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“Living Dad” will by Giacomo B. Contri
Today, I’ll make my will.
Last will,
first article,
Inheritance.
Seventy years old
just enough to ask myself
a question that is trivial to all,
but the question is not trivial
and the answer is not trivial,
they go together as a couple.
I came to ask myself this serious question,
whether I would
want to be
thirty again today,
or not.
I have to say that
I turn this question also
to The Lord Domine.
I asked myself many times
how can God not become bored,
anguished with all this eternity
in front of him
(boredom and anguish are the same thing,
even if they show themselves
in different ways).
I don’t even know
what I would be,
well maybe I do but
an answer is needed,
if I had the eternal youth fountain.
There was also a famous movie
about the answer “no” in the past,
and it was a really
rational movie.
I'm not saying that the answer should be no,
I said that the answer
has to be such that it can be
applied both to me
and to The Lord Domine.
Here it is, this is my introduction.
I started working as a psychoanalyst
when I was thirty,
forty years ago.
I started and I never stopped,
even if at one point,
I found a solution that Freud
has been searching for a long time.
I have no time to demonstrate
what I just inferred,
but it is provable,
and it's to become
an operator of thought,
a worker of thought,
the one that, to make it short,
is inclined to say thinker,
having psychoanalysis as
an application of this thought.
I can call this first chapter
I opened
I can entitle it " Inheritance";
I will go on after this
to a few other paragraphs.
I am about to leave
as my inheritance what I call,
somehow quizzically,
a discotheque,
of my writings
throughout time.
Inheritance becomes here
a decisive word.
The word "father",
so properly challenged by my mentor,
the analyst Lacan,
introduced by Freud,
reintroduced by Freud,
and brought to a stall by Jaques Lacan,
is a word that would be
in fact meaningless,
rightly meaningless
a pure sound,
if it didn’t derive
its meaning from inheritance.
And inheritance,
as I say,
“as a living dad”;
not everybody know this expression
“as a living dad”
doesn’t mean only alive,
but neither shabby
sick,
suffering from Alzheimer
or stuck in bed.
There is also another interpretation
of “living dad”,
I took it from Shakespeare,
and it means not
like King Lear.
King Lear ended up
like everyone else,
in a civil war
where everybody is dead,
because King Lear
gave up is throne.
Who abdicates has
nothing to leave to his heirs.
Addressing inheritance
the obvious question appears
regarding who the heirs are.
There are just two cases,
those who take and those
who do not take.
There is also a third specie,
in this case,
as in the case of my inheritance,
the one I called my discotheque,
there are no thieves,
the heirs are the ones who take,
not even too metaphorically,
they are the ones who eat:
having a
dietary idea of intellect
is the most correct idea
we can have of intellect.
To learn is to take,
our school prohibits
the assimilation
of taking and learning.
I, following the wave
of a certain lexicon of logic,
invented the existence
of the modus recipientis,
the way of the taker,
who understands,
who has an acknowledgment
similar to an understanding.
Very few people do this,
very few people take.
Blessed are those who take!
Last will, second article,
blue collar.
My second paragraph
is entitled blue collar.
As I said before,
an operator of thought,
a blue collar of thought,
a producer of thought.
Work is productive,
don’t you accept, or anyway,
I don’t,
the distinction between
what is called productivity
and what is today
comically referred to as creativity.
Creativity is, if there is any,
productivity:
there is a passage from
a raw material to a sophisticated one
that will itself give birth
to new products,
or it can be consumed
right away at that moment,
depending on the case.
Its own, even better,
now only its own,
but the good side of one thought,
whatever it is,
is that it's susceptible
of being
transformed in a product,
meaning a sophisticated material,
and count as raw material
that can be sophisticated.
It took me many years
to become a worker of thought,
years during which I made some mistakes,
for examples I worked as a teacher.
It was already a modus operandi,
which many people had given
their head to fight against,
Lacan especially,
and Freud before him.
The worker is one who
produces and someday,
maybe, if there are
any more producers,
no more nor less than him,
(there isn’t a hierarchy of workers),
If there will be other workers
no more or less than him
then a society of workers
might come to life.
About the worker I can add this,
without taking too long.
