How To Be In The World
Cesare Maria Cornaggia | Federica Peroni - The new realities between fear, anxiety, and hope.
The hardships of this time embody an impossible to define. Where in this present, time remains an instant devoid of a before that allows its history? This occurs from the moment an “I” capable of saying “I” is made absent, of distinguishing itself as other-than-other-than-self. But there is a chance not to resign oneself to this living according to sadness. To an anxious and fearful way of dwelling habitually in the world. That is, living the experience of anxiety and fear as a block, as a fear. As something that chills life.
Certainly, today we are facing a flood of psychic phenomena, in the form of anxiety, panic attacks, depressive expressions, suicides or attempted suicides, conduct abnormalities, addictions, experiences of maladjustment or school dropouts, and so on.
In our opinion, we should first ask ourselves an important question: Can these phenomena still be considered expressions of something that can be framed as “illness”? Or are we facing something that does not fit the definition of “illness, at least in the strict sense or as we have traditionally understood this term?
For simplicity's sake, we could begin by noting that these phenomena are very diverse and often do not strictly conform to traditional definitions. They can also be unpredictable and inconsistent.
First and foremost, there appears to be no clear deviation from what might be considered a significant “norm.” In fact, the phenomena we observe today increasingly appear to be becoming the “norm” themselves, particularly when we consider the short-term future.
Second, there is no perception orienting them of malaise, and everything is experienced as “normal” and as taken for granted. This, perhaps, represents the first most dramatic fact and, that is, the fact that living according to sadness and anxiety is considered as a habitual, obvious way of being in the world.
Monologues, closures
More than anything else, it is worth pointing out how these phenomena, behaviors, or discomforts (as we typically come to call them) do not have relational value, that is, they are not “dialogue” (rather than “illness,” which, like “norm” itself, remains and is affirmed as dialogue). Indeed, “illness” as it has been classically understood can still be considered a dialogue, in the sense that it presupposes two “talking” subjects who have the common goal of establishing or re-establishing a sense of existence. In the observed discomforts, “acts” seem more present, acts that seem to be “monologues” that close to dynamic exchange.
If they are not “illness” what are they? If they are not dialogue, that is, symbolic, what are they? They are something first and foremost that remains on the body, in the instant of a present without past or future, a matter that is there, exists to the point of unbreakability, precisely insofar as it is unspeakable.
“I have anxiety and I don't know why… I don't know what to do,” ‘I'm sick… I don't know what's wrong with me… I beat myself up because I feel like beating myself up… I'm sick doctor do something…,’ ‘I don't feel like it, I don't care… nothing is needed’: these are the phrases we hear ourselves saying, without actually a question that is structured in the form of a word, if anything a request for action, even unthought, unmotivated, only in action.
These discomforts embody, therefore, an impossible-to-define, where time is only an unbearable instant devoid of a before that allows its history. This occurs, in our view, from the moment that there is a lack of an “I” capable of saying “I,” of distinguishing itself as different from other-from-self. As Julián Carrón stated (speech in Bocca di Magra, June 2024), “[…] the great absentee is the” I. To what is what we call Ego reduced? To the psychological, sociological, circumstantial factors from which it derives. Being nothing more than these factors, the ego is at the mercy of everything, it becomes a being at the mercy of its reactions, it becomes a puppet, a marionette, like a stone swept away by the torrent of external forces….”
All that we have described above seems, in essence, to be the dramatic expression of a non-Ego, one swept away like a stone by external currents.
In this state, identity is reduced to nothing more than the product of the actions of the strongest. This creates a significant advantage for power, which can easily establish its dictatorship, reminiscent of Orwell's vision in 1984.
It is no coincidence that, in other circumstances, we have called our society “pathoplastic” (C.M. Cornaggia, G. Maspero, F. Peroni, Anxiety and Idolatry, Inschibboleth, Rome 2024), going back to, with this term, the powerful shaping effect that culture acts on the expression of a pathology; today we are inside a society that expresses its being “pathoplastic,” not in shaping symptoms, but in helping to maintain them in their inability to become a relationship. So, if we must or want to talk about pathology, perhaps we should begin by talking about the “pathoplasticity” of our post-modern society. The “disease” we can, if anything, find in society, as well described by Fellini in the screenplay of The Journey of G. Mastorna, dating back to 1965. On the other hand, abolishing the relationship abolishes the self.
There are many signs guiding us in this direction.
