the first European festival on creativity

2011 Program

Evento n.15

Adam Phillips, Gabriele Romagnoli

About balance

The problem of balance, of measure, of avoiding excess is central to our lives. We aspire to achieve and maintain equilibrium, but whenever something seems important to us we tend to lose our balance, much as we do when falling in love. Phillips shows that the most appropriate way to discuss balance consists in dealing with the various forms that excess and exaggeration take on in our society, including sex, education, and religious and political fundamentalism. Psychoanalysis plays a central role here as it can show us ‘why there is often nothing more imbalanced than demanding a well-balanced viewpoint.’ A reversal of the common perspective that is so characteristic of Adam Phillips, who is constantly riding the fine line between psychoanalysis and literature, Freudian references and artistic suggestions.


Adam Phillips

born in 1954, is a British psychoanalyst and a man of letters. He has edited the complete works of Sigmund Freud in the U.K. He was head of Child Psychotherapy at London’s Charing Cross Hospital, and has authored a number of essays. An unusual intellectual of many eclectic interests (including tropical birds), Phillips never appears on tv, but partly owing to a few prominent patients, including the fiction writer Hanif Kureishi, he has become a sort of hallowed ‘psycho-star,’ so much so that The Times has dubbed him ‘the Martin Amis of psychoanalysis.’ His essays, published in Italian by Ponte alle Grazie, deal with a broad range of subjects and uncover poorly known and elusive dimensions of our psyche. They include I lombrichi di Darwin e la morte di Freud (2000), Paure ed esperti (2003), Normalmente (2005), Elogio della gentilezza (with B. Taylor, 2009), La scatola di Houdini (2010), Sull’equilibrio (2011), Sul bacio, il solletico e la noia (2011).

Gabriele Romagnoli was born in Bologna in 1960. He has written Navi in Bottiglia (Mondadori, 1993); In tempo per il cielo (Mondadori, 1995); Passeggeri (Garzanti, 1998); Louisiana Blues (Feltrinelli, 2001); L’artista (Feltrinelli, 2004) and Non ci sono santi (Mondadori, 2006). He writes for La Repubblica and Vanity Fair.
All theevents2011


Evento n.1

Chiara Saraceno

Too much inequality hinders everyone’s well-being

Evento n.2

Giuseppe Penone, Sergio Risaliti

Flowing in time like a river pebble

Evento n.3

Kinds of lies

Evento n.4

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Can artificial life exist?

Evento n.6

Zygmunt Bauman

Reflections on the notions of community and network, on social networks and Facebook

Evento n.7

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The friar

Evento n.8

Francesco Piccolo

How to write a screenplay

Evento n.10

Maurizio Bettini

Mythological forms of memory in ancient Greece and Rome

Evento n.11

Almudena Grandes, Ranieri Polese

History from the viewpoint of women

Evento n.12

Adriano Prosperi

Crime and forgiveness

Evento n.14

Gian Carlo Calza

Different, eccentric, extraordinary: aesthetics and creativity between Asia and the West

Evento n.16

Marco Belpoliti

As you have seen it on tv

Evento n.17

Salvatore Veca

On philosophical imagination

Evento n.18

Vittorio Gregotti

City, metropolis and urban design

Evento n.19

Enzo Bianchi

Paths of humanization

Evento n.20

Patrizia Cavalli

Poetry knows everything first

Evento n.21

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Life is communication

Evento n.23

Silvio Orlando

Diderot, Rameau and other paradoxes

Evento n.24

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The merchant

Evento n.26

Franco Borgogno

In other people’s hearts and minds. A psychoanalyst between tradition and creativity

Evento n.27

Giuseppe Bertolucci, Emanuele Trevi

In words and pictures: cinema and literature

Evento n.28

Michela Marzano

Mind and body: anorexia, or the enigma of desire

Evento n.29

Alfonso Berardinelli

Intellectual types, styles and powers

Evento n.30

Luca Scarlini

The power of images, the images of power

Evento n.31

Felice Cimatti

Mind, communication and language in animals, including Homo sapiens

Evento n.32

Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna

Regretting the families of yesteryear?

Evento n.33

Alberto Manguel

The Muse of impossibility

Evento N.34

Ennio Peres

Mathematics is the game of life

Evento N.35

Luce Irigaray

Saving human energy. Breathing: a source of universal sharing

Evento n.36

Edoardo Boncinelli

What is life? Life yesterday, today and tomorrow

Evento n.37

Sonia Bergamasco, Fabrizio Gifuni

A quiet sunny day. Attilio Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a friendship in verse

Evento n.39

Alessandro Barbero

How did Middle Ages men think? The knight

X Download podcast