The worker’s position,
of the blue collar
I am now referring
to the mere definition,
is the position
who answers the question I asked before:
whether I would be
interested in being thirty again,
and linked to it,
the possibility to have
the fountain of eternal youth.
For one in the position
of a worker there is no anguish,
nor boredom.
The position of the worker
is the position of health or,
if you will, of satisfaction.
The work I am talking about
does not tire.
I remember the famous title
of a story called
“Working makes you tired”.
This work, the work of thought,
doesn’t make you tired
and it is the only
action
there are other actions like
the murderous one,
work does not kill,
for example, work does not kill,
does not steal,
does not deceive
and so on with all the list
of sins or felonies;
work is
the only actions
or operation
that assures,
important verb,
because it is useful to the answer
to the question,
that assures satisfaction,
and this is often forgotten,
the word satisfaction is
in opposition to anguish
or boredom.
In our world
in 99% of the cases
satisfaction is confused
with
sedation,
we think we feel fine,
but are just sedated.
I might even add that
in one line,
maybe two,
everything I have said,
I have just extended,
but it had already been said
by a eighty something years old Freud,
when he put on paper
that work,
since he kept working
until a minute before he passed away,
that work was his only satisfaction.
I simply extended
his observation.
Freud’s statement does not mean
that I have lost all my other satisfactions,
but at least I have that one,
he says it is
the only one
whatever he is able to do,
resources and what not.
The source of satisfaction
free of anguish,
free of boredom,
the source of satisfaction is work.
The work I am talking about
is work in a duo,
because in order to have
a raw material
and to pass to a sophisticated one,
there need to be somebody that
has prepared the raw material,
I might have done it,
but it could have been
somebody before me from whom
I can take the raw material.
Last will, third article
thought.
At the end of the day,
the word thought
is my third paragraph,
it is not in very good shape,
and after all,
it does receive great respect.
What do I mean by thought.
I mean a thought not inferior
to the one of any thinker
of the history of thought,
resulting
for a twofold revolution,
starting with Freud’s thought.
The first revolution is linguistic,
the second constitutional.
The linguistic reform
if I remember correctly
came to me in 1992 or 1994,
maybe 1994,
the first revolution,
the linguistic one,
consisted in changing
the Freudian word
known as urge,
I changed it
into a universal law
of body motion.
It entails universal Newtonian gravitation;
there is a law of body motions
that are our own,
human that is a law
not any less universal
than the Newtonian law,
but it was necessary to have
a passage and a linguistic revolution
of the word urge
to the expression body “motion law”.
It isn’t difficult to imagine,
I won’t even begin to tell,
the resistance I encountered
in this purely lexical revolution.
The one I called constitutional revolution
was exactly so,
because it is internal to the law
of motion I am talking about,
and it involves the history
of thought ever since
we have been able
to produce documents,
what is called the history of philosophy
until the present day.
Freud, in his motion law,
not any less universal
than the Newtonian gravitation law,
envisages three articles,
four articles,
an articulation in four parts,
momentum,
more exactly,
the push,
the setting to a start,
therefore, the source,
I say it is the subject itself,
and in the end there will be a goal,
an equal conclusion,
logical and chronological,
or even synonymous to satisfaction,
the third article being the object.
Good Heavens!
The entire history
of philosophy descends,
as if to say,
upon this word “object”,
just as the story of our human troubles.
When we are talking about Object,
Freud used to say,
we are dealing with narcissism,
that is schizophrenia.
I just did a simple passage though,
constitutional,
I switched the object
with the usual,
I apologize for the colloquial term
but sometimes is necessary,
with the usual shenanigan,
which in italian is called
as an old dance from Piemonte,
a folk dance, called munferrina,
for those who don’t know,
it is a ballroom dance,
a shenanigan of the relation
between subject and object.
I said to myself one day:
“I can’t stand it anymore!”
And I was right to say so to myself.
It was not about switching
the object
with the spirit,
not the ideal,
catastrophic ideal,
it was about switching
the object with matter.
I am not an objectivist
I am a materialist.
Now anyone can go
and see for himself the relation
between what I am saying
and Marx’s historical and dialectical materialism,
with the vulgar materialism,
with yet other materialisms,
I don’t want to give
any philosophy history lesson.
