Vittorino Andreoli

q:it:Vittorino Andreoli (1940) is an Italian psychiatrist and author.

Quotes

In the end, even the psychiatrist lived in the asylum like the other lunatics. A strange life, perhaps paradoxical, perhaps absurd, but all in all true. When it had to be established that things were not right, the comparison was with the lives of healthy people. A normality that, if I had to define it, I could only describe as pathological, since for the inhabitants of the asylum it is the “outside” that is abnormal.
- I miei matti

I believe that the perception of being children of God, not in the sense of a statement of principle but of an experience that attests to their involvement, must be an extraordinary existential condition, capable of giving strength and removing many of the doubts and disappointments that the human condition activates and feeds.
- Fierezza nel sacerdote, Avvenire, 11 June 2008

In their own way, non-believers are frequent visitors to churches: they love them as intimate places, as special museums where they can admire art and music, but there they find themselves wondering about the miracle of that presence which, after two thousand years, still fills the whole earth and the lives of so many people.
- Il sacerdote e i non credenti, Avvenire, 24 September 2008

The non-believer is someone who feels the limits of their own existence, and who, while using reason and considering it the best way to solve many existential problems, and certainly as a scientific tool, wants to push it further to question the mystery.
- Il sacerdote e i non credenti, Avvenire, 24 September 2008

The priest seems to me to be the most appropriate person to talk about death: he knows that it is not a subject for despair.
- Il sacerdote e la morte, Avvenire, 17 September 2008

The old priest now knows that man errs, and that this often produces only temporary effects, so that what ultimately makes complete sense is precisely prayer.
- Il sacerdote anziano, Avvenire, 30 July 2008

I don't know if the present time has brought us great benefits, but it has certainly invented a lot of fears.
- Le paure non vanno in vacanza, Corriere della Sera, 19 July 2009, p. 45

The most beautiful dimension is that of the priest who has nothing, but who is an integral part of an active and attentive community, within a flock that loves him.
- Conflitti interiori: essere senza avere, Avvenire, 9 July 2008

Despair is madness. Madness, the perception of the impossibility of living: being there, but as if not being there. Despair as an experience of madness is incompatible with life. It sees death, plans death, and kills itself and the other. Despair is a madness possible to man, to all men; it is, in fact, a perspective of man, linked to his need to be with others, to the fact that he cannot live alone, because human life is not solitude but sharing, belonging, attachment. Killing is a moment of infinite and incurable despair, and then the world appears useless and harmful and an individual perceives himself as irreducible to the world, as an alien, as an alienated person. A human feeling, possible, compatible with normality. Killing is linked to the madness of normality, to that capacity of man which, when in crisis, instead of helping him to live, transforms him into death and pushes him to kill and ruin himself, to kill himself. Madness is different from a clinical point of view, but also from a legal one (the inability to understand and intend: an infirmity that has arisen, preventing the human machine from functioning). I see madness as a mechanism that mirrors that of despair, of the feeling of the end: the incomprehensibility of the world, pulling out of it. Still being on the planet without knowing it. Close to others without needing the other. Even losing the memory of words and their meaning, giving up on communicating. Schizophrenia is an extraordinary example of this: being in the world as if the world were ending and as if being had no meaning, since all meaning is based on relationships. The schizophrenic is an island, a monad locked in a cell of existence, in a prison of the world. In isolation because that way they can still breathe. Life that comes closest to death. In short, madness already has to do with death, though not in its physical representation, but in its psychological representation, personality, and social representation, relationships. There are three kinds of death: that of the body, the most emblematic and absolute; that of the mind, which allows the body to remain active and even to take on an air of elegance; and then social death: deprived of every dimension, as if we had become transparent and, even within a crowd, no one could see us. The madman is a dead man who walks and breathes. If he kills, he does so without despair, perhaps out of anger; he is a corpse who kills. Madness has already overcome despair and for this reason lives without living, lives as if dead and, if it kills, kills already dead.
- Il lato oscuro, Rizzoli, 2002

