Silvano Arieti's novel The Parnas: A Scene from the Holocaust
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 95; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/1745-8315.12149
ISSN1745-8315
Autores Tópico(s)Psychiatry, Mental Health, Neuroscience
ResumoAbstractSilvano Arieti was an Italian psychoanalyst who undertook psychoanalysis of schizophrenic patients in the 1960s and 1970s. He left Italy in 1939 at the age of twenty‐four following the Race Laws of 1938, and moved to New York until his death in 1981. A training analyst and author of several psychoanalytic and academic books, Arieti kept his research open in a wide variety of directions, giving equal weight to the internal world – as it seen from the psychoanalytic viewpoint – and to the organic functioning of the brain, as viewed from the perspective of the neurosciences. Arieti's interpretation of schizophrenia helped to overcome the dichotomies between the classical psychoanalytic approach, neurobiological research, and research into cognition, and opened up new paths for an interdisciplinary understanding of mental functioning and creative processes. This paper examines Arieti's book The Parnas (1979); this is a partly‐fictionalised account of a pre‐eminent figure (Parnas in Hebrew means “head”) in the Jewish community in Pisa, Giuseppe Pardo Roques, in the 1930s and early 1940s, who experienced mental illness and was killed in the Nazi extermination of Jews. The paper examines Arieti?s reflections on what he sees as the ‘insights’ provided by mental illness, which are considered through the figure of Giuseppe Pardo Roques, and in the context of the trauma of the Shoah in Italy.Translations of summaryDie Krankheit als „Vorahnung”Auf der Grundlage von Silvano Arietis Buch The Parnas: A Scene from the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 1979) formuliert der Autor Überlegungen zum Judentum und zur Shoah‐Tragödie. Der Parnes war Giuseppe Pardo Roques, Vorsteher der jüdischen Gemeinde von Pisa (Italien). Er wurde zusammen mit 11 Gästen, die sich bei ihm aufhielten, im August 1944 in seinem Haus von Nazi‐Soldaten, die nie identifiziert wurden, erschossen. Der Parnes litt unter einer seltenen Form von Verfolgungswahn; seine Krankheit wird auch als eine Form oder „Vorahnung” der Verfolgung der jüdischen Bevölkerung und des Holocaust untersucht. Das Buch The Parnas ist eines der letzten Werke Silvano Arietis (1914–1981), eines Psychiaters, der von Pisa aus in die USA emigrierte und dort zu einem der einflussreichsten Psychiater seiner Zeit wurde.La enfermedad como ‘premonición’Basándose en el libro de Silvano Arieti El Parnas: una escena del Holocausto (New York: Basic Books, 1979), se realizan una serie de consideraciones sobre el judaísmo y la tragedia de la Shoá. El Parnas fue Giuseppe Pardo Roques, dirigente de la Comunidad Judía de Pisa (Italia), asesinado en su casa en agosto de 1944, junto con miembros de su familia, por soldados Nazis que nunca fueron identificados. El Parmas sufría una extraña forma de trastorno mental persecutorio y se considera su enfermedad como una forma o ‘premonición’ de la persecución de la población judía y del Holocausto. El Parmas es uno de los últimos libros de Silvano Arieti (1914–1981), un psiquiatra que emigró de Pisa a los Estados Unidos en donde se convirtió en uno de los psiquiatras más influyentes de su época.La maladie comme prémonitionL'auteur de cet article examine certains aspects du judaïsme et de la tragédie de la Shoah à partir du livre de Silvano Arieti, The Parnas:A Scene from the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Giuseppe Pardo Roques était le Parnas – le chef de la communauté juive de Pise. Celui‐ci fut assassiné à son domicile en août 1944, en même temps que onze autres personnes, par des soldats nazis qui ne furent jamais identifiés. Le Parnas était atteint d'une forme rare de troubles de la persécution. Sa maladie peut être également considérée comme une forme « prémonitoire » de la persécution du peuple juif et de la Shoah. The Parnas est l'un des derniers livres de Silvano Arieti (1914–1981), un psychiatre qui émigra de Pise aux États‐Unis, où il devint l'un des plus éminents psychiatres de son époque.La malattia come “premonizione” nel pensiero di ArietiSilvano Arieti è state uno psicoanalista italiano che negli anni ’60 e ‘70 ha approfondito la problematica psicoanalitica della cura con pazienti schizofrenici. Lasciò l'Italia nel 1939 all'età di 24 anni in conseguenza delle leggi razziste del 1938. Si trasferì New York dove visse sino alla sua morte nel 1981. Analista didatta e autore di numerose pubblicazioni accademiche e psicoanalitiche, Arieti mantenne aperta la sua ricerca in molteplici direzioni, dando pari dignità al mondo interno, così come appare nella prospettiva psicoanalitica, e al funzionamento cerebrale, così come appare dal punto di vista delle neuroscienze. La sua interpretazione della schizofrenia ha contributo a superare le dicotomie fra l'approccio psicoanalitico classico, la ricerca neurobiologia e quella