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Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

1 
(2021) 

1-2

Pierpaolo Limone
Editorial 7

First Section

Slavoj Žižek
The Vagaries of the Superego 13

Ricardo Espinoza Lolas
Nature and Pandemic 33

Paolo Ponzio
Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: 47 
Notes on the Self and the You

Daniela Savino
“Liquid” Identity and Otherness in the Phenomenon 61 
of Religious Alienation: The Loss of Critical Thinking 
and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion

Francesca R. Recchia Luciani
The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact 85 
in the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy

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Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Martina Rossi
Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Teaching: 103 
Future Perspectives

Marco Ceccarelli
A Historical Account on Italian Mechanism Models 115

Giusi Antonia Toto - Alessia Scarinci
Cyberfeminism: A Relationship between Cyberspace, 135 
Technology, and the Internet

Luigi Traetta - Federica Doronzo
Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson not to Be Forgotten 153

Federica Doronzo - Gianvito Calabrese
Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection 163 
between Neuropsychology and Mathematics

Giuliana Nardacchione - Guendalina Peconio
Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding Principle for Inclusive Teaching 181

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“Liquid” Identity and Otherness 
in the Phenomenon of Religious 
Alienation: The Loss of Critical 
Thinking and the “Barter” of the Self 
in the System of Communion
Daniela Savino
Università degli Studi di Bari (Italy)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-savi
annadaniela.savino@uniba.it

Abstract

The “interior space” (Guardini, 1997) is inevitably influenced by the “external space”, 
which can be the mother, the inter-personal relationships, the local community with 
all its particular declinations (community of peers, scholastic, academic, working, etc.) 
or society in general; yet the educational relationship (Kanitsa & Mariani, 2017), in 
particular in the parental and religious sphere, has the main function of “forming” the 
pupil, as a child or adult, student, or faithful; in the same way, also the whole society in 
which one is immersed is understood as an “external environment” which continuously 
influences the formation of an individual. Indeed, for the purposes of this analysis, 
is interesting to note what Marcuse writes about the constitution of the “conceptual 
paradigm” of a society: he warns of the fact that when a society is imbued with a certain 
ideology, it seems that it is “inhabited” by a paradox; since “Ideologies in particular 
tend to remain entangled in the dilemmas of the paradox, especially if their metaphysics 
is anti-metaphysics” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189). What intervenes as a matrix and “inter-
feres” in the educational process, and so what constitutes the original source from which 
an education springs out and which, therefore, creates an “educational interference” 
(Demetrio, 2020, p. 5), is undoubtedly multiple and multi factorial, not reducible 
to a single root. Precisely for this reason, in this investigation, various paradigmatic 
educational sources will be taken in consideration, also crossing the Global and Digital 
(Byung-Chul Han, 2015) dimensions typical of our age, since they act as a “stimulus” 
and so they are understood as “educating forces”. These “forces” appear to be marked, 

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each internally, by a paradoxical logic: they could be realized, indeed, not only as 
“educational forces” but also as “alienating forces”. It seems that we face a “power” then, 
which, taking the place of the authentic and beneficial “religious” or parental “care”, 
“sets” a new bond of Attachment (Bowlby, 1972, 1975, 1983), capable of emulating 
some significant aspects of care or relationship, infusing instead, discomfort, pain and, 
ultimately, alienation. The aim of this study is, therefore, to thoroughly investigate 
this “inner space of consciousness” (Guardini, 2002, p. 41), when happens that it is 
“violated”, voluntarily or unconsciously, by those who invade it, giving to an indi-
vidual, at the same time, identity and the alienation of the identity. 

Keywords: attachment; educational relationship; identity; internal working models; 
paradigm; religious alienation.

Introduction

What happens to your own identity when it begins to be assimilated to 
the identity of another, no longer coinciding with your own, original, 
authentic Self?

How could happen that you start thinking as “another” person 
thinks? Without being the master of your own thoughts anymore? How 
could happen that you begin to desire in a different way than you did?

John Henry Newman suggests a method for this study, a philosoph-
ical-phenomenological one on one hand, and a pedagogical purpose on 
the other hand; this method always takes in consideration the construct 
of “system”: speaking of identity, Newman proposes a “philosophy of the 
person” and in the same way as he does, I want to analyze the phenom-
enon of “alienation” as it occurs in the context of religious communities; 
a community of this sort proposes a “lifestyle” in “communion”, that is, a 
community life governed by an “ideal” or “rules” that indicate or educate 
to a precise way of life and I carry out this investigation by tracing “every 
novelty of our conscience to what we already know, adapting and harmo-
nizing it in a network of relationships” that Newman calls “system”: in 
fact that philosophy, rather than a super-science with a defined episte-
mological status, deals with the relations among knowledge, constituting 
rather a “general attitude” of thought and a critical faculty that “acts and 
according to a spirit of unity, through comparing, adapting, connecting, 
arranging, classifying, synthesizing” (Newman, 2016, p. 13) and in 
this way, this “architectural science recognizes the whole in every part” 
(Newman, 2016, p. 13).

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By sharing and following this methodological approach, I believe I 
can, therefore, establish a connection and a parallelism between the two 
privileged “places” where education is put in action; places where, para-
doxically, alienation can take the over the development of identity in an 
authentic sense: the family and the religious community. 

