(in English)

The field of psychoanalysis is unlimited as it spans the entire territory of

the unconscious, its mechanisms, its manifestations, its productions and

structures. If one cannot affirm the analyst has a free access to these

territories, certainly it can be said he or she has a privileged view onto

them. Indeed, taking the move from the premise of the unconscious, no

distinctions of time, space, gender, race or ethnicity can be drawn to build

walls and separate human beings. The other is always inside us and it needs

to be given a shelter, as we – as psychoanalysts – have learnt throughout

hard challenges and the unceasing work carried out on ourselves.

In this sense we never entirely overlap with the institutions to which we

belong. If we make an opening to the pain that we hear from the letters of

the Turkish colleagues today, it is because they metaphorically give back to

words their meaning, renewing the sense of the word that always had a

particular, enchanting sense: freedom.

This special enchantment  comes from the traumatic background represented

for everyone  by the fact of being alive in a specific subjectivity, which is 

 eventually part of a  greater History. 

When we are faced with texts like those by Janine Alounian (whose paper

 "Returning to ancestors to recover a youth and fighting spirit", in French, we

 are glad to publish in the present number of Frenis Zero journal),  where

surviving ("survivance")  becomes not only a dramatic testimony of the 

genocide of an entire people, the Armenians, but also a great metaphor of the 

 survival of what she considers as something precious, i.e. psychoanalysis itself.

 Therefore we are called but to feel at the frontline of the struggle for freedom 

 when the Turkish police beats a psychoanalytic working group on 

homosexuality in the premises of the university.  

We express this solidarity in this space, as best as we can, considering

also the urge to share now our participation to the trauma we indirectly

suffer, together with our female colleagues who experience it directly , 

but with no lesser intensity for the afore-mentioned reasons.

About all that gives us testimony the "Letter from Istanbul", written by Bella

Habip, psychoanalyst belonging to the Istanbul Association for Training,

 Research and Development (Psike Istanbul).

As evoked by Hannah Arendt, after attending the Eichmann trial, evil with

 its whole banality reappears with its chilling presence in our everyday life,

and it continues to amaze us despite the harsh experience of living in

contact with history.

<<One cannot be human without first being free >>. That is the concluding sentence from the statement of our collaborators and colleagues from the Turkish Psychoanalytical Association in Istanbul. You may read it on the Italian Psychoanalytic Society website.

We questioned ourselves about this sentence. What do our Turkish colleagues want to tell us with it?

One might say that it is a wrong sentence: humanity is not lost losing freedom, as witnessed by the great solidarity  took place  in the concentration camps. However, the restriction of freedom, as we all know, severely challenges our capacity to stay wholly human. People, in situations of captivity, may at times develop survival mechanisms that are, in a paradoxical way, successfully due to the identification and compliance with the very monstrosity of the system that segregates them.

Nonetheless, I think of those remarkable figures like Aung San Suu Kyi, who in spite of long years spent in a situation of freedom deprivation managed to stay profoundly human. Or what about Nelson Mandela, recently passed away, who did not lose his humanity once released from prison, when he actually played a critical role in putting into motion historical processes of Truth and Reconciliation to prevent the perpetuation of the violence perpetrated in the time of apartheid by means of summary executions and chains of never ending revenges?

Yet, if our colleagues have made this statement, there must be a reason, which we want to try to briefly explore while inviting our readers to do the same. If our colleagues are telling us that a person cannot be human without being free, they may unconsciously feel a de-humanization creeping through as a result the violence they so unjustly suffered. That violence was perpetrated by the very people to which they also belong and acted by those who should rather protect the people and grant the future of democracy. If our colleagues perceive such a deep de-humanization, I deem that a sign that we should not underestimate.

De-humanization begins in a subtle and latent manner. It undermines human relationships, it attacks them form a sort of underground territory dominated by dormant agents. It persecutes any intimacy with guilt and suspect, hence embroiling it in a persecutory and disturbing ambiguity. It manifests through those sadly known initial symptoms: the sudden lack of confidence in our neighbours, the widespread feeling among the citizens that all human relationship are eventually fake, based on vested interest or undertaken on the basis of evil intentions.

Our humanity needs freedom - we are told by our Turkish colleagues, and we think they speak referring to themselves, not to someone else!   -  to be fed, to express itself and thrive. It seems that they want alert us about the risk of a slow, gradual fall of our democracies in the realm of unfreedom.

There is a cry for help! It is not just a complaint!

If the mind of our Turkish colleagues is in danger, insofar as when one lives under the persecution of other one cannot be and do the things one considers valuable to be lived and done, then it is the time when our work as psychoanalysts is asked to provide some kind of answer.

We think we should take the time to think about it.

A remarkable work we want to give an account of in the present number of Frenis Zero journal, dedicated to female analysts involved in civil rights struggles in Mediterranean contexts, is witnessed by Lidia Tarantini who, between 2002 and 2007, guided some therapeutic groups in Tunisia, particularly with female patients, experience interrupted by the 2010 so called  "Jasmine Revolution". On November 2013 Lidia Tarantini came back into Tunisia to interview her patients, and the article "Tunisian autumn between disappointment and hope" (in Italian) gives us an account of it.

Finally, one of us, Ambra Cusin, together with Franca Amione, wrote the paper "Bion and myth", we propose in the present number of the journal. Originally it has been presented in "2008 Bion Congress: Second Thoughts, Alfa Functions and Catastrophic Change" (Rome, Jan., 31- Feb., 3, 2008).