifies as the main obstacle to the evolution of civilization
Civilization does not evolve spontaneously towards the good, is not that the tendency of natural development, but said only through the ability that men have, or do not have to curb the destructive forces in themselves and, through the forms of 'civil organization , their prevalence in society.
Two dreams, recounted sitting in two different patients, can make clear the attitude of these forces in the unconscious individual.
The first belongs to a man, already in the heart of maturity, and has not been collected directly from me but posted a written Voltolin Adriano, titled "Evil and its repetition", the second belongs instead to a young woman patient of mine, has completed its analysis.
The two subjects are linked by the sufferings of depressive therefore exposed to experiences of mental pain and an existential condition that coexists with the presence of "evil"
First dream
First dream
There is a rectangular-shaped city contains another, smaller, rectangular well. The perimeter walls of the city and outside the show as the place of social and civil life.
The inner city is entirely manned by fifteen soldiers is a safe place because there is kept in secret, evil. It 's the place of evil and horror.
The area enclosed by the walls consists of written text as the printed pages of the newspapers, then the entire space occupied by the texture of writing. To hide even more evil, the text of the inner city is actually photographed as are the scanned texts. It is therefore not a true test, as it seems, but only an image. Thus what appears written has no meaning countervailable.
Evil is confined to the inner city. Overshadowed by the press which does not allow scanned readily understandable and not opaque zone is a clearly discernible.
Outside, the city appears to be where it takes place, in an apparently harmonious life of individuals associati.Male and good are not opposed to each other, but the evil is located inside the well and the well is almost the function of camouflage. Evil is located in an internal position with respect to good and it is the most intimate (It is worth mentioning that Freud, in his work of 1915 "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" identifies the destructive componemte as existing in the individual psychic ormation ).
Evil must be guarded, kept at bay by 15 soldiers, military content, why not invade the space of the property, destroying it. According
dream
The patient observed a bright and airy landscape, in a brilliant sunny day. In a mountain that rises from the sea is situated a city with buildings standing out sharp and well on top is the "citadel", home of the places of civilized life. The structure of these buildings evokes the patient an architecture which combines the stronghold of the Parthenon in Athens and the medieval citadels and refers, in his experience, to place of 'childhood remembered as ordered and reassuring.
Below the city is divided into streets and houses, the place of a busy business
of population.
She notes the picture from an elevated position, drawing a sense of peace and peaceful progress of construction.
Suddenly, the calm and sparkling sea, huge wave rises and, with horror, the patient sees, from his protected position, the wave descending on the city submerging it all in a whirl. The feeling which was filled with terror is not so much for herself, for her safety and even for the desperate anxiety of a disastrous event (personal experiences of suffering were at the center of his analysis for many years), but deep pain for the inevitable disappearance of so much harmony and hard work and for their impotence in groped to safeguard that asset.
The wave, however, developed his strength, slowly flows back into the sea which gradually returns to quiet down. It follows then only the upper part of city, the "citadel" that manifests itself and becomes free "as it was before."
She thinks with pain and compassion to those who died, at the bottom of the mountain, and especially the value of their daily work suddenly struck down, but look forward to the town re-emerged, saying to herself "courage, we must start from there" .
The dream indicates, essentially, in the experience of the mental patient, the possibility of a restraint of evil by good. And includes the coexistence, in the inner world of good and evil, where the property is not based on an idealized texture (the perfect light harmony in the city) but, under the constant threat to its survival, it is claimed by a busy reducing the effects of evil, thanks to "good governance" in their instincts.
's just the development of the evil that may contain destructiveness.
E 'known that, in Kleinian psychoanalysis, overcoming the destructiveness is related to the ability to tolerate the risk of investing with his aggression even the good parts of the object. It is on this tolerance stands riparatività the fact that it is the foundation of the depressive position.
I find it significant that in both dreams, the expression of different subjects, but both engaged in analytical work, and showing the city in its archaic forms of civil society (a quadrangular one, evoking the basis of the Roman city, the other medieval citadel-greek). The city can be taken as the symbolization of a person who implements a work around their own identity, a work of separation and differentiation from idealized representations and, as such absolute and indistinguishable as are the broad categories of good and evil . This is the work of psychoanalysis that does not change the external reality, does not provide solutions appeasing, once and for all good research but their own, individual ways to rebuild their identity and the subjective memory itself.
And here I see the analogy between the proximity or at least as Levi has addressed the issues of memory of the tragic events that he lived and how psychoanalysis works with the subject.
Levi warns us in the face of simplifications, appeasing the partitions, the beatification of the witness. Invite to seek in the folds and facets of the facts so that they can be identified the risk of repetition and rendered unconscious distortions, so that the historical memory is memory prior to the future. His dramatic experience, constantly rethought and revised, made him aware that man is not a simple entity and above is not rated for its very nature, the attainment of good.
way psychoanalysis works on the individual's past, these would be revisited in the shadows during the removal, in its recurrence through repetition in the symptom.
In a recent paper, forthcoming in the journal "Construction psychotherapy", the Argentine psychoanalyst Maria Cristina Bacchetta, follows a theme similar to that exhibited the reflections indicate that, in addressing the denial of memory about the period of the dictatorship military in Argentina.
He wonders if it is not possible to think of history as we think of the historicizing of the subject in analysis.
ANPAR I inform you that the (National Association for Arbitration), accredited by the Ministry of Justice to take training courses provided by art. 4 c.3 DM July 23, 2004, No 222, will hold in Crotone, in the Niagara Club SAS c / o the Lido Restaurant Rocks, an advanced training course of 45 hours, referred to as "professional mediator" to a maximum of 30 students, on the following dates: 3-15 June July 1-7-14 (Time 9:00 / 13:00 - 14:00 / 19:00). 
