La costruzione del nemico, il 15 ottobre a Milano

La costruzione del nemico.

Una lettura psicoanalitica e psicosociale

Ogni società costruisce confini tra un "noi" e un "loro". Talvolta questi confini proteggono l'identità; altre volte, invece, possono trasformarsi in processi di esclusione, ostilità e disumanizzazione. Quando questo accade? Quali meccanismi psicologici portano persone e gruppi a individuare un nemico, a semplificare la complessità, a cercare un capro espiatorio?

In una società caratterizzata da polarizzazione, comunicazione digitale e rapida diffusione delle informazioni, tali dinamiche assumono forme nuove e pongono interrogativi che riguardano anche la professione psicologica. Comprendere come si sviluppano l'odio, la radicalizzazione e i processi di costruzione del nemico significa interrogarsi non solo sui fenomeni sociali contemporanei, ma anche sul ruolo della psicologia nel favorire comprensione, pensiero critico e dialogo.

Il seminario propone una riflessione interdisciplinare che attraversa la psicologia sociale, la psicologia dell'emergenza, la psicoanalisi e gli studi sulla radicalizzazione, affrontando temi quali il contagio dell'ostilità, la costruzione del capro espiatorio, la diffusione dell'odio nel web e le forme contemporanee dell'antisemitismo, considerato nella sua specificità storica e come occasione di riflessione sui processi che alimentano l'odio collettivo.

Evento gratuito, l’iscrizione è obbligatoria.

Programma del Seminario

Ore 9.00 Saluti istituzionali

Il seminario si aprirà con i saluti istituzionali dell’Ordine degli Psicologi della Lombardia,
seguiranno i saluti della Dr.ssa Rosanna Supino, Presidente della Associazione Medica
Ebraica, di Sua Eminenza Reverendissima il Cardinale Matteo Maria Zuppi, Arcivescovo
Metropolita di Bologna e Presidente della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana e di Rav Alfonso
Arbib, Rabbino Capo della Comunità Ebraica di Milano.

Ore 9.30 Modera: Prof. David Meghnagi

● Il contagio ostile: dall’esperimento della “Terza Onda” ai troll nel web.
Prof. Fabio Sbattella, Psicologo e Psicoterapeuta, Responsabile dell'Unità di
Ricerca di Psicologia dell'Emergenza e dell'Assistenza Umanitaria dell'Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.

● Radici e dinamiche dell'antisemitismo contemporaneo.
Dott. Ricardo Rafael Ileyassoff, Psicologo, Psicoterapeuta e Psicoanalista con
cinquant’anni di pratica clinica in Argentina, Francia e Italia. Autore di “Il Re è sempre
nudo- El rey esta siempre desnudo. Un psicoanalista ciego entre la mirada y la voz”,
Letra Viva Libros, Buenos Aires 2020 e in preparazione in Italiano.

● Odio come vincolo reciproco.
Dott.ssa Maria Teresa Fenoglio, Psicologa, ESPRI' (Emergenze Sociali
Psicologiche Ricerca Intervento), autrice di "Psicologia dell’emergenza: scritti ed
esperienze". Kiwi ed. (2024).

Ore 11.20 Intervallo

Ore 11.30 Modera: Prof. Fabio Sbattella

● La polarizzazione, i processi di radicalizzazione e il ruolo terzo delle vittime.

Dott. Luca Guglielminetti, EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalization, EU

Centre of Excellence for Victims of Terrorism, Centro studi “René Girard” politico

presso UniPd, Associazione Leon Battista Alberti.

● Le parole malate e le parole che curano. Strategie educative e culturali contro

le derive del nuovo antisemitismo.

Prof. David Meghnagi, Psicoanalista, Studioso della psicodinamica del pregiudizio.

Presidente del Comitato Accademico Europeo per la Lotta all'Antisemitismo. Ideatore

e direttore del Master internazionale di II livello in didattica della Shoah (Roma Tre).

Editor-in-Chief di Trauma and Memory, European Review of Psychoanalysis and

Social Science. Autore di “Ricomporre l'infranto. L'esperienza dei sopravvissuti alla

Shoah”, Marsilio, Venezia, 2005.

● Come scienza e politica si confondono: il caso Hans Asperger. 

Dott.ssa Donatella Camerino, Psicologa, già Ricercatrice confermata dell'Università

degli Studi di Milano, Medicina Preventiva dei Lavoratori.

Evento gratuito, l’iscrizione è obbligatoria.