A common thread connects these spaces and calls the person who 
seems to be “trapped”: dysfunctional relationships in the family or in 
the religious community can cause the person to “lose” his identity by 
“replacing” it with that of the alienating parent or religious leader. 

The educational relationship (Kanitsa & Mariani, 2017), in 
particular in the parental and religious sphere, has the main function of 
“forming” the pupil, as a child or adult, student, or faithful; in the same 
way, also the whole society in which one is immersed, the community, 
is understood as an “external environment” which influences the forma-
tion of an individual, continuously: the “interior space” (Guardini, 2002) 
of Guardinian memory is inevitably influenced by the “external space”, 
be it the mother, inter-personal relationships, the local community with 
all its particular declinations (community of peers, scholastic, academic, 
working, etc.) or society in general. For the purposes of our analysis, in 
fact, it is interesting to note what Marcuse writes about the constitution 
of the “conceptual paradigm” of a society: he warns of the fact that when 
a society is imbued with a certain ideology, it seems that it is “inhabited” 
by a paradox: since “Ideologies in particular tend to remain entangled 
in the dilemmas of the paradox, especially if their metaphysics is anti-
metaphysics” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189). What intervenes as a matrix and 
“interferes” in the educational process, and so what constitutes the original 
source from which an education springs out and which, therefore, creates 
“educational interference” (Demetrio, 2020, p. 5) by exerting an influ-
ence on man, is undoubtedly multiple and multi factorial, not reducible 
to a single root. 

Precisely for this reason, in this investigation, various paradigmatic 
educational sources will be met, which, also crossing the Global and Digital 
dimensions typical of our age and of our society, act as a “stimulus”; they 
are “cause” of those aspects of human formation which, I believe, while 
presenting themselves as “educating forces” they could be also realized as 
“alienating forces”: they appear to be marked, each internally, by a para-
doxical logic. 

The intent of this study is, therefore, to thoroughly investigate this 
“inner space of consciousness” (Guardini, 2002, p. 41), when happens that 
it is “violated”, voluntarily or unconsciously, by those who invade it and by 
those who “grant” such an invasion. 

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We face a “power” which, taking the place of the authentic and 
beneficial “religious” or parental “care”, “sets” a new bond of Attachment 
(Bowlby, 1972, 1975, 1983), capable of emulating some significant care or 
relationship, infusing in its stead, discomfort, pain and, ultimately, aliena-
tion. 

1. “The ‘I’ of mind”: representation of the Self, 
of the other and formation of the “vision 
of the world” in the Theory of Attachment 

Craig Childress (Mazzola, 2016; Montecchi, 2016) addressing the 
phenomenon of parental alienation, since it seems to us that it presents 
the same “method” that causes the alienation of the Self in the religious 
sphere, refers to the Theory of Attachment: identity individual and 
personal is presented as a construct on which multidisciplinary studies 
(Martini, 2020) continue to develop their research and interpretation. 
Having said this, beyond any definition that can be followed according 
to the different disciplinary approaches, the fact that it is built “first of 
all” starting from the early relationship that each new born has with the 
main reference figure, called, in fact, “figure of Attachment” (Bowlby, 
1972, 1975). This primary and original relationship, with one’s mother or 
caregiver, traces the initium not only of the feeling of the Self but also of 
the archetypal structures through which relations with the Other and in 
general the “feeling of the world” will be conceived and “framed” as what 
is called Weltanshaaung. 

John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment together with the subsequent 
researches and evolutions it inspired, especially over the last thirty years, 
could intertwine some aspects which seem to be linked to the Deweyan 
“Philosophy of the mind” (Filograsso & Travaglini, 2004), in particular 
with regard to the structure and dynamics of the “Internal Working 
Models”: they have a sort of “transcendental” character, therefore they have 
an “a priori” structure that needs to be solicited from outside in order to 
be activated. 

The Internal Working Models (IWM) also regulate, in a cognitive-
emotional-affective and behavioral intertwining, the different areas of the 
“mental” and affectivity, therefore the ability to interweave relationships. 

The Attachment System, in fact, is a system that “manages” and regu-
lates all aspects relating to love and emotional bonds, such as parent-child 
relationships and sentimental relationships: this “organization” can take 
place thanks to the mediation of “mental structures” or saying it better 

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“representations” which are formed and transmitted also in an inter and 
trans-generational way from the caregiver to the child, since the early-years 
care relationship (Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 2013). 

During the relationship with the caregiver and throughout the course 
of life, in the development phase and beyond, together with the activation 
of the Attachment System, in all its structures and variables, “the inter-
nalized patterns of the representations of relationships are also activated. 
(IWM or schemes) contained in the attachment system” (Camerini, Pingi-
tore, & Lopez, 2016). 

There is, therefore, this adaptive and organizational capacity of the 
mind in its paradigmatic structures that is formed on the basis of the 
early relationship with the caregiver, which seems to recall the structure 
of Jung’s “archetypes” (Montecchi, 2016, p. 36): this structure seeks a sort 
of logical coherence between conceptions, that are already possessed, and 
the new ones the person will necessarily assume gradually throughout his/
her life. 

