Dialogues with Eugenio Borgna, the Poet of Gentle Psychiatry

Abstract

The article, which is a tribute to Eugenio Borgna’s thought, but above all to the man, always creates a comparison between the Adlerian model and Phenomenological Psychiatry. For Eugenio Borgna it is important within the setting to create a common space in which an emotional flow is created between the one who treats and the one who is treated: a sort of community of destiny in addition to a community of care. Bringing the emotional experiences of the heart into psychotherapy means moving away from the Freudian thesis of emotional neutrality to sail in the troubled and dangerous waters of countertransference. Emotions are understandable not only on the basis of the words spoken, but also on the basis of body language, faces, glances, gestures and voices. The figures of waiting, hope, encouragement understood in the Adlerian sense, are the constitutive elements of every therapeutic relationship. Hope is seen as an existential and psychotherapeutic category that is linked to the Augustinian dimensions of time. The article describes the relationship between Individual Psychology and Phenomenological Psychiatry by Eugenio Borgna, not following a linear chronological order, but the inner flow of consciousness of the writer, condensing what has been explored in the various seminars, all interspersed with phrases, reflections, dialogues, conversations, poems, quotes from books or from the various “interventions”