The memory of images is stored within us, and it is to this that we attach our feelings.
- Corriere della Sera, 2 June 2008

Fear is a defense mechanism that allows us to be aware of danger and therefore to take action to avoid its consequences.
- Le paure non vanno in vacanza, Corriere della Sera, 19 July 2009, p. 45

Isn't choice already an expression of freedom, even if only a basic one?
- Le nostre paure, Rizzoli, 2010

- Loneliness is an unacceptable peace. A restraint of feelings to appear normal while feeling the desire to explode, to exist for someone. And so you can even fight, hit and be hit, just to not be alone. Useless for everyone. Useless to oneself.
- Tra un'ora, la follia

I deeply believe that priests are figures of great importance for non-believers.
- Il sacerdote e i non credenti, Avvenire, 24 September 2008

Anatomia di un capolavoro dell'orrore

Preface to Bram Stoker's Dracula, November 2001, pp. III-XXI

Dr. John Seward is the director of the Purfleet asylum, and throughout my reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula, I felt as if I had returned to San Giacomo della Tomba, my old asylum. For this reason, among others, the book literally drew me into its pages with the kind of engagement that only great writers can achieve. [...] If a novel has this ability, it is a masterpiece and needs no further proof. It is the mark that each reader leaves on it, and when they put it back on the shelf, it is almost as if they are separating themselves from something they have entered into and can only leave knowing that the book is there waiting and can be reread at any time.
Dracula is a psychiatric novel in the sense that it focuses on strange behavior. The word madness is frequently used.
(About Abraham Van Helsing) He is a psychiatrist, although he has many other specialties: he is a surgeon but also practices hypnosis, which he does regularly with Mina. He was one of Dr. Seward's teachers. He deals with the occult sciences: a term that well expresses the attempt to heal the contradiction between positivism and mystery.
‘'The case of Renfield’', although fictionalized, does not lose its connotation of psychiatry and that of the time. On the contrary, it serves to raise a very pressing issue at the time: the relationship between mental illness, a natural phenomenon, and demonic possession, which is an extra-natural phenomenon. The psychiatric category that best lends itself to this issue is that which allows for rapid changes in behavior and thought. Renfield goes from a phase of excitement and delirium to a state of calm and apparent normality. Renfield's delirium is the need to feed on living creatures in order to obtain vital energy for himself and thus not die. To this end, he asks for sugar, which he places on the windowsill of his hospital cell to attract flies, which he then swallows. A subsequent phase is to encourage the development of spiders that feed on flies and then swallow them. And the next plan is to have mice that eat spiders and cats that eat mice, so that by eating cats he gains extraordinary vital energy. His whole life is conditioned and focused on this idea.
A two-stage illness, disorder-disappearance of the disorder (normality), focuses attention because it is closest to demonic possession: when the demon possesses the body, the possessed person exhibits behaviors that disappear immediately when the demon leaves as a result of some therapy (exorcism). Dr. Seward's interest in Renfield probably stems from Kraeplin's discovery of manic-depressive illness in 1895: in the same patient, a phase of mania can be followed by a phase of depression in temporal sequence.
While Renfield represents psychosis, Lucy represents neurosis. The hysteria that Bram Stoker uses in his novel is what we would today call “dissociative,” leading to a split personality. And with this form, he brings us back to the theme of antithetical behavior in the same personality: Lucy's hysteria is expressed through sleepwalking, which manifests itself in actions that the young lady performs in a state of unconsciousness, of trance, even if it is a trance in motion. This is an extraordinary condition, as it allows one to have experiences and encounters without remembering them when one returns to a waking state. And it is during her sleepwalking phase that she falls prey to Dracula.
Blood is life; without blood, one is exhausted, close to the end. After sucking blood, Dracula has strength and even becomes young. Without it, he cannot live among the dead. Even in the present day, there are countless references to this symbolism, which take on religious expressions: Christ transforms bread into the body and blood of the Lord and thus gives life to men. He transforms it into blood because the body cannot live without blood. Moreover, when he dies on the Cross, he gives all his blood, so much so that the evangelist notes: water flowed from his side. He had given everything.
Sucking is the gesture of life, the way in which a newborn baby lives. It attaches itself to the breast and devours it. Life passes from the mother to the child, who sucks it in. It remains a gesture full of charm, and in adult erotic games, sucking plays an important role: once again, it is a symbol of vital force. Dracula has none of the oral aggression of those who eat; on the contrary, he never eats, he only sucks. And in this, he has remained at the gesture of newborn life, the primary movement par excellence: if the child did not know how to suck, it would die.
Among the possible metamorphoses of Dracula, the most significant, so much so that it has become known to all, is into a bird, a bat. The symbolism of the bird is boundless and is also part of life. The penis is popularly called a bird: precisely because it rises and in that flight gives life, the seed. The bat is a strange creature, we might say perverse: both because it belongs to the mammals and not to the bird species, and because it is nocturnal and at night becomes a bird of sin, of the forbidden. It also has the characteristics of attracting and repelling. During the day, it has no life and remains hanging limply in a cave, while in the dark it is reborn and continuously searches for its prey in that unstoppable flight. Blood therefore recalls the bird-penis, and the image of the ‘baptism of blood’ with Mrs. Mina attached to Dracula's chest, in a position reminiscent of fellatio, is evocative.
We must now have the courage to say that the count even manages to soften us, to make us feel sorry for him. After all, he is not the monster with superhuman and unstoppable strength, one of those who appear on today's screens of stupidity. Dracula is still a man, he was one while he was alive, in the historical sense of the term; he was a hero, one who saved his people from the Turks, and at that time, the word ‘Turk’ brought to mind evil and extreme violence. A dead character yet full of needs: during the day he must return to a coffin hidden in the ground of the cemetery where he was buried, so much so that he must always carry it with him. He is terrified of good or signs of good: the silver crucifixes and consecrated wafers that Professor Van Helsing uses as his weapons of defense. He is a monster who is afraid and who can be defeated, so much so that this is the conclusion of the story.
The strength of this novel, however, lies in the great and ever-present theme of the struggle between Good and Evil. A titanic struggle that moves from the everyday scene to the tragedies of the classical period and throughout literature with a capital L. After all, Dracula is Evil, even if he has a charm that sometimes captivates, and the group of characters who eliminate him represent Good, not least because they act in the name of Good.
Professor Van Helsing is the priest of Good who, given the times, does not wear the robes of a monk or priest, but the garb of science. And so he interprets well the period in which the action takes place: positivism. A priest, therefore, who uses reason, the power of science, but who does not forget the sacred, magical instruments.