Any change that occurs in the environment or in the caregiver itself 
will produce “adjustments and adaptations” (Santelli Beccegato, 1998, 
p. 40) to the archetypal structure formed at the early age and during the 
age of development. “The attention therefore turns to the evolutionary 
process and qualitative changes of the organization. […] the self finds its 
roots in the organization and relationship of the dyadic system” and in this 
context the representations of the Self and the Other “are formed within 
the relational matrix thanks to the construction of interactive schemes, of 
a series of adaptive expectations and behaviors that form the backbone of 
the Internal Working Models that the child is building” (Montecchi, 2016, 
p. 36). 

On the same nature of Bowlby’s investigations, Mary Ainsworth 
(Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 2013, p. 63) conducted her research: the 
results of the Strange situation brought further clarity on the definition 
of the nature and structure of IWMs; Bowlby himself referred to Kenneth 
Craik (Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 2013, p. 68) when, with regard to the 
IWMs, he believed that their structure was such as to allow children “to 
adapt to changes in the environmental context by expanding the behav-
ioral repertoire at their disposal” (Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 2013, p. 68) 
and underlining their inner dynamic, he highlighted that “the intrinsically 
relational character of the processes underlying behavior. The term Model 
indicates in fact that the structure of representation is relational and that 
it originates from the relationship with the real world, while the Operative 
term emphasizes the dynamic quality of the Models” (Ortu, Pazzagli, & 
Williams, 2013, p. 68). 

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What seems to be clear, therefore, is that starting from the early dyadic 
relationship, from the “interactive dance” (Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 
2013, p. 61) of mother and child and based on the responsiveness and 
sensitivity of the mother towards the “emotional needs” of the child, 
models and structures as “representational” of the Self, the Other and the 
World are built in the “mind”; they also constitute a “general conceptual 
horizon” in which to understand the general frame of the Self, the Other 
and the World. They also help the individual to predict and understand 
his/her environment, promoting behaviors that guarantee survival, such 
as “maintaining proximity to another clearly identified person, deemed 
capable of facing the world adequately” (Bowlby, 1983, p. 25) and they are 
responsible of the “sense of security” for the individual. 

Of the same opinion and, in particular, on the genesis of the construc-
tion of the broader “horizon of meaning” and conceptual paradigm that is 
formed within the early relationship with the caregiver, Bretherton and 
Munholland (Breterthon & Munholland, 1999) believe that the IWMs 
define Self-Other representations not only in the relationship with the 
“figure of attachment” but above all in the entire “cognitive map” of the 
world: “the subject constructs an internal map of the external world” that is 
a conception of the Self, the World and Others, as said and which could be 
called, according to a Marcusian expression, a “Given Paradigm” (Marcuse, 
1999, p. 188). 

This “coherence” of the detail with the general structure is crucial 
since in fact

Once constructed, the mental representations of oneself in relation to others 
tend to be relatively stable over time, thus allowing forecasts of future evolu-
tion, and to self-perpetuate, since each person is led to recreate congruent 
experiences with their own relational history. (Marcuse, 1999, p. 110)

Each Model, therefore, acts as a “filter” for future relational experiences 
and will select, unconsciously, relationships that will confirm the para-
digm or the conceptual reference in which the same models were formed; 
from this, consequently, arises the character of self-perpetuation of the 
Models. 

The Models, then, are stable and consistent, but adaptive and flexible 
at the same time; to use a metaphor found within the jurisprudential field, 
it seems is possible to understand them as basic “Constitutional Princi-
ples” of one’s Weltanshauung: that is, principles we can refere that create a 
stable “hermeneutic horizon” for the individual, which are difficult to be 
modified but at the same time not totally “immune” to change even up 
to subversion: one’s Vision of the World, therefore, becomes modifiable 

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should the external environment require it for the purpose of its conserva-
tion. 

Understood as a Paradigm, then, the Model somehow prejudices the 
future destiny of the individual as it tends to seek and recreate the condi-
tions of experience of the “given” reality; the same is for a relationship that 
needs to be coherent with the structure of the Model that has been being 
formed itself. 

Intimately linked with mental representations, the Models then create 
“the internal onto-gnoseological environment” within which a total vision 
of the world, of the self and of the other is possible since it must necessarily 
respect an internal logical coherence functional to its own ecology: in this 
regard, it is interesting to note the correlation between autobiographical 
narrative and implicit memory that springs from the representations of the 
Internal Models; this is in fact the observation that Siegel (Siegel, 2001) 
adds to what has been analyzed so far. In fact, the author believes that the 
system of implicit memory, structured by virtue of the Models, is capable 
of extrapolating and memorizing complex rules that also govern co-varia-
tions; they are self-perpetuating in the interpretation of subsequent experi-
ences since they seek that logical coherence with past experiences, as said. 

Moreover, the very modality of the individual to organize his own 
experiences directly influences the mind’s ability to integrate the “new” 
experiences: implicit and explicit experiences make themselves respon-
sible and, at the same time, “builders” of the same personal identity that 
it is “continuously” shaped by the Models. It could then be argued that 
the Models influence memories and autobiographical narratives, both 
as a conscious experience and as an unconscious experience: in fact, 
Schacter (Schacter & Mennella, 2001) is of this opinion and argues that 
auto-biographical stories provide narrative continuity between past and 
future, configuring themselves as a set of memories that “continuously” 
form the core of the personality. It can therefore be argued that, in turn, 
the Internal Working Models, following precisely this logic, are influ-
enced by an external “given” paradigm, both at the level of personal and 
family education, and at the level of society: elements that make up the 
“riverbed” in which the single individual is formed “while” his Models are 
configured. 