First, we observe a striking reduction in verbal language, replaced by communications in the form of emails or messages that are increasingly concise and cryptic. This shift has led to what can be considered a new form of language, creating a significant fracture in communication and understanding between generations.
Second, there is a growing separation between words and the body due to the massive reliance on remote communication. This trend has advanced to the point where even long-distance intimacy, such as virtual sex, has become a reality.
It is thus that the ego becomes a monad suspended in a limbo without time, without place, without history, without future, at the mercy, as mentioned earlier, of the stones of the current. Byung-chul Han, in his bookThe Nonthingsof 2022 (Einaudi), argues that to this day human beings are becoming “infomaniacs,” meaning that they seek pleasure not in experience but in the accumulation of data and information.
What to do in the face of this absence or poor structuring of the ego? Before attempting to answer, we would like to take up Julián Carrón again, when he affirmed, in a passage from the text quoted earlier and echoing Fr. Luigi Giussani, that the path to one's ego is not discovered so much through psychology, understood as superficial brooding on the self, but rather “… by surprising oneself in action! It is in action that the possibility of unmasking all the reductions to which we are exposed emerges.” He therefore invited us to look, as Fr. Luigi Giussani stated in the first volume of The Religious Sense, at the “neglect of the ego” as our greatest enemy.
Surely, psychological work, if understood as merely focusing on one’s own thoughts, can easily lead to brooding. This is something to be strongly avoided, as it leaves one stagnant and motionless.
Instead, we could consider good psychotherapy in contexts where it involves living and dynamic action on the self. Only in such cases does it become a powerful tool for self-knowledge, addressing the care of the ego and helping to prevent, as much as possible, its aforementioned neglect.
The question that arises is this: If we are indeed facing something that cannot be classified as a disease, something that does not require psychology as we traditionally understand it, what can we do?
This phenomenon appears to stem from an “ego neglect” and a non-self-conscious ego, one that lacks traditional tools of care or cure. In such a scenario, what weapons, if any, might be available to us?
Firstly, let us define what is meant by “self-conscious Ego” and, in this regard, we propose to take up what Julián Carrón reported in Tempi magazine in August 2020: “Self-consciousness is the capacity to reflect on oneself to the full (which does not mean remaining in a psychological introspection, but working on oneself in an active way). But if one reflects on oneself to the end in a totally conscious way, one encounters an Other because by saying 'I' in a totally self-conscious way, I realize that I do not make myself.” What therefore facilitates self-consciousness?
We would like to attempt an answer. To reach the relation, it is most likely necessary to start again from the body, beginning to reread things through the “felt,” the perceived,” in any case, through whatever is more reassuring than the ”thought.” Second, we still need to latch on to the “concrete,” to the “real,” as something that is there and can be touched, on a par with the very body. And as one does with a child, from this body start to reread what happens every day as if it were something unknown. This operation perhaps allows a body that does not access mentalization (like that of the child who has yet to learn it) to become a place of encounter and exchange, from which precisely to start.
From “in front of the canvas” to “behind the canvas”
It is no coincidence that we are living in the time of Lucio Fontana. We are troubled by the blank canvas, feeling as though we no longer have the tools to represent, draw, or write words.
Yet, we can move beyond this limitation through the act of the cut — like the cut a borderline subject makes on their arm. This cut opens a space for pain to emerge, to gush out. It allows pain to be re-signified, to flow from a “beyond” that exists but has not yet been translated into words. This act gestures toward an excess, something beyond what can currently be expressed.
It is as if we need to move from “in front of the canvas” to “behind the canvas.” On the other hand, we need to rediscover the limit as a place and occasion of encounter with the other-from-us. For it is not in our lucubrations that we find the meaning of us, but in the place of encounter with the other.
In this regard, two more questions come to us. We are in the time when we should see the growth of the ego from the ego in action. But what can we do before the one who does not move? The ego moves before a fascination. But how can it move if there is no Ego capable of seeing the fascination?
For so long, phenomenological thinkers have been talking to us about the need for reknowledge, but perhaps we should talk about knowing, since this whole process must be initiated today, having been likely lacking before. It is not the current generation, in fact, that is lacking as much as the generation of fathers because we have been incapable (or distracted) in handing over the baton for the generational transition. Anxiety and panic, therefore, can be seen as a way to access an evolution and to break with previous deficient patterns. In this meaning, then, we are returning to the era of becoming aware of the limit, moving out of the conception of guilt and back into that of conflict that evolves. Conflict not as war, but as the introduction of new meanings.