cognitiva, contribuendo a sviluppare orizzonti nuovi per una comprensione interdisciplinare del funzionamento mentale e dei processi creativi. Il presente lavoro è in particolare dedicato al Parnàs (1979) una delle sue ultime opere. Il Parnàs è una storia in parte romanzata che ha per protagonista un'autorevole esponente della comunità ebraica di Pisa (in ebraico Parnàs vuol dire capo di una comunità ebraica), negli anni ’30 e inizi ’40, che fu trucidato dai nazisti. Il Parnàs soffriva di una grave fobia. Il saggio prende in esame le riflessioni di Arieti sui significati profondi della malattia e delle verità nascoste di cui può farsi veicolo. Verità che Arieti approfondisce attraverso la figura di Giuseppe Pardo Roques, sullo sfondo del trauma della Shoah in Italia.Key words: Silvano ArietiHolocaustJudaism Shoah premonition Notes1. For information on Silvano Arieti (1914–81), visit the website of the Silvano Arieti Association: http://www.silvanoarieti.it. On the dissemination of Arieti's work in Italy, see Galli, 1998.2. In January 2008 President George W. Bush in person apologized for this on behalf of the United States (cf. Wiesel, 2008).3. Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate is one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature. The novel was completed in 1960 and is set in the Soviet Union between the summer of 1942 and February 1943, along the Russian front between the Don and the Volga, where the battle to defend Stalingrad was raging. It is a nightmare scenario, in which the lives and destinies of many characters, indeed of humanity itself, are played out: soldiers at the front, their families with anxieties and distress, field doctors and nurses, workers dedicated to the war effort, officials, Jews in the Nazi camps, political prisoners and deportees in the Soviet camps. As the novel runs its course, the author – who was following the Red Army as a war correspondent – tells the everyday story, putting its everyday heroism at the centre in defence of dignity against every form of prejudice and anti‐Semitism.4. The Ddl (Disegno di legge [Design of the law]) of 27 July 1944 (Gazzetta Ufficiale, 29‐7‐1944), in which the Bonomi government listed the crimes of Fascism while remaining silent about the persecution of the Jews, was issued three days after the Red Army had liberated the camp at Majdanek and released their pictures of it (see Hilberg, 1985[1995, pp. 1042, 1072]). A few days later in New York, 40,000 people took part in a demonstration called by the American Jewish Committee in Madison Square to ask for the last Jews in Europe to be saved.5. For a detailed study, see Wieviorka (1999) and Chaumont (1997).6. Enzo Bonaventura was a pioneer of Italian psychoanalytic thinking. From 1926 to 1929 he was an assistant to Francesco De Sarlo, and at the professor's request gave a series of psychoanalytic classes which were gathered into a volume published shortly before he left Italy to escape the race laws of 1938. The success of this work, which went into a second edition after barely five months, shows how urgently students needed commentaries on Freud's thought. Despite the regime's virulent attacks on psychoanalysis, the book was reprinted many times, and for many years constituted the only synthesis of Freud's thought with sufficient depth and quality to be relied on.7. Translated by P.C. Bori in 1979, this unpublished Freudian text became better known to the wider public in 1989 after its publication in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis by Y.H. Yerushalmi (Bori, 1979, pp. 331–5; Yerushalmi, 1989, pp. 375–95).8. “Thus one undertakes to treat each possibility in the text as a clue and to fill the gap between one fragment and another according to the law, so to speak, of least resistance, that is – to give preference to the assumption that can claim the greatest probability. That which one can obtain by means of this technique can also be taken as a kind of historical novel, since it has no proven reality, or only an unconfirmable one, for even the greatest probability does not coincide with the truth” (Freud, 1934, quoted in Yerushalmi, 1989, p. 379).9. “I am very well aware that in dealing so autocratically and arbitrarily with Biblical tradition – bringing it up to confirm my views when it suits me and unhesitatingly rejecting it when it contradicts me – I am exposing myself to serious methodological criticism and weakening the convincing force of my arguments” (Freud 1934–38[37–38], p. 27, note 2). Further on he makes this doubt explicit with the assertion that the reproach of having built “a structure of conjectures with too much positiveness, for which there is no basis in the material”, may be considered unjustified because he had “already laid stress on the factor of doubt” in his opening remarks, and “as it were, placed that factor outside the brackets”. This should allow him to be spared “the trouble of repeating it in connection with each item inside them” (ibid., p. 31).
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