One could therefore believe that it is exactly this self-preservation 
process that can be interrupted, at a certain point, intercepted and subverted 
by an “Other”: what does allow this “subversion” capable of directing the 
paradigm differently? what does allow the opening of a “new conceptual 
horizon” recognized as “truer”, worthy, therefore, capable to modify and 
replace the previous one?

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2. From the early care relationship to the “given 
paradigm”: the “interference” in the Attachment 
System

It is not only the early dyadic relationship to form the Internal Working 
Models and Representations that create Identity and Vision of the world: 
as a testing ground let us take the “desire”, which “behaves” exactly like a 
Model, and it appears to us “conditioned” not just by the attachment rela-
tionship with the caregiver but also by the “given paradigm”, in which the 
same caregiver is formed, receiving himself/herself a continuous education. 

Indeed, it is Herbert Marcuse’s analysis (Marcuse, 1999) to elicit 
some reflections that somehow create a conceptual “bridge” between the 
conception of the formation of representations, due to the dyadic relation-
ship with the caregiver, and the alteration or interference that an “external 
paradigm” may have. 

The parallelism between the Marcusian socio-economic conception 
“of man in relation to society” and that of the Internal Working Models of 
the Attachment Theory theorized by Bowlby “of a child in relation to the 
mother”, seems evident to us: on one hand, we would like to investigate 
the modality in which a “conceptual paradigm” is formed, as said, at the 
level of “philosophy of mind” in the Deweyan sense; on the other hand, 
we also want to deepen what is the process, through which the identity can 
be altered, reaching the point of alienation, if it “impacts” another “given 
paradigm” and another Weltanschauung. 

The “paradigm shift” which we are witnessing today specifically 
concerns the philosophical-economic horizon of neoliberalism, the digital 
revolution and globalization: all these are the vectors within which to 
understand and define the conceptual horizon, which properly generates 
the general conceptions humankind can think of in our present era. 

Marcuse’s “individual” is immersed in an empirical “a priori” of a given 
conceptual horizon, in a certain sense, “taken for granted”: “By virtue of de 
facto repression, the world as it is experienced is the result of a restricted 
experience, and the positivist clearing of the mind brings the mind into 
alignment with the restricted experience” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189).

As said, we seem to be able to establish a comparison between this 
conception of Marcuse and the conceptual focus of Bowlby’s theory: in 
the “care relationship” the child’s innate abilities can find expression and 
development if the caregiver is emotionally available since 

The presence of an emotionally available figure constitutes the only possible 
context for the realization of innate programs and […] today we tend to see 
development in terms of a continuous reorganization of innate abilities and 

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emotions in which the previous levels of organization are integrated into 
more complex and new levels. (Ortu, Pazzagli, & Williams, 2013, p. 104)

We believe we can put forward the hypothesis that Identity and Desire are 
structurally formed and conditioned, in principle by the child’s relation-
ship with the caregiver at an early age, and subsequently, during adoles-
cence and adulthood, when it “impacts” society, or in Marcusian terms, the 
“given paradigm”: whether it belongs to the socio-economic environment 
in which one is immersed, and, if impacted, belongs to the religious envi-
ronment, in some way “integrates”, modifies or replaces the “Attachment 
System” in its entirety, not just one or some conception. 

This phenomenon can occur if the “source” of that new paradigm “is 
emotionally available” or available in an improved way with respect to the 
caregiver. 

The research, especially by Peter Fonagy (Allen & Fonagy, 2006) has 
demonstrated the interconnection between the security of attachment and 
the ability to mentalize: representation, or mentalization, consists in the 
ability to “imagine”, to “feel” the whole one’s own and one’s own mental 
states. In addition, one can also feel and understand other’s mental states 
and so this capacity is the basis of reflective and interpersonal competences; 
it is, in fact, only by virtue of the personal ability to “feel”, to “listen to 
oneself ” in one’s own needs that one can open up to those of others. This 
can be learned, assumed as a capacity, thanks to “mirroring”, offered in 
interpersonal interaction, by the “care figure” when it shows itself to be 
“sufficiently good” (Lingiardi & Gazzillo, 2014): 

This mentalizing representational system would offer immense evolutionary 
advantages for survival because it would allow individuals to understand, 
interpret and predict their own and others’ behavior. As such it constitutes 
the cornerstone of social intelligence. (Lingiardi & Gazzillo, 2014, p. 132)

The “responses, or answers” of the caregiver are in the womb of the educa-
tional relationship, at the heart of the interpersonal interaction which allows 
mentalization and affective regulation; this is is configured as an “emotion-
ally responsive social environment”: the emotionally connoted and socalled 
“highly contingent” facial expressions allow the child “to discover the 
mental self in the social world” (Lingiardi & Gazzillo, 2014, p. 133).