"L'Italia è un Paese malato di mente. Esibizionisti, individualisti, masochisti, fatalisti"

From an interview by Andrea Purgatori, Huffington Post, 6 August 2013

Interviewer:Exhibitionists Andreoli: Of course, this is the mask that hides masochism. And keep in mind that, generally speaking, exhibitionism is a sexuality disorder. Showing off one's organ, but not because it is powerful. To compensate for impotence.
[Second symptom of Italy's mental illness] Ruthless individualism. And mind you, I mean this adjective. Because a certain amount of individualism is normal, one must have one's own identity to which one attaches esteem. But when it becomes ruthless...
[The British] never talk. Instead, we talk even when we listen to music or read the newspaper.
Interviewer: You can't joke about faith. Andreoli: Not faith in God, let's leave that aside. I'm talking about believing. Thinking that tomorrow, at eight in the morning, there will be a miracle. Then whether it's God, Saint Januarius, or anyone else, it doesn't matter. In short, to be clear, we live in a disaster, in a sewer, but we believe that tomorrow morning at eight there will be a miracle that will change our lives. We're waiting for Godot, who isn't there. But try explaining that to Italians.
Interviewer: Hidden masochism, ruthless individualism, acting, belief in miracles. We're in a terrible state, Professor Andreoli. Andreoli: That's right. No psychiatrist can save this patient that is Italy. I can't even take away these symptoms, because without them you would feel dead.