Sure that
the switch from matter to object
as I anticipated before,
has as a consequence,
it's better to say the premise
consists in the fact that
the matter I am talking about
is the one typical of the word of work,
of the world of work,
the raw matter,
it could be sectioned metals,
it could be packaged bricks,
they are raw materials,
but I included thought
within the raw materials.
How is that possible,
how can thought be considered matter?
surely is matter, if it is liable
of being transformed
into something ulterior,
in an ulterior product, than it is matter,
no more no less than bricks.
Infact, the society,
which I'll talk about in a moment,
called “Friends of Thought”,
I also called it
brick mill.
I already complained about
the fact that I was not the one
who invented the brick mill,
or at least,
I have the satisfaction of having
invented the brick mill.
As a producer, I produce bricks,
often, week after week,
I produce one a day
on my blog "Think",
that many already know.
Matter,
a passage to matter,
from raw material to sophisticated material,
requires more than one partner,
at least two partners,
and this is part
of the production of anything.
Brute matter exists,
the one that the Greeks called "Ule"
I remember the time of high school
that nobody could understand what it is.
It was Plato’s shenanigan;
he wanted matter
to exist in a state
even less than protoplasmic.
The example I present to you
to sink the idea of Ule
is a very simple one,
known to all:
grapes, one single grape.
for any monkey or dog
that passes in front of the vineyard
the grape doesn't even exist
not even as brute material,
it is simply not there,
and they pass as if it were not there.
The day that
I pick up that grape
with even the conjecture
that it may be eatable,
from that moment it is matter.
What transformed that grape
into a raw material?
Thought.
My thought that said
“oh, maybe it is eatable”.
In that moment,
that grape existed as a raw material.
Last will, fourth article
Society
My fourth episode
is entitles society.
To say it more extensively,
this is what I call “Society of the Friends of Thought”.
I have already compared it to Masonry,
of which I know very little,
but it is fine to call it “brick mill”,
since the products of thought
can be perfectly compared to bricks.
I also leave this idea of a
“Society of Friends of Thought”
as my inheritance,
because, even if at least
a few people already adopted it,
I created it,
it has nothing to do with
the teachings of a teacher,
the teacher himself,
the day after
could underate
what he produced
while no worker would do
something like that
with something he created,
he will defend his creation
like he would defend his own hands
“hands off from the creation”,
except for those people
who do something with that creation.
However, I want to give
a clearer and stronger idea
of what this Society of friends of thought really is.
I don't want to spend too much time
on what I mean with “friendship of thought”,
it is enough to say that
I see the dignity in any meaning
commonly
related to the word "friendship",
when it is not friendship of thought.
When this isn’t friendship of thought,
betrayal is behind the door.
I add even that
this is a case
I make no distinction between
friendship and love,
and that I linked
love to the product.
But there is something more
to say about this society.
When does this society come to life?
It's not formed as groups are formed,
first you get together,
and then you find your common goals.
I did this a lot,
and I wasted a lot of time in doing so,
and now I am paying the price for this,
because when
first we join
and then we will see,
there will always be
the astute ones,
more exactly,
the hysterical ones,
who say don’t push,
that you, me for example,
I'm trying to persuade them
to do what they are there to do,
push,
they feel blow on their necks
and then they blackmail you.
There is another way
to make this society come to life:
you need first of all
to be producers.
We can use a comparison
that I still consider suitable,
even if it comes from popular tradition;
well I saw
many farmers,
vineyard owners and producers of wine.
They go as far as producing their own wine,
and after being wine producers,
they take it to the cooperative wine cellar.
This cooperative is the step
of social aggregation,
but to the care
of the vineyard,
to the grape harvest
to all this huge and long process
that leads to the production of wine
bottling included
this is the job
of each one
This doesn't preclude that each one
can do this job
through a partner
but is always him
going to be an individual producer,
and the society lies
in the cooperative wine cellar.
I said enough,
I could say that with this comparison,
in this comparison,
I summarize
much of the work
I have done over the years.
I don’t have a countryman,
agricultural, out of style
or old vision,
simply sometimes,
this comparison are usefull.
The comparison with the wine
I already used it
to say that there is nothing more
metaphysical than wine.