Somehow, it seems clear to us that, where responsive “emotional gaps” 
have formed on the part of the caregiver, probably, “the new paradigm”, 
whether it comes from a person, society or the religious environment 
mentioned here, may be able to “activate” the Attachment System that has 
shown itself to be “incomplete”: and it is in this sense, therefore, that we can 
better understand what we mean when we assimilate the attachment figure 

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to the Marcusian matrix or “paradigm”: it is in this way that we assume that 
happens the “Other” can easily fill this gap “of Attachment” to replace it. 

According to Marcuse, in fact, the cornerstones of a society, of its 
socio-economic organization above all, are based on a philosophical-meta-
physical conception, which is in a certain sense preliminary, and acts as a 
theoretical matrix, as a conceptual framework, for everything that can be 
organized as a social practice in every sphere and sector of society (Marcuse, 
1999, p. 189).

Compared to the historical period mentioned by the author, the 
positivist philosophy “erects for its use a self-sufficient world, closed and 
well protected against the entry of external disturbing factors” and it is 
easy to understand how, without reporting all the philosophical-historical-
economic evolution here indicated by the author, it acts as a paradigm; 
first of all, this occurs at the level of the very possibility of “creating and 
conceiving” concepts that can be thought of by man: “The transforma-
tion of critical thinking into positive thinking takes place above all in the 
therapeutic treatment of universal concepts” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189); In 
the Marcusian conception and analysis an assumption emerges, which we 
think is fundamental: when a conceptual horizon is given, being on the 
same wavelength, this is transformed for man into a real total Weltans-
hauung, within which is possible to conceive all aspects of the human life; 
consequently is possible to giving life and shape, based on its theoretical 
basis, to the various socio-economic sectors of a society, for which this 
conceptual horizon “once accepted, it constitutes an empirical a priori that 
cannot be transcended” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189). 

It is interesting to note that precisely by virtue of the influence exer-
cised by the paradigm, the empirical “a priori” given, even in its accept-
ance, in any case “violates” the empirical itself as what speaks “in it” is the 
“abstract mutilated individual who experiences and expresses only what is 
given to it, which affects only the facts and not the factors, whose behavior 
is one-dimensional and manipulated” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 189): it seems 
to us that we can identify in this nature of the paradigm the root of any 
“prejudice” generally understood. 

We have seen how, what applies to the structural ontological order of 
man in society, by virtue of the intimate and innate connection that exists 
between the “I” and the “Us”, between Identity and Otherness, applies 
primarily and first of all to man as an individual: we now want to turn and 
analyze, on the basis of what has been said so far, the implications of the 
phenomenon of vocation in the religious sphere with the constitution of 
the paradigm that interferes in the system of what we have called “incom-
plete” attachment. 

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3. The concept of “vocation”: the irruption 
of the new paradigm and the new Weltanshaaung

Peter Fonagy, speaking of mentalization (Fongay & Target, 2001) refers 
precisely to the early interpersonal experience that a child has with the 
adult: in the literature there are several references to the ability to mentalize 
previously done before Fonagy but it is with his work that the intrapsychic 
component is best configured, as much as that of the intrapersonal compo-
nent of the mentalization itself:

The psychological self can therefore develop through the perception of the 
fact that another person thinks of us as having mental states. Parents who 
cannot reflect comprehensively on the child’s internal experience, and there-
fore respond accordingly, deprive him of a nuclear psychological experience, 
necessary to build a sense of vital self. (Lingiardi & Gazzillo, 2014, p. 132)

Mentalization, the ability to reflect on one’s mental states, to recognize 
them, and the very ability of reflexivity, which is discovered in the narra-
tive capacity, somehow coincides with “a vital sense of self”: if the caregiver 
has unfortunately created “responsive emotional voids” what is penalized is 
above all the ability to mentalize, the reflexivity as such. This will lead to 
a confused sense of the Self that will not be able to structure, develop and 
elaborate nor a “positive and real thought” of oneself and others, as seen 
in Insecure Attachment, nor, consequently, any kind of “critical thinking” 
(Tani, 2007).

The phenomenon of the religious vocation, as belonging to the inner 
sphere of conscience, probably fits and “nestles” in this “emotional void” 
caused by the inadequate responsiveness of the caregiver during the early 
relationship: the condition of total dependence and the need for survival 
manifest themselves first of all in the search for affective closeness, corre-
spondence, reflection and confirmation of the Self, which is realized, as we 
have seen, in the Attachment System. 

If the internal experience is “empty” due to the “not happened” 
mirroring, probably, one will look for a “fullness” and a sort of a “full-
fillment” throughout his/her life: the need to be confirmed in one’s own 
identity, the emotional-affective needs first and foremost correspond to the 
survival of the unitary sense of the Self, of that “vital sense of the Self ” we 
have mentioned. 

It does not seem bold to us to believe that a “vocation”, while retaining 
the purely “religious” sphere of transcendence in which we do not enter 
here, can be “hosted” more easily by those consciences that in some way 
are “wounded” by the gaps left by an Insecure Attachment; because of its 

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marked character of “filling” or “correspondence” for the affective level and 
for the identity, the phenomenon of vocation corresponds, phenomeno-
logically, simultaneously to a “call”, on the one hand, and to a “Advent” of 
one Good from the other hand. 

