• E. Minkowski, “La schizofrenia”, Einaudi
• C. Lowney, “Leader per vocazione”, Il Sole 24 Ore
• M. Haddon, “Lo strano caso del cane ucciso a mezzanotte”, Einaudi
• AA. VV., “Ciò che non so dire a parole”, Guida
• Borgna , E., “Saggio di psicopatologia e psichiatria clinica”, in U. Galimberti,“Il corpo”, Milano, 1983.
• K. Wojtila, “Persona e Atto”, Bompiani
• P. Watzlawick, “Istruzioni per rendersi infelici”, Feltrinelli
• C. de Seta, “Il Grand Tour”, Electa Napoli
• H. Carpenter, “Gli inklings”, Jaca Book
• A. Gaston, “Psiche individuo comunità, in “Aquinas”, Anno XL, 1997, Fascicolo 1

Da: Alberto Gaston
“Genealogia dell’Alienazione”
Feltrinelli, Milano, 1987
pagg. 116-119

Usiamo il termine iponoico, mutuato da Kretschmer, in senso strettamente etimologico. Con esso vogliamo indicare una particolare qualità di certi stati psichici, che presentano caratteristiche per certi versi arcaiche e primordiali del funzionamento mentale e che si manifestano come slatentizzazione più o meno brusca di una sorta di struttura preformata, la quale, una volta innescata nella sua operatività, è connotabile in termini di automatismo: un qualcosa, cioè, che sembra provenire dal di sotto del nous, e che, ancora una volta, permette, tramite l’esclusione di tutti i processi riflessivi, di incontrare il mondo affettivo ed emozionale in tutta la sua immediata originarietà. Questi stati sono caratterizzati dai seguenti elementi:

1. si svolgono sempre all’interno di una coscienza alterata (dal restringimento crepuscolare, all’oniroidismo, all’onirismo)
2. l’esperienza psichica presenta profonde analogie con l’esperienza del sogno, sia per quanto riguarda la strutturazione spazio-temporale, sia per quanto riguarda la presenza di meccanismi quali la condensazione, la drammatizzazione, la simbolizzazione, sia, infine, per il tipo di relazione tra l’Io e la sua esperienza
3. l’esperienza reattiva interrompe la continuità temporale del soggetto
4. cessata la reazione, se l’amnesia non è totale, l’Io stabilisce in genere con l’esperienza subita un rapporto analogo a quello che stabilisce con il sogno.

Possiamo distinguere:

3.1. Esperienze acute, intense, a carattere spiccatamente primordiale, che, in genere, sono innescate da situazioni di grave pericolo reale. Esse oscillano tra una polarità di tipo stuporoso, con blocco psicomotorio più o meno totale e una polarità di iperattività motoria incoordinata e incongrua. Per gli stati più gravi che si possono manifestare agli estremi di questi due poli sono state fatte analogie con i comportamenti di certi animali in situazioni di pericolo (Todstellreflex e Bewegungssturm).

Nelle pagine sulla peste, Manzoni descrive in maniera toccante i gradi intermedi di questo tipo di reazioni:

Lungo i due lati che si presentano a chi guardi da quel punto, era tutto un brulichìo; erano ammalati che andavano, in compagnie, al lazzaretto; altri che sedevano o giocavano sulle sponde del fossato che lo costeggia; sia che le forze non fossero loro bastate per condursi fin dentro al ricovero, sia che, usciti di là per disperazione, le forze fossero loro ugualmente mancate per andare più avanti. Altri meschini erravano sbandati, come stupidi, e non pochi fuor di sè affatto; uno stava tutto infervorato a raccontar le sue immaginazioni a un disgraziato che giaceva oppresso dal male; un altro dava nelle smanie; un altro guardava in qua e in là con un visino ridente, come se assistesse a un lieto spettacolo. Ma la specie più strana e più rumorosa d’una tal trista allegrezza, era un cantare alto e continuo, il quale pareva che non venisse fuori da quella miserabile folla, eppure si faceva sentire più che tutte l’altre voci: una canzone contadinesca d’amore gaio e scherzevole, di quelle che chiamavan villanelle; e andando con lo sguardo dietro al suono, per iscoprire chi mai potesse esser contento, in quel tempo, in quel luogo, si vedeva un meschino che, seduto tranquillamente in fondo al fossato, cantava a più non posso, con la testa per aria. (I promessi sposi, cap. XXXIV)

3.2. Esperienze di tipo crepuscolare. Da sempre considerate come reazioni tipiche di personalità con problematiche isteriche. La coscienza si restringe bruscamente, come se l’evento toccasse un elemento profondo, facendo scattare una sorta di altro stato; il vissuto, che sembra nascere da un fondo timico intrecciato di emozione e desiderio, si esteriorizza drammatizzandosi: tutto ciò che non rientra nel tema emotivo appare selettivamente scotomizzato. L’analogia con il sogno è notevole, tanto che Kretschmer ne ha descritto la differenza:

si distingue dal sogno dell’uomo sano per due caratteri: prodotto da emozioni violente ed acute, lo stato crepuscolare presenta una carica affettiva molto più considerevole e si svolge in una maniera più violenta e drammatica, l’angoscia, la disperazione, la collera, il rapimento erotico attraverso le quali esso si esprime si manifestano in una maniera molto più impressionante e sofferta che nel sogno. Inoltre, mentre il sogno è separato dalla psicomotricità da una barriera insormontabile, lo stato crepuscolare comunica con la sfera motoria con una facilità spesso esagerata.