Per informazioni e iscrizioni, scrivi a: eventipsicoame@gmail.com

Promosso da AME, Associazione Medica Ebraica

www.ame-italia.eu

Case Study presentation at INDEX

 

It was a great pleasure and an honor to present my a case study on exit work in Turin at the INDEX: an iternational network of practitioner in P/CVE, exit work, or tertiary prevention, that offers a space where expertise is understood, supported, and strengthened and gives access to regular online meetings, case consultations, and -most importantly - a trusted, international community of practitioners dedicated to ethical, evidence‑informed practice.

Nuova edizione del laboratorio: Conflitti. Prevenire, Gestire, Comporre

 

New paper out in the volume dedicated to the COV&R Conference 2023 in Paris

 

A one-of-a-kind overview of the lasting impact of mimetic theory and the extent of its interdisciplinary applications, a century after René Girard's birth.

Bringing together a team of established scholars from different disciplines, this collection assesses how much the theory has developed over Girard's lifetime and beyond. Literary texts and myths are analysed through a mimetic lens, revealing the underlying patterns of rivalry, violence, and sacrifice. Mimetic theory is then applied to real-world phenomena, such as terrorism, social conflict, and ecological crises, demonstrating its relevance in the 21st century.

Each chapter collected here demonstrates mimetic theory's on-going capacity to open up new avenues in philosophy, disability studies, literature and beyond. Girard argued that texts, whether religious, literary, or anthropological reveal fundamental aspects of the world. Inspired by this chapters drawing on a rich selection of works and authors including DH Lawrence, Oedipus Rex, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Houellebecq to reveal innovative uses of his theory.

By illustrating how Girard's ideas are being used by specialists and practitioners across diverse fields, this expansive exploration of mimetic theory tackles timely topics from social media and terrorism prevention to toxic masculinity and conspiracy theories. It is for anyone interested in understanding human behavior and culture from multiple perspectives.

Link to the book

It includes my paper entitled: What Are Girardian Persecution Texts If Not What We Now Call Conspiracy Theories? Their Legacy In Manzoni's Work And In Crime Prevention. 

-> You can reed an extended draft version here on Academia.edu.

Table of Contents

Introduction: B. Chantre

René Girard: Death and Resurrection

Part I Reading texts:

1 Mark Anspach (Independent scholar)

Oedipus and the evolution of the scapegoat hypothesis

2 Ethan Blass (Wartburg College)

Comparative Methodology and Seeing the Victim

3 William Johnsen (Michigan State University)

The “Missing Mother” and the continuing Fecundity of René Girard: Depaternalisation and the Dedomestication of Women in Modern Writing

4 Steve McKenna (Independent scholar)

“An expression significantless and without past”: History, Language, and the Sacrificial Structure of Near-Lynching in Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust

5 Simon de Keukelaere (Catholic archdiocese of Vienna)

Does reading Girard make your life worse? Mimetic desire, literature and the desire for God.

6 Johann Rossouw (University of the Free State – South Africa)

René Girard, Michel Houellebecq and mimetic rivalry in the liberal consumerist society

Part II Reading the World

7 James Alison (Independent scholar)

Humility: a loser's virtue, the route to reality, or both?

8 Barbara Carnevali (École des Hautes Études – Paris)

Deviated Transcendence: Girard's Legacy for Social Philosophy

9 Vincent Delecroix (École des Hautes Études - Paris)

Cain and Abel

10 Elisabetta Brighi (University of Westminster)

Towards a Mimetic and International Political Theory of Terrorism?

11 Chris Fleming (Western Sydney University)

Images, Emotions, and Moral Reality

12 Andreas Wilmes (Pazmany Péter Catholic University)

Violence: Sketch for a History of Ideas

13 Jean-Pierre Dupuy (Standord University)

The looming nuclear war

14 Alan Cork (Independent scholar)

Mimetic Theory and L'Arche

15 Luca Guglielmimetti (European Radicalization Awareness Network)

What Are Girardian Persecution Texts If Not What We Now Call Conspiracy Theories?

Their Legacy In Manzoni's Work And In Crime Prevention

16 Julien Lysenko (Independent scholar)

René Girard, thinker of the Apocalypse

Can Truth triumph over Reality?