Romano Guardini, in fact, affirms that “every” vocation has some-
thing to do with “The Good”, the Good as it is conceived for the Self, 
and which grows in the interior space: “[…] this interior space exists” he 
affirms and “includes a second concept: the depth” (Guardini, 1967, p. 15). 
Speaking of the interior dimension and depth we speak of concepts linked 
to the “voice of conscience”, which resounds in the “personal conscience”. 

Depth means a special dimension, different from quantity or extension […] 
it is a stratification towards the interior and precisely in such a way that 
the more internal the layers become, the more precious they become ours, 
delicate, living. (Guardini, 1967, p. 15)

Gathering in its interior space, therefore, the Self discovers its depth, its face, 
its identity; and this identity has a voice that speaks, the voice of conscience 
that has a precise, clear content, identifiable with the Good. The Good 
“beats to the conscience” and speaks to it; the Good, while presenting itself 
to consciousness as an infinite ideal totality (unendlicher Inbegriff ), presents 
itself to it from time to time in the situation; “The Good is the Good” Guar-
dini says and it cannot be broken down into simpler elements, it cannot be 
identified with a precise, single content; doing this would only result in a 
single manifestation of the good; but it is at the same time an ideal totality 
and still a specific content; it is therefore not an abstract idea, not a simple 
“law”, but something “spiritually alive” (Guardini, 1967, p. 14). 

It is necessary to dwell on the concept of good as it is intimately 
linked not only to that of conscience:

conscience is something more than the simple “knowing” something: it 
means having something within oneself, […] something intimate, […] 
something that is related to what the ancient concept of the “bottom of the 
soul”, of “scintilla animae” expresses. (Guardini, 1967, p. 14)

Consciousness is then that organ that “knows” and “feels” the good, it is 
that organ “through which I respond to good and become aware of this” 
(Guardini, 1967, p. 14): then every identity possesses in itself this precious, 
universal and absolutely particular at the same time, this capacity, this 
organ, capable of grasping the good in its evident existence. 

The passage from the gnoseological to the ethical-moral level takes 
the form of a sort of logical consequence; the making of the good, which 
“beats” the conscience and wants to be understood and implemented, 
shows itself as a richness, a value that requires form not only content: 

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“good therefore is equivalent to a real creation; it is not a simple execution 
of an order but a creative actuation of something that is not yet” (Guardini, 
1967, p. 18). 

The first good that man/woman, in a certain sense, creates and must 
create for him/herself is the response to the call to his/her own existence; the 
vocation is part of the order of realization of this fundamental call. Every 
man/woman “hears” the call to self-realization, which can only consist in 
the realization of a good for him/herself, for his/her own life above all. But 
this, somehow, needs to be learned, needs an example, a guide. Here the 
Attachment Theory reveals its essential and fundamental importance for 
the sense of existential fulfillment, task and destiny of humankind in every 
age. It is the mother, or in general, the caregiver, who transmits the sense of 
self-fulfillment, with the care and love she/he offers; it is above all with this 
recognition of the essential emotional-affective needs of the child that is 
transmitted the sense of the Self. And this happens through the “reflection 
and correspondence” but also with the example of the caregiver’s life.

When this care is non sufficient and creates “emotional voids”, the 
vocation, placing itself as a “promise” of that Good that in some way has 
not been received, or has been received in an inadequate way, penetrates 
into the depth of consciousness by “giving” a sense of emotional-affective 
“fullness” together with the recognition that is needed. 

Trying to take a further step, we want to underline also the “histor-
ical” character of the vocation: it is never abstract, detached from a precise 
historical context; the figure of Christ himself is historically located and 
many studies of a philosophical-theological nature, that could not be 
enumerated here due to their enormous vastness in time and space, traces 
it as a cornerstone and distinctive element of Christian doctrine: compared 
to other doctrines, it is this precisely historicity of the advent that charac-
terizes the Christian announcement. 

Indeed, the Christian proclamation, which preludes and permits 
vocation, is always located in time and space and finds both body and 
hospitality in the community of the faithful people: an example for all 
of this Christian “method” is the conversion of Augustine of Hippo, also 
documented in a vast multiplicity of philosophical-theological works, in 
which the “Tolle lege” (Guardini, 1967) represents the novelty under the 
theoretical aspect, that is the beginning of the change of the conceptual 
paradigms and of the total vision of the world; while the Community 
of Cassiciaco, founded by him, embodies the ethical novelty under the 
historical-existential aspect (Agostino d’Ippona, 2000). 

The historicity and being historically “situated” of the phenomenon of 
vocation are well documented in the well-known trilogy by Luigi Giussani:

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The Mistery makes itself known only by revealing itself, taking the initiative 
to place itself as a factor of human experience, how and when it wants. The 
human reason, in fact, awaits this revelation but it cannot make it happen. 
(Giussani, 1988b, p. VII)

As Augustine “found” the Church, understood as the “Body of Christ”, in 
any case he founded the community of Cassiciaco as a particular need for 
fraternal life to lead life in communion, yet today vocations are accepted 
because they “are born” in the current stream of the Church; it also happens 
today that they are “raised up” precisely in the bosom of the various particular 
ecclesial communities, which belong, despite the diversity of charisms, to 
the same womb, to the same unique Church, called, precisely, “Mother”. 