Natural wine,
in the past some farmers
wanted me to pieces,
because they wanted advertised their wine,
like on tv,
their wine was really natural,
not artifact.
How is it possible to don't understand
that there is nothing more artifact,
more meta-physical than wine,
and I said it before,
starting from the discovery of the grape?
The grape and the brute data,
natural of the grape,
it still has no existence,
even if no one doubts that
those things hanging from the grape-vine exist,
but it assumes existence,
starting from the metaphysical
act of an eye,
or better of a thought,
that connected the grape
with at least the cogitative
hypothesis of its edibility.
In this sense
the comparison with wine-making
is the best one I can cultivate
in the work that I,
and not only me,
have being doing for many years.
Last will, fifth article
new man, old man.
This duo is linguistically old dated,
but I think I did more than refreshing it,
revising it, correcting it, redoing it,
however, as a product of thought.
What do I mean by old man.
His,
let’s say meta-chemical composition,
but it would be also right
to say metaphysical,
we are always just metaphysical
even when we are morons
we are metaphysical,
this one of those things
that nobody understands.
An animal can't be moron,
only a man, who is
always and anyway metaphysical,
can be an idiot.
Animals are never idiots;
no animal can be an animal
as much as we can.
The composition of the old man
is divided into four articles
or four chapters.
The first chapter or article
is the one which creates,
of those beliefs that are the least
sustainable nevertheless
the most sustained,
who believes he has instincts and,
particulary
who believes he has *** instincts,
the famous concupiscence.
The second component is
the man who gave up,
a few millennia ago,
if my memory is correct
my memories go back about
the assyrian-babylonian people,
I missed a few things, but I was there,
it's the belief,
I won’t even dispute if it's worse
or less worse then the previous one,
but anyway, they go together,
so the severe and stupid believe,
unsustainable and still highly sustained,
the belief that love has as role model
on falling in love and,
as anyone knows,
falling in love it's also correctly said,
yet correctly,
the belief that falling in love
means loosing your mind.
People say “I lost my mind for..”.
It is true,
it means loosing your thought.
I have done nothing but
making myself the defender of thought;
Freud was born to be the defender
of thought and we are still loosing
our minds by falling in love
and we are still arguing
that this is love.
Luckily, the educated Greeks,
not the philosophers,
had the high common sense
of calling Eros the evil god.
They were right.
At the most, you could make
a distinction between earthy falling
in love and divine falling in love,
but some say that even God my fall in love,
that the model of love
as falling in love could be
applied to God himself.
Third component.
The third component is highly specific,
and precisely because
I should dedicate to this
an adequate amount of time,
I will dedicate very little to it.
The third component is religion.
When I point out the Jesus Christ himself
came to abolish religion,
and we have been going on
with religion for 2000 years.
The fourth component is
the one that
in the written documents
dates back to some 26 centuries ago,
to Parmenides,
and it is ontology.
The word ontology came to life
in the recent 1600 as a word,
it did not come from Parmenides,
but we can backdate it to 2600 years ago,
to Parmenides, Plato, and all the others.
Whenever one notices
the thought is work,
productive work,
work on raw materials,
productive of fruits,
we have here a precise alternative
to ontology.
Ontology is not a friend of thought,
as productive, as work.
The new man I am talking about
is the man who revolutionized
all four of these chapters,
he’s an economical man,
juridical and logical.
I remember, a bit too condensed way,
but at least I do,
that most of the times
I wrote that thought,
as it was discovered by Freud
is what logic was missing
to be considered complete as logic itself.
You can imagine if all around,
in the psychological world,
but even in the psychoanalytical world,
they understand what I am saying,
there’s nothing to do, leave all hope…
The old man is also a pathological man;
I am indeed talking of neurosis,
psychosis, perversions,
and the worst of how things are going
for any of us as individuals.
I might add,
regarding the old man and new man,
that psychoanalysis
is nothing but
one way,
let’s call it method,
technique,
that implies applying
the already new man
to the healing of the old man;
this healing of the old man
consists in the falling of the old man.
There is an interesting data
in the work of the new man
on the old man;
it means
that,
rather "to operate",
in the meaning of: an analysis is to operate
is an operating
using
even the pathology
and even the worst
pathology as matter to revise,
and as they say,
“nothing has to be discarded”.
