Corpo, umano (Einaudi). This is what Vittorio Lingiardi will discuss in a captivating lecture on the stage of Giunti Odeon! Following his presentation, the author will also introduce a screening of Habla con ella (in Spanish with subtitles) by Pedro Almodóvar, scheduled for 9:00 PM.

The Book:

Like a medical examination, a science fiction film, or an afternoon of love, this is a journey into the body. Of all the books on this theme, it’s the only one marked by a comma: Corpo, umano. The comma signals a pause—a breath, a moment of thought—during which readers can search for their own body. Today, our bodies are in the spotlight yet often neglected: medicine breaks them down into isolated parts, online life removes them from physical connection, and politics turns them into tools. With sensitivity, Vittorio Lingiardi brings the body back to center stage, guiding us organ by organ—from liver to brain, eyes to heart—through the lenses of science, myth, art, and literature. He achieves the feat of restoring the body to us whole: "electric," as Whitman might say, "alive," as Winnicott might put it, inseparable from the psyche.

This autobiographical, psychoanalytic, medical, and imaginative book is structured into three sections—the remembered body, the detailed body, and the rediscovered body. It takes readers on an adventurous journey within, celebrating the body’s physicality while embracing its poetic nature. Blood and cells, symbols and memories. With scientific explanations, artistic images, and literary words, Vittorio Lingiardi narrates the life of the body as “our I, but also our first you.” In his clinical practice and the work of caregiving, he has listened to many bodies. The search for connection, the turmoil of adolescence, the experience of illness, the awakening of desire, the transformations of gender. But also the symptoms and silences: the cut on the arm that dulls mental pain; the sharp bones of anorexia; the inflated muscles of muscle dysmorphia; the distorted gaze seeing flaws where there are none; the panic simulating a heart attack. Our body follows and accompanies us, able to console or become an adversary. It is an alchemical laboratory capable of endless manifestations: anatomical, pathophysiological, social, political, religious, aesthetic, naked, clothed, dancing, energetic, tired. Body, Human is an evocation, an idiosyncratic and enchanting reconstruction. Page by page, organ by organ, it brings to light the awareness that, even when it risks disappearing, the only way to rediscover the body is to tell its story.

The Author:

Vittorio Lingiardi (Milan, 1960) is an Italian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, professor of dynamic psychology at the Faculty of Medicine and Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome. From 1985 to 1998, he carried out clinical and research work at the Institute of Psychiatric Clinics of the University of Milan and the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. In 1987-88, and again in 1995, he pursued studies and training in the United States and Canada at the Menninger Clinic (Topeka, Kansas), the Chestnut Lodge Clinic (Rockville, Maryland), and McGill University (Montreal, Canada). His books include Citizen Gay: Affections and Rights (il Saggiatore, 2016), Mindscapes: Psyche in the Landscape(Raffaello Cortina, 2017), Diagnosis and Destiny (Einaudi, 2018), I, You, We: Living with Oneself, the Other, Others(DeA Planeta, 2019), Archipelago N (Einaudi, 2021), and Body, Human (Einaudi, 2024). He has also published poetry collections, including Precision in Love’s Confusion (nottetempo, 2012) and Alterations of Rhythm (nottetempo, 2015).