The phenomenology of the vocation first occurs in the interiority of 
the conscience, then translates in the joining a community and following 
people immersed in a concrete “Christian environment”, made up of a 
visible human reality; one might ask: 

But today, after two thousand years, how is it possible to achieve certainty 
about the fact of Christ? How does it make sense today to adhere to the 
Christian claim? This identifies the heart of what is historically called the 
Church, that socially identifiable phenomenon that appears in history as the 
continuation of the event of Christ. (Giussani, 1990, p. IX)

According to Giussani, the vocation, therefore, seems to trace the existen-
tial story of Christ and his first apostles on a methodological level in fact

In a certain historical moment a man, Jesus of Nazareth, not only revealed 
the mystery of God, but he identified himself with it. How this event began 
to attract the attention of men; how Jesus created a clear conviction in those 
who began to follow him; how he communicated the mystery of his person, 
how he confirmed his unveiling with a new and perfect intelligence of 
human life. (Giussani, 1988b, p. IX)

The content of all this constitutes the core of the author’s intuitions 
expressed in the second volume of the trilogy mentioned; while the joining 
to the religious community, that is, the phenomenology of “the encounter 
with the human reality in which he is present” (Giussani, 1988b, p. IX) is 
documented in the third volume. 

It seems, then, that by hearing and responding to the call of Good, 
of the full realization of the Self, man joins at the same time a commu-
nity of believers, the faithful people, who share the same event that has 
erupted into conscience and into life, “modifying”, “replacing and ulti-
mately converting” the previous Paradigms, representations, values, ideals 
and desires: it is precisely for this reason that we speak of conversion, 
precisely because a cum-verto occurs into another total existential direction. 

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The moment in which one adheres to the vocation, which is precise in 
the space-time coordinates, puts in place a real revolution of the Being: it 
represents a watershed with the past, with what one was before, what was 
believed, thought and desired. 

This revolution of the Being that is visibly concretized in the Chris-
tian community, in the single persons belonging to the community to 
which one has joined, presents itself to the “wounded conscience” by a 
“failed” Attachment as fullness of Being: as that recognition and emotional-
affective responsiveness which, as documented, was asked to the mother or 
the caregiver and which did not happened in a “enough good” way, to 
recall Winnicot, or which did not happen at all: what further consequences 
can this revolution entail?

4. The gnoseological-ethical consequences of vocation 
and the “to join” the religious community: the loss 
of critical thinking and integralism

Let us now try to face the modality of interaction, which exists in the 
organization of a religious community, with the “communication” that 
accompanies it: we will not deepen the sociological aspect, so to speak, 
but we will focus on what we consider as fundamental aspects of the rela-
tionship that is inaugurated in such of situation and which, as mentioned, 
replaces the attachment relationship. Widely validated by the numerous 
researches in the field, the theory of Attachment, through the complexity 
of communication, resting on the two intrapsychic and relational bases 
(including in this the person and the environment), explains the “style” of 
attachment of the child, which we find in the adult; the style of Attach-
ment, which, as known, was deepened in Ainsworth’s research (Ains-
worth et al., 1978) in the famous “Strange Situation” (Marris, Parkes, 
& Stevenson-Hinde, 1995), depends on the “quality” of the parental 
care received, and organizes the “Attachment System” so as to deter-
mine, already in early age, both the personality and the “thinkability of 
concepts”, or the “paradigm”, as well as the concepts of the Self, the Other 
and the World, as already said. 

We have seen that, the general “Worldview”, as said, depends, to a 
very large extent, on the matured Attachment System and on the inter-
actions with the “given Paradigm”; while on a social level, as we have 
analyzed it in the Marcusian theory, the “attachment style” defines the type 
of relationship that is expected fromwho is felt as a “guide”, as it is from a 
parent or a caregiver.

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Now let’s see how the “paradoxical communication” works within 
the relationship with those who lead the religious community and how 
it “opens” the space of what we think could be a “cognitive-emotional-
affective alienation”. 

Let us take up what we have said about the interior situation that 
creates the phenomenon of vocation and the “joining” the religious 
community: we expect a Good, we have joined the community of brothers 
who expect the same thing; the conceptual paradigms and representations 
will change and we will adhere to those communicated by the religious 
community in which and through which the vocation took place. The 
different defense mechanisms (Tani, 2007, pp. 20-21) will selectively 
exclude all information coming from the outside that could “disturb” or 
“question” the system, newly adapted, thus allowing its conservation and 
the sense of unity of identityalong with it that has been formed in that 
apparently “new” emotional-affective relational situation. 

Paradoxically, this could be what happens: the very “first” true alien-
ation, formed with the original imprinting of the Attachment System, is 
re-actualized precisely when the encounter with that human reality pre-
announced as Good occurs, which is it was communicated as the bearer of 
that existential Good, corresponding to the expectations of cares, typical 
of the educational relationship and of occurrence, which were not real-
ized. 