3.3. Esperienze di tipo oniroide. La coscienza è alterata qualitativamente a tutto campo; ne deriva uno stato psichico particolare in cui, accanto e contemporaneamente all’esperienza reale, declinata all’ombra del dubbio, si colloca un’altra forma di esperienza, con caratteri di interiorità, ma con forte coefficiente di realtà; essa si oppone all’esperienza reale, indebolendola nella sua pregnanza percettiva; il vissuto si situa nella dimensione del ?come se?; i significati si sospendono; si perdono i confini tra immagine e realtà ed esse si presentano equivalenti nella loro estesia; l’angoscia può raggiungere limiti inimmaginabili: è la Wahnstimmung, l’umore delirante, la preparazione dell’animo ad accogliere significati nuovi, estranei e misteriosi. Questa reazione espone il soggetto alla possibilità di entrare profondamente nella follia. Per cercare di comprendere più da vicino questo complesso e straordinario stato mentale conviene affidarsi a una magnifica pagina di Gérard de Nerval in Aurelia:

Qui ebbe inizio per me quello che chiamerò il dilagare del sogno nella vita reale. Da quel momento tutto assumeva talvolta un duplice aspetto ? e questo senza mai che il ragionamento mancasse di logica, senza che la memoria smarrisse i più piccoli dettagli di quanto mi accadeva. Soltanto le mie azioni; insensate in apparenza, obbedivano a ciò che, secondo la ragione umana, si chiama illusione…
[...]
Ritrovatomi solo, mi levai a fatica e ripresi il cammino in direzione della stella dalla quale non distoglievo gli occhi. Camminando cantavo un inno misterioso che mi pareva di ricordare come se l’avessi udito in un?altra esistenza e mi colmava di una gioia ineffabile. Nello stesso tempo mi andavo spogliando dei miei vestiti terrestri e li disperdevo intorno a me. La strada sembrava alzarsi senza posa e la stella ingrandirsi. Poi rimasi a braccia tese aspettando il momento in cui l?anima, attratta nel raggio della stella da una forza magnetica, si sarebbe separata dal corpo. Sentii un brivido; il rimpianto della terra e di coloro che amavo mi strinse il cuore e supplicai con tanto ardore lo Spirito che mi attirava che mi parve di ridiscendere in mezzo agli uomini. Una ronda notturna mi circondava; avevo la sensazione di essere grandissimo, e carico di forze elettriche, pronto a rovesciare tutto quanto mi si avvicinasse. C’era qualche cosa di veramente comico nella cura che prendevo di risparmiare la forza e la vita dei soldati che mi avevano raccolto.
[...]
Steso su un letto da campo, mi parve di vedere il cielo svelarsi e aprirsi in mille aspetti di inaudita magnificenza. Il destino dell’Anima liberata sembrava rivelarsi a me quasi a farmi rimpiangere di avere voluto rimettere piede, con tutte le forze dello spirito, sulla terra che stavo lasciando… Cerchi immensi si stavano tracciando nell’infinito, simili alle orbite che forma l’acqua turbata dalla caduta di un corpo; ogni regione, popolata da immagini grandiose, si muoveva e svaniva di volta in volta mentre una divinità, sempre la medesima, gettava lontano sorridendo le maschere furtive delle sue diverse incarnazioni per rifugiarsi alla fine, inafferabile, nei mistici splendori del cielo d’Asia.
[...]
Questo stato si protrasse per parecchi giorni. Fui trasportato in una casa di cura. Molti parenti ed amici vennero a visitarmi senza che io me ne accorgessi.
La sola differenza tra veglia e sonno era che, nella veglia, tutto ai miei occhi si trasfigurava; le persone che mi si avvicinavano sembravano cambiate, gli oggetti erano avvolti in una penombra che ne modificava le forme, e i giochi di luce, le combinazioni dei colori si scomponevano portandomi a seguire una serie costante di impressioni collegate tra loro e di cui il sogno, più svincolato dagli elementi esterni, prolungava la probabilità.

3.4. Esperienze di tipo onirico. La coscienza è alterata quantitativamente; ci sono tutti i segni di un’importante compartecipazione somatica. L’evento, in questo caso, tocca quasi sempre fisicamente il corpo. Non si riesce più a cogliere una differenza tra le due esperienze (quella con carattere di interiorità e quella con carattere di esteriorità); l’immagine e la realtà non sono più né l’una opposta all’altra né l’una equivalente all’altra, ma si presentano frammiste e confuse in una continua e cangiante polimorfia. La continuità temporale è frantumata in una successione di parziali presenti. L’Io si smarrisce totalmente nella confusione. L’affettività occupa il mentale e si tramuta direttamente nell’azione. è l’unica reazione che espone concretamente il soggetto alla possibilità della morte.

© Alberto Gaston

• Traduzione in italiano su MaCity
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Stanford, 14 giugno 2005

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.