17 Susan McElcheran (University of Toronto)

Intellectual Disability Studies and Mimetic Theory

Emerging Connections

18 Vincent Riordan (Psychiatrist, West Cork Health Services)

Applications of Mimetic Theory to Psychiatry

Past, Present, and Potential for the Future

19 Favbrizio Arcuri (University of Bergamo)

The Manosphere: A Case of Mimetic Resentment

20 Ivan Blecic (University of Cagliari) & Paul Dumouchel (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Towards Modelling Mimetic Theory: An Agent-Based Simulation 

Lezione all'Università di Bari

 

Bestie da confessione. Tra memoir e pamphlet

Memoria critica di una psicoterapia, edito da Arshile Booklets, Dicembre 2025. 

ISBN 9788897825579.

...un breve memoriale che diventa un pamphlet applicando con discreta fedeltà gli strumenti foucaultiani e un’esperienza terapeutica contemporanea.

Fromazione psicologi a Jesi: Il trauma psicopolitico

 

Territorio e radicalizzazione: formazione agli psicologi del FVG

 

THE DIPLOMACY OF VICTIMS

 A lesson on the role of the families of Israeli hostages

It is difficult to fully understand who exactly brought about last week’s ceasefire and the start of what we all hope will be a lasting peace process in Gaza and Israel. What has become clear after these two years of bloody conflict is the crisis of traditional diplomacy. During this time, we have witnessed the use of weapons, the so-called intelligence diplomacy at the various meetings in Doha for previous ceasefires, and, following Trump’s return to the White House, a diplomacy focused on business and the reconstruction of Gaza in particular. Yet, since the days immediately after October 7, another actor has moved along the diplomatic path — neither political nor military, neither economic nor state-based, but civilian. These are the people visited last Saturday by Witkoff, the U.S. envoy for the Middle East, and Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, accompanied by his wife Ivanka Trump: the families of those kidnapped on October 7. Witkoff opened the ceremony that, every Saturday evening for the past two years, has taken place in Tel Aviv’s Hostages’ Square, where the Forum of the Hostages’ Families has mobilized thousands of Israeli citizens to demand that the rescue of the hostages be placed above all else. A square that has relentlessly challenged both actors — Hamas and the Netanyahu government — who have played their bloody game at the expense of the hostages’ lives.

Beyond the weekly demonstrations, the Hostages’ Families Forum, with the support of politicians, lawyers, and journalists, has organized a broad campaign of communication and international outreach to raise awareness among policymakers and foreign ministries around the world about the centrality of the hostages in ending the conflict. The Israeli military response — which until just a few days ago seemed to lack any clear time frame or political horizon capable of addressing the Palestinian question — has now found an endpoint, thanks in part to the diplomatic efforts of the Forum and the Israeli citizens who have mobilized alongside it. It is work that might have had an earlier impact if the public opinion of Western countries had paid more attention to this third voice — one that, for two years, has persistently denounced the deception of violence inflicted on both Israeli and Palestinian victims.

Unfortunately, propaganda has prevailed — that war of words that has often made us passive consumers of a flood of information, a mix of truth and falsehood, in which the only freedom granted was to choose which narrative to follow, so that we might find ourselves — within a bubble — together with others on the “right side.” Propaganda’s cognitive trap lies in the power of war to shift from the local ground where weapons resound to every global social context, where partisanship divides schools, universities, political parties, and cultural institutions far removed from the battlefield.

The result is polarization — precisely what Albert Camus observed in 1956 — whereby each opposing group of supporters “chooses among the victims and declares some moving and others obscene.” What happens within the info-sphere is that each political actor victimizes its own fallen, seeking to portray them as “absolute victims,” absolutely moving, just as it portrays its enemy as absolute and the enemy’s victims as absolutely secondary, so secondary as to appear “obscene” placed at the bottom of a value scale that withdraws from them any parity of innocence with one’s own.

My quarter-century of work with the victims of terrorism in Italy and across Europe has taught me to 'follow the families of hostages' as an ethical compass between humanism and politics. As I wrote in my first essay on the social perception of the victims in 2017:

“Kidnapping is a form of attack that does not end in the few minutes of a shooting or bombing, but prolongs the time of terrorist action. In that prolonged moment, one can observe media and political dynamics concerning the victims/hostages and their families, with particular significance arising from the impossibility of knowing the outcome of the abduction. This temporal uncertainty forces political and social actors to take a position on the strategy for managing the hostages — whether to negotiate their release or abandon them — clearly revealing how each side (social or political) perceives the victims: that is, whether the human value of the hostages’ lives outweighs or not the Reason of State and the stability of government.”