L'uomo di vetro

All it takes is a hundred people willing to die as suicide bombers, strapping explosives to themselves, to render ridiculous the system of certainty and the certainty of power on this earth, of the potentates of this world.
Well, if I have been, and am, a good psychiatrist, if I have helped my crazy patients, it is because of my fragility, because of the fear of a madness that lurks within me, because of the fragility that I feel capable of splitting me in two, of taking away my will to live and making me like a depressed person who only wants to disappear in order to erase the pain that shapes him.
The Song of Songs speaks of necessary love: being two makes it possible to exist for those who separately would not have made it, would have broken.
Pain is a quality of being fragile.
Pain is the primary source of fragility because it breaks you and you feel shattered, unable to put the pieces you see in yourself back together; indeed, you are a pile of fragments, grains of sand that should come together and shape, sculpt a man.
Pain makes more noise than any other noise.
The limit of energy becomes the limit of civilization, of a civilization that seems to be one of well-being and that at times appears to be a civilization of waste.
Marriage is my life with her and our children, but none of us can say that it has been a forty-year trip out of town.
Marriage is the greatest of human frailties, capable of producing good and incapable of avoiding evil.
The powerful do not believe they need to be resurrected because they think they are unshakable, like the Eiffel Tower made of iron and not flesh, soulless, cold as a railroad track.
The powerful do not know how to love; the man of iron is cold, he knows how to envelop and bind in order to subjugate, to enslave.
The sense of belonging. This is marriage.
The old man lives on the dead and awaits death.
Love has nothing free about it, because fear does not allow this utopia to be exercised.
Man would not survive in the dark without a light bulb to illuminate a page to read or to power a computer on which to type a new world, which also depends on energy.
The end is not a distant appointment, but a present that perpetuates itself, and so we die continuously and are dead even when we breathe.
The fragility of fine Murano glass or Bohemian crystal: beautiful, elegant, but it takes very little for it to shatter and turn into useless fragments. Knowing its nature, one must be careful how one uses it, how one preserves it: one must keep it away from places where impetuous actions are performed, because otherwise that fine glass becomes nothing, just a memory.
Fragility remakes man, while power destroys him, reducing him to fragments that turn to dust.
Jealousy is the fear of being alone, now that the perfect formula for wholeness has been found, which means completion, security.
My fragility leads me to love, so love is the answer to a need born of fragility, of the perception that without the other, my being in the world is doomed only to death, to non-existence; and the loneliness of the glass man is the worst of all diseases, of the diseases of living.
Fear is not only linked to physical pain, to the feeling of no longer functioning, it also attaches itself to well-being, which has a mental and social dimension, to how one lives with one's personality within that environment made up of relationships.
The perception of the end is within each of us, it is a stigma of the species, a mark of its transience.
The presence of the divine in the world should serve to calm the visceral pride and sense of human omnipotence that exalt power and domination.
Repetition has always been the source of certainty.
Old certainties appear as gross errors, and there is now a need to educate, and to do so urgently, at a time when no one knows what it means anymore, since for several generations, throughout the 20th century, this term has not been used, obsolete and with the flavor of something dirty and perverse.
Violence does not make history, it is not a difficulty that can be worked through, but simply a war that leads only to the death of love and sometimes even of its protagonists.
Beliefs in heaven, populated by the living, express well the denial of death and the desire to remain.
In the family, where daily disagreements have disappeared, dramas made up of extreme behaviors arise.
To accept defeat, you have to believe in those who decree it, you have to be sure that the competitions are not rigged, that they do not become a business, but that they are conducted with absolute respect for skills and talents, whatever field they may be in.
If your neighbor is antisocial and does not like your noise, he turns on his own and cancels yours.
We sell them weapons, because the disease of power has spread everywhere, and they throw away every resource, even human lives, to wage and win wars, wars of misery.
Sometimes you lose because you didn't choose the right field of trial.
An adult man cannot be reduced to an active and productive man.