We could then value this era and place it in a healthy attempt at self-affirmation. Even anger could, at this point, be defined as a clumsy and extreme attempt to separate and define oneself. It is no coincidence that we are in the age of “bullies,” that is, of those who, having never learned from anyone how to be adults, feel pushed and despite themselves obligated to be adults anyway within a violent distortion of the position associated with adulthood that leads them to hold power so as not to look at their limit, their fear, and their fragility (in fact, the bully never confronts a peer or superior, but only those deemed “weak” because they reflect his fragility and fear).
The greatest struggle seems to be to overcome the discrepancy between before and after where the before being past is defined as “better” compared to a now that is not categorized and, therefore, defined as “bad.” This is probably the origin of anger: one wastes time judging the gap and does not look for new ways to meet it.
Reality, the world, calls
Another aspect we care about touches on the vision of the future. As Frank has well demonstrated in his text A Psychologist in the Lagers, we can only live and adhere to the real by having a dimension of future and meaning (which is relational). On the other hand, we wait for nothing in our lives but to be expected.
Surely we can accompany each other, together, recognizing the limit that defines us, the emptiness that belongs to us. Only the promise can save us, can lead us to that beyond that Fontana taught us. Because the world, that is, reality, by its very nature provokes, that is, calls. Philosophy and psychology can meet in that both have always been very much questioning not only how the other stands in relationship, but also how one looks at reality and preserves one's own history.
Today we are certainly facing a change in family, work, society, and communication, and the absence of useful “patterns” causes young people to experience an emptiness that generates anguish and anger. Probably as a manifestation of the anger of previous generations.
Then it is up to us to function as a bridge where patience, listening, but also the body, can be “tools” to go and rediscover the fascination of giving meaning to reality in its light and shadow aspects.
Coupled with this is also the question of time and rule. Let us give time to understand the rule and the limit and to make sense of one and the other, not as acquisition of information, but as experience of one and the other.
Approaching the land of human frailty
Another key passage is that relating to fear. This term, to date, is heavily used and abused especially in its negative sense of blocking and fear. Fear, in itself, is a very powerful emotion that carries two different meanings: on the one hand, fear about the possibility of catastrophic representations of reality (mental representations given by the mixture of different elements and emotions with previous traumatic experiences), which, therefore, blocks and holds the human being firm in the known and, therefore, reassuring position. But there is also fear as a positive signal, as a momentum, a challenge. Fear in its primordial and primary meaning is a very powerful defense mechanism that enables survival and is adaptive since it manifests in response to a threat, real or perceived, and enables the search for a saving situation (fear is activated before consciousness itself). Fear, read in this sense, is what emerges when we stray too far from our nature and find ourselves in that situation of bewilderment, blockage, exhaustion that is concatenated with the anxiogenic manifestations dictated, precisely, by fear.
By paying attention to this powerful signal, it may become possible to uncover the true desire that forms the natural foundation of being human.
Through this process, we can identify the distortions we have embraced and work toward rediscovering the original trace of our essence. This trace extinguishes fear because it reveals the authentic “being-I” in connection with the Other.
Even today, we tend to shy away from fear, seeing it as a red alert triggered by a threatening world and, most of all, a threatening future.
However, fear is instead an internal warning signal, urging us to pause and reflect on our thoughts and actions. This reflection can help us shape them into expressions of a more harmonious encounter with reality.
We seek an existence without fear, that is, without challenge, without seeking, without failure, without growth.
At some level, we are living in an age of immortality. We do not move; we remain suspended.
Death has become a taboo, something that need not—or cannot—be unveiled. It is seen solely as the end of existence, rather than as a necessary transformation: a passage, a loss of previous patterns in favor of more adaptive ones.
Rediscovering oneself as human in one's limitation through experience and listening could be a good passage to relieve judgment and anguish, and to discover that what is desired is not immortality but living. As Byung-chul Han says in the previously cited book (The Non-Things, Einaudi), “Contemplative lingering at things, that looking without ulterior motives that could be the recipe for happiness” is only possible if we abandon the throne of control and power and approach the land of human frailty.
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Cesare Maria Cornaggia is a psychiatrist and associate professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Milan-Bicocca. Federica Peroni is a clinical psychologist, systemic-relational psychotherapist, U.O. neuroriabilitazione cognitiva, Istituti Clinici Zucchi, Carate Brianza.
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