The Creative Identity

Imaginative symbolism constitutes the idiom, the “fundamental language”, through which we dream, speak to ourselves and maintain contact with others through the exchange of identifications. The conventional symbolism of language and the mathematical symbol allow, through the constitution of the Secondary Process, the opening of the doors of the cultural and social world to a more abstract level. The Neurosciences, once brought into the analysis room and compared with the psychoanalytic technique, generate new perspectives but, above all, confirm and explain, in even more depth, many aspects of Freudian theoretical construction and its therapeutic practice. The book presents different psychoanalytic hypotheses on the development of artistic creativity and metaphorical and conventional symbolism, such as the acquisition of language. The conquest of the Secondary Process and Consciousness by every child is a gradual, slow, complicated and never fully completed path, which allows you to get out of your private and idiosyncratic world in order to take advantage of the advantages of staying in “contact” identification with the others. Creativity is a constitutive aspect of identity and subjectivity, which comes to life when the mind is able to make its own bodily perceptions and sensations and is completed by the creation of that magnificent bridge, to communicate with oneself and with other individuals, which is the artistic object. The presentation of the book will be the occasion to read again some of the works of the permanent collection of the Museo Novecento and open an unusual debate with the public.

Stefano Calamandrei, psychiatrist, coordinator of rehabilitation facilities for young psychotics, is an ordinary psychoanalyst member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, expert in group therapy, adolescents and serious diseases, is the author of numerous articles and interventions on psychoanalysis and art, serious pathologies, youth discomfort and its prevention.

ITACA project, per la mente, con il cuore (Florence).