Un secolo di follia

Incipit

Throughout the Middle Ages, madness was considered sacred: a manifestation of God and the devil. It was a mystery, and therefore respected even if it could be frightening. It was difficult to distinguish between God's madmen and those possessed by demons, just as it was difficult to determine whether a somatic illness was attributable to evil “spirits” that accumulated in the body and corrupted it. (Storia letta e storia vissuta, p. 9)

Quotes

(Commenting on the 1904 law on mental hospitals, inspired by the principles of the anthropological-positive school and Cesare Lombroso) Prison and Psychiatric hospital are consistently two ways of defending against criminals and the insane, particularly against their dangerousness. The insane are not responsible for their actions (and therefore not punishable), but for this very reason their wishes cannot be respected when it comes to committing them to an asylum: the will of the community must prevail over that of the individual. Insanity, after all, could not be cured, only restrained and contained: this was the task of psychiatry. (Il manicomio del 1904, p. 50)
Madness is an integral part of culture, and the madman is a citizen of society, even when he is confined to an asylum. It is not possible to understand madness by dealing only with madness. On the other hand, one cannot have a complete picture of a society without the chapter on its madness. (Intorno alla follia, p. 62)
Even for history there is a “principle of indeterminacy” and here too, in defining some facts, one must give up describing others. The impression arises that many accounts of a historical period are possible depending on what one chooses and consequently eliminates. And it is impossible to tell a story without making choices. (Intorno alla follia, p. 63)
The name Gustave Le Bon recalls that of Gabriel Tarde, who in 1890 published ‘'The Laws of Imitation’' and argued that the psychological phenomenon of imitation can explain all forms of social bonding and all the secrets of social life. With Tarde, the sociological dispute was already alive. It was this author, in contrast to the dominant sociologist of the time, Émile Durkheim, who claimed that the era of non-psychological sociology (that of Durkheim, in fact) was over. If Auguste Comte is the founder of sociology, Tarde deserves credit for founding social psychology. (Intorno alla follia, p. 65)
While scientific discoveries, however great, may not have immediate repercussions on lifestyle and daily life, it is precisely technology that brings about immediate practical upheavals, usually considered positive. Science always changes ideas (of science itself or of culture), while technology has little impact on them and mostly only indirectly through the subversion of ordinary processes of existence. (Intorno alla follia, p. 70)
Frank Wedekind, actor and playwright, focuses his performances on sex and its perversions with the aim of exposing the hypocritical respectability of the bourgeoisie of the time. He proposes the morality of erotic impulse as an alternative to bourgeois morality. (Intorno alla follia, p. 79)
In 1950-51, Maxwell Jones invented, as an alternative to psychiatric hospitals, small therapeutic communities made up of patients and psychiatric and social workers, managed on the basis of collective participation and dynamics that were intended to bring out the abilities and qualities of each individual. The model of the extended family or village will go beyond psychiatry to apply to the problems of marginalization (from prisoners to drug addicts, the disabled, and the elderly). (La società o la fabbrica della follia, p. 131)
Falsification is a term that has entered everyday language. It was introduced by Karl Popper. Every scientific result must be questionable and, therefore, imperfect, the starting point for new experiments for progressive, but never definitive, perfection. Scientific research is the never-ending story of corrections to previously obtained data, a story that has the limits of Tantalus. The definitive is dogmatism; it can be asserted but not proven. The great system of Bacon and Galileo has been decisively destroyed, precisely in the method that founded it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 333-334)
Paul Feyerabend described science as a place of anarchy based not on logical-rational method but on protocols, the tools of the trade. Science is, therefore, a ‘relative’ discipline, capable of affirming truth only in relation to data conventionally compared: a truth-error. (Requiem per la verità, p. 334)
Sexuality is also dying. Once upon a time, the penis had great significance and could be an ideological foundation. Today, it is an appendage of the body without qualities. No plans are made for the penis anymore. It is an intriguing and dangerous organ. It can generate in an overpopulated world. Better the power of an engine. Impotence has never been as high as in the contemporary world. You are male because of your motorcycle, your tattoo, your abdominal muscles, and your beard; the penis has nothing to do with it. (Requiem per la verità, p. 335)

