Abramo e la mente contemporanea: la rilettura della figura di Abramo compiuta da Silvano Arieti

Abstract

Abraham and the contemporary mind: an interpretation of Abraham written by an Italian psychoanalyst, Silvano Arieti. Silvano Arieti was born in Pisa where he got the medical degree, and after the discrimination laws against Jews, he went to the United States and there he became one of the most eminent psychiatrics and psychoanalysts of the second half of the XX century. He was the editor of the American Handbook of Psychiatry and dedicated all his life to the care of mental illness. Abraham and the contemporary mind, published in 1981, was his last book. There he revised the personality of Abraham, whom he considered the first modern man: Abraham broke the idols and opened to a personal God who proposed the alliance. On the basis of his clinical experience he proposes a dual model: psyche and brain as two distinct but interactive entities. This model is proposed, using analogical categories, for the dialogue between Humankind and God from Sodoma and Gomorra narration. An interactive model of acting between God and Humankind is presented in order to build the Earth for the future incoming of the Messiah. Here the connections with Teilhard de Chardin are underlined: for the French palaeontologist and Jesuit the perspective is to build the Earth, thanks to the alliance, for the second incoming of Christ. The common task is that of moving towards a transcendent future. Finally in his vision Arieti solved the problem between psychoanalysis and free will: psychoanalysis in not any more the science negating free will, but on the contrary the branch of medical science able to solve the pathologies which don’t allow the exercise of free will.