Last will, sixth article
Jacques Lacan
I move on to the sixth paragraph,
because it is not only
my duty but also my pleasure
to remember Lacan
in the title of this paragraph,
my mentor and analyst.
The Work, real work,
this is how Lacan entitles his writings,
yet if he had entitled them “works”
he would have simply used
a synonym
and not only because my hand
works when I am writing,
let’s be clear;
ever since I started,
some forty years ago,
and thinking of this
I could go back two years,
meaning add two years and reach 42 years,
ever since 1968,
anyway Lacan’s work
has always been a guide,
but how?
I partly understood it right away,
from the first year,
and the rest came later,
because I worked on,
this seeming the best word to use,
on Lacan’s uncertainties.
Be aware that even a certainty is a product,
a product of work
and not even certainty
is something that falls
from the sky into our brains
or otherwise this would only be a prejudice.
I have worked on certainties
since the very beginning,
on Lacan’s uncertainties
and the very word certainity
made Lacan sensitive
when he was talking
of the certainty of the act
of the analyst,
a certainty to reach.
Therefore, he had three uncertainties,
you can see that he knew
very well what certainty was,
and he had three uncertainties.
The first uncertainty of Lacan
had to do with what he had
already called the “symbolic”
for a long time.
Well, already in 1969
I entitled my Ph.D. in Paris,
a third cycle Ph.D.,
“symbolic law or positive law”.
In this, is started to develop
the idea
that the symbolic,
Lacanian substantive,
is an opponent of the “juridical”.
Here, my forty years
long carrier started from there,
and I never gave it up.
In any case,
never Lacan had in mind
that the symbolic included
heavenly ideas,
the skies falling upon us,
they joy
in our heads
because if anything,
it was Asterix’s sky,
who always says
“the only thing we fear
is that the sky may fall on our heads”.
The Lacanian symbolic
is an infernal sky,
and then we keep saying
that the super-ego belongs
to Freud but,
in this regard, Lacan was more
advanced than Freud,
he included super-ego,
Lacan said symbolic,
and so there is to discover what symbolic was,
as an infernal sky of thought.
The second uncertainty of Lacan
has precisely to do with thought.
Lacan never talks of thought
with any sympathy,
he never feels comfortable
in siding up with thought,
and expresses himself ironically,
as he does about Ego,
because after all,
the thought of a subject
and a grammatical subject
of thought is active,
not only grammatical, is acting,
acting subject is the Ego itself,
even when it thinks about
the worst possible thinks.
It is in this regard that Freud is excellent,
because Freud sees the Ego working
even in the worst possible pathology.
This means discovering something.
The third uncertainty
of Lacan is the object.
Lacan, throughout all of his life,
never went past talking
of his famous Object a,
which nobody understands what it is,
and at the most he wished
he would fall,
that it could fall,
as an old story might be dropped,
but we know that old stories
aren’t just dropped but
they come back as a remake,
they coming back,
especially in pathology,
we perfectly know this.
Nothing is created
or disrupted in pathology,
but everything is transformed,
which means that in 10 years
from now we will feel sick
just as we do today.
Here it is, through his non-certainties,
his uncertainties,
Lacan was a guide to me,
I just needed to see them
as uncertainties,
meaning as work that
still needed to be done.
Last will, seventh article
Jesus – Freud
A seventh and second last paragraph
of my review,
now that I think about it,
I can also call it inventory,
since after all when you prepare you
inheritance you have to do an inventory,
then in this case we can say
that I am preparing an inventory
of my inheritance,
I hope this inventory
does not leave out too many things
or that it is accurate enough,
even if it may be a bit rough,
I don’t know!
Seventh article,
I can entitle it Jesus Freud, Jesus – Freud.
This article
of my inventory
costed me many of my friends
and it made me some new ones,
let’s say,
both on the left-wing and
on the right-wing,
in this case not just in
a immediately political sense.
One of my quote has been
“If it is true that Jesus seats
at the right side of the father,
Freud seats at his left”.
I always found it to be
a happy sentence,
and now anybody is free
to hate me as he pleases,
I can’t stop him anyway.
What do Jesus and Freud
have in common?