Incipit of some works

I miei matti

I decided to become a psychiatrist in 1959.
I had finished high school and, like all my classmates, I was thinking about what to study at university. Choosing a faculty, in those days, meant choosing your future. And I felt rather torn.
I was a “nerd,” a horrible “nerd,” even though I fit in well with my peers. Beyond my grades, which were the highest and didn't set me apart in any way, I loved philosophy.

Lettera a un adolescente

Dearest,
I should tell you right away that I am old, belonging not only to the category of fathers but also to that of grandparents.
An old man convinced that silence between generations is unacceptable, meaning between fathers and children in the same house, while sitting side by side. It is better to talk than to remain silent. In silence, resentment and hatred take over, and so we must not tire of trying. It is for this reason, to oppose the pain of non-communication, that I have decided to write to you. I have many things to tell you, emotions and feelings to convey to you. I address you without forced youthfulness, simply as an old man. I take the attitude of a father and grandfather towards you. In short, I will embody my role and I will do so to the fullest.

Preti di carta

In 1560, Don Narcisso Pramper (or di Prampero) wrote a work, Specchio de verità (Mirror of Truth), in which he combats the Mass and, in particular, the Eucharist, as practices not established by God, but invented by the Church for purposes that are not only contrary to the principles of the Old Testament and the message of Christ, but also opposed to them, provoking behavior contrary to the true practices of religion.
Already in this statement, the reference to the Protestant Reformation is very clear, both in the expressions of Martin Luther and Zwingli.
We are in the 16th century and therefore in the climate of the Protestant Reformation and also of the spread in Italy of a movement opposed to the official Catholic view. This indicates that the Reformation also took root in our country and, more curiously, among priests.

Preti. Viaggio fra gli uomini del sacro

The priest is a figure in our society. A figure with a long history in our culture, who has performed tasks that have been recognized in different ways and often even opposed. A figure who has changed because the environment in which he finds himself has changed. Thus, while pursuing the same goal, linked to the institutional role he holds, the environment in which he lives has changed him, even changing the outward way in which he presents himself to the people. From the long black cassock with a pointed cap and pompom or stiff wide-brimmed hat, he is now sometimes seen in “bourgeois” clothes, jeans and T-shirts, no longer identifiable or immediately recognizable. He did this to hide when his mission, which was opposed, had to be carried out clandestinely, or because of his conviction that he should be noticed not for his clothes but for his way of being and his behavior, reversing the popular saying that clothes make the man.

Tra un'ora, la follia

It is evening and people are gathering in the village square. The Vigo di Fassa band is playing, with the musicians dressed in the traditional costumes of the valley. The young conductor has the seriousness and expression of the great conductors: those who, instead of coming to Bellamonte, go to Salzburg or Vienna or Bayreuth. There is a special atmosphere because the holidaymakers are also taking part, the “siori” who have come from Milan, Parma, and Bologna, the greats of the world who need rest. The villagers have put on their best clothes to express their hospitality.

Bibliography

Vittorino Andreoli, I miei matti, Rizzoli, 2004.
Vittorino Andreoli, L'uomo di vetro, Rizzoli, 2008.
Vittorino Andreoli, Lettera a un adolescente, Rizzoli, 2004.
Vittorino Andreoli, Preti di carta. Storie di santi ed eretici, asceti e libertini, esorcisti e guaritori, Piemme, 2010.
Vittorino Andreoli, Preti. Viaggio fra gli uomini del sacro, Piemme, 2010. ISBN 9788856615197
Vittorino Andreoli, Tra un'ora, la follia, Rizzoli, 1999.
Vittorino Andreoli, Un secolo di follia, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milano, 1998. ISBN 88-17-11838-9