 

EU Centre of Expertise for Victims of Terrorism

For 25 years, I’ve worked closely with victims of terrorism, bearing witness to their resilience, pain, and unwavering strength. Their memories are not just personal stories—they are a collective call to honor their experiences and amplify their voices. Victims and survivors play a vital civil and social role, reminding us of the human cost of violence and inspiring us to build a more just and compassionate world. Their courage fuels our commitment to peace and remembrance.

“René Girard Politico” Studies Center at the COV&R2025

 

In the Frame of the of the COV&R 2025 

"Spirituality, religion and the sacred"

Rome Campus, Australian Catholic University

June 4-7, 2025

Panel: “René Girard Politico” Studies Center

Guglielminetti, Ferronato, Fornari & Barberi

University of Padua

This panel aims to present the Studies Center “René Girard Politico”, established at the University of Padua’s Department of Political Science, Law, and International Studies. The session will provide an overview of the center’s mission and activities since its founding in 2021, as well as outline its future directions. The “René Girard Politico” Studies Center serves as a hub for scholars interested in exploring and testing the potential of collaborative initiatives centered on Girard’s thought. The focus is especially on the political dimensions of his mimetic and victimary theory, approached through both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses.

While the center’s core perspective is grounded in the history of political thought, philosophy, political science, it also welcomes contributions from comparative literature, international relations, anthropology, theology—viewed both in their expressive and broadly “political” dimensions.

In recent years, the Centre promoted knowledge of Girard’s paradigm by organising conferences and lecture series that explored the relationships between Girard and Machiavelli, Hobbes, Schmitt. In 2024, the conference “Reading Achever Clausewitz: War and the End of History in René Girard” brought together scholars from different backgrounds, both experts on Girard and avid readers new to the Girardian paradigm.

Identità culturale e prevenzione della radicalizzazione: un libro a Trieste

 

Guerra Psicologica: un video

Lavoro di gruppo degli studenti di psicologia dell emergenza dell'Università Cattolica di Milano. 

Guerra Psicologica: Il Potere Nascosto delle Parole

Convegno internazionale sull'ultima grande opera girardiana

Per seguire la diretta in streaming : https://unipd.zoom.us/j/84383251622?pwd=Rjhg3yOnCykZXoVX8GlYuhFZypUtZF.1#success

Abstract dell'intervento "Democratizzazione della violenza politica e liberazione della vittima".

L'evoluzione della violenza dalle guerre napoleoniche al terrorismo contemporaneo riflette forse una 'democratizzazione della violenza' politica (se la guerra è politica con altri mezzi, allora la politica democratica evolve in guerra democratica), in cui è riduttivo focalizzarsi solo su attori non statali (i rivoluzionali o i terroristi), nuove tecnologie, fine della guerra come istituzione, come fanno René Girard, Carl von Clausewitz, e anche Carl Schmitt. L'evoluzione dei conflitti comporta infatti che ogni cittadino possa diventare perpetratore o vittima di atti di violenza politica più o meno legittimi. Da porre in evidenza è come la vittimologia (Jan van Dijk, 2009)  abbia confermato la dimensione sacra della violenza e il ruolo del Cristianesimo presenti nel paradigma di Girard. Ma negli ultimi decenni il ruolo della vittima è stato sottoposta a critica dalle stesse vittime (del terrorismo) che hanno reclamato il diritto di sottrarsi dal ruolo religioso del capro espiatorio tra i due attori in conflitto, tipicamente stato e attore non statale, o di essere politicamente strumentalizzati dallo stato per le sue politiche di antiterrorismo o di memorializzazione dei conflitti con il terrorismo. Esemplare è il ruolo del comitato dei familiari dei rapiti del 7 ottobre, che nel contesto di un conflitto che sembra spingere all'estremo l'escalation bellica della risposta israeliana all'aggressione di Hamas, si pongono come attori politici terzi e con un'autonoma iniziativa diplomatica finalizzata a 'risparmiare sangue' (concetto di Anna Bravo, 2013).

Così, la vittima che si libera dall’etichetta di vittima, non è solo quella alle prese dal dilemma tra farsi milite che si vendica o buon cristiano che deve perdonare il perpetratore. Proprio come suggerisce Girard, in Achever Clausewitz, si deve stare nel conflitto svolgendo parimenti un ruolo di riconciliazione. Un ruolo che in ultima analisi ricorda a tutti l'umanità del nemico. Le vittime sono forse quelle che meglio possono interpretare tale ruolo da antieroi titolati a richiedere di risparmiare sangue?