Jesus made the new man
operation I said before,
some twenty centuries ago,
the same one,
I am not missing any means
of evidence or documentation
to back this statement.
The new man,
see chapters 1,2,3,4,
that we saw before,
Jesus had already discussed it,
if we take ontology for example,
when he says that the tree
has to be judged by its fruits,
he means to say that the tree
can't be judged by itself,
ontology says that the tree
has to be judged by itself,
and you cannot go past the tree.
This is just one example.
The production of the new man,
or if you will,
at the constitutional reform
the leads to the new man,
that Jesus had already worked on,
and we cannot say that
it went to well for him.
Spent eighteen centuries and a half
to the production of the new man
1,2,3,4 chapters,
also Freud treated it,
just look around
to see that
it went wrong even for him
It could not even cross my mind
It could not even cross my mind
the idea of being upset by this balance,
I don't wanna say why
I think this balance is miserable
we may open this chapter
some other time,
but I have my ideas on the matter.
Last will, eight article
Difference between sexes
Last paragraph.
I could entitle it sexes,
it would be better to say
difference among sexes
also because,
when the difference is stressed,
all debates regarding gender
become non interesting,
not aiming and not innovation.
Once we come out
of the old man,
towards whom we would have
these *** instincts,
which also means *** needs,
just like we have food needs,
we will have *** needs.
For this reason Freud
and his colleagues at medical university,
being on average educated people,
were amused by a Latin saying
(Who knows who came up with it)
that the doctor should have
written as an assignment
to the female hysterical patients.
And this assignment to the patients
followed the idea,
in fact, of a *** need
and it said
“coitus normalis dosim repetatur”
(Repeat regular coitus
in the correct amounts),
and she will be fine.
I can imagine this medical students
rolling on the floor laughing!
They were true fraternity students;
they knew how to ridicule
something by throwing that
“dosim” in the middle of a sentence,
where it has nothing to do with Latin.
Getting out of the idea
of the *** needs,
even if there would be
something to say also about eating needs,
it is false to say that we eat
because we need to,
mental anorexia is there
to show us that is strictly false
that we eat because we need to,
and proof of this truth is that
the anorexic patient
would have the need for salts
and other things but she starves herself
to death.
In this sense, we could say that
the anorexic patient is an advocate
of lost causes,
or better,
she loses her life
to become an advocate
of lost causes!
Well, outside of our fanaticism
regarding sexes,
I come to call it fanaticism
so while Freud called it overestimation,
we’re there,
and then the sexes are still there,
the differences stay there,
and everything else;
therefore, if anyone sees it,
with no one breathing on his neck,
pertaining just
a representative function.
Of what could sexes,
in their difference,
assume a representative function?
They become representative
of what I called before
modus recipientis,
one who receives,
that lets himself be fecundated,
I eat your brick”.
In this sense,
in the difference among sexes,
I never said women,
it is obvious that the woman
is physically constituted
in this way,
and so in the receiving function
in the most material meaning of the Word,
there is a body penetrating another body,
but the function "receptacle",
so much so that we later talk
of a closed recipient;
however “recipere” does not refer
to the container,
with that idiotic metaphor
that you can all recognize,
“recipere” is very well
represented by the “recipere”
of the ground receiving the seed.
It’s just that, let’s say so,
I am talking about a seed
that could very well reverse
his relationship and become
the ground itself and the ground
would work as a seminar,
and that’s why I love giving seminars.
You seed during a seminar.
Here, in this sense,
the difference among sexes
assumes the representation of the whole
modus recipiendis
of every one who knows
how to be or how to have a partner.
Which means that in this representation,
we can assume that,
the difference among sexes
involves any partnership,
we can assume that
we can empower
the word feminine,
therefore,
in the production of thought
the feminine position,
that is recipient,
is the same both for men
and women.
Unlike sexes,
it assumes
the representation of “recipere”,
both for men and for women.
And the most
fanatic idea falls
that is the feminine should be only
the other half of the sky.
First of all
in the operation of thought,
in the intellectual operation,
that involves everyone 24/7
even during the sleep,
especially among all in
the intellectual operation
that is the goal of our work,
may they be men or women,
it is feminine,
it is recipient, recipiens.
There was a logical explanation