It remains in its basic structure for life through a whole series of 
defensive mechanisms aimed at the conservation of the system itself and is 
perpetuated in the “choices” or relational preferences of the adult. We have 
also seen how what formed us and, at the same time, “wounded” as chil-
dren, by virtue of the self-perpetuating Attachment System consisting of 
a closed conceptual horizon, will continue to be sought to be maintained 
and preserved, through a sort of pre-selection of information, a kind of 
“selection at the entrance”. 

The vocation and the religious community are placed as a place of 
that “safe” relationship, of full support, comfort and development of the 
self that was expected from the caregiver: in reality, when the original 
conceptual representations and paradigms change by adhering to those 
proposed by the community, the identical alienating dynamic of the 
“failed” attachment relationship, that we wanted to replace with and in 
the vocational phenomenon, occurs again. What, in fact, could open to a 
true understanding of one’s identity, emotional-affective needs, which were 
not reflected in the care relationship and which led to the failure of the 
attachment system, would be the processing of the “attachment trauma” 
(Lingiardi & Gazzillo, 2014, p. 79). 

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If, on the other hand, one adheres to an “other” paradigm without 
reviewing what happened in the “failed” attachment, adherence to a creed 
or a religious community does nothing but re-proposing the same identical 
dysfunctional dynamic for the self that has occurred in the relationship of 
care characterized by the failure of attachment. From whatever source it 
comes, then the “paradigm” is closely linked to its communication: in this 
regard, Cumming believes that “it is necessary to continually reconstruct 
the concept of the Self if we are to exist as persons and not as objects: 
a reconstruction that generally takes place in ‘communication activity’” 
(Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1971, p. 73); certainly, the Insecure 
Attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978), in its various forms, which in a 
certain way predisposed to “hearing the call” and to joining the religious 
community is characterized by a “paradoxical communication”: it seems 
to us that we can identify with it the “Key” of alienation which is found 
as a communicative and relational modality in the interactions of the reli-
gious community with the person. Analyzing the works of Watzlawick and 
Jackson we see, in fact, how the paradoxical communication, generating 
confusion and inducing a sort of “transcendental epochè”, creates a sort 
of “opening” in the definition of the representations matured up to then, 
but felt, so to speak, as “unsatisfactory”: in this suspension of judgment, 
“anyone” can enter and “take” the place in the creation of the representa-
tions, generating a new “programming” of the same; the emotional-affec-
tive area is of absolute importance since, in the absence of the original 
attachment, the subject (be it a child, adolescent, young or adult) looking 
for the attachment figure, especially on the emotional-affective side, with 
one of his substitutes, will “attach” him/herself to anyone whoenters in the 
door left open by the suspension of the thought. 

It is precisely the paradoxical communication that generates the “avail-
ability” or “vulnerability” to openness, to the reorganization of representa-
tions, through confusion and suspension of judgment, thus fully investing 
the cognitive level; alongside it, the “emotional-affective request” of the 
“abandoned child” plays the other important part, giving rise to the “new 
attachment”, a harbinger of new representations more or less integrated, 
superimposed or totally substituted to the previous ones. 

It is, in fact, the pragmatic paradoxes (Watzlawick, Beavin, & 
Jackson, 1971, p. 186) that reveal the functioning of the “black out” that 
is created at the “level of representations” in the mind engaged in the 
attachment relationship: descending and showing its fascinating unity with 
the previous logical and semantic levels (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 
1971, pp. 184-185), the pragmatic paradox at the same time reveals the 
end and the beginning of the disorganized, contradictory attitude of the 

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mentality, and therefore of the Vision of the World and of the Self of the 
attachment figure; it is in fact the total Weltanshaaung of the attachment 
figure that is “handed down” intergenerationally to the child/learner and 
it shows itself with behaviors; it is also communicated with the different 
levels of communication within the educational relationship felt as “an 
intrinsic need” of relationship itself. 

5. The “key” of joining the “alienating” religious 
community: the paradoxical communication 
and the attribution of role

Let’s go back, then, to the paradoxical structure of communication that 
characterizes this particular type of attachment relationships that favor 
alienation, introducing the pragmatic paradoxes, metacommunication and 
the “double bind theory”. 

To understand the nature of these types of human communicative 
interaction that has the characteristic of the “paradoxical”, we are met by 
the pragmatic behavioral evidence that these interactions produce, that is: 
the levels in which the paradox occurs are first of all the “logical” ones, 
secondly the “semantic” and thirdly the “pragmatic” place (Watzlawick, 
Beavin, & Jackson, 1971, pp. 146-207); starting from the latter it is easy to 
detect, in some way, the path that the paradox itself takes to get to “enter 
the existential experience of man” (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1971, 
p. 180). 

What interests us here, leaving aside the logical-semantic levels and 
therefore the semantic antinomies, are the “paradoxical injunctions” that 
most exquisitely belong to the “pragmatic” level of human interactions and 
communications; and which, in our opinion, permeate that specific field 
of relations that we are investigating here. 

As already seen, the attachment relationship of an insecure type 
(avoidant-ambivalent-disorganized in the various forms it can take) is char-
acterized by a paradoxical type of communication; it presents three clear 
elements: first of all it occurs when a strong complementary relationship 
has been established; secondly, within this relationship we find a scheme 
that provides for “an injunction” that must be obeyed but to be obeyed 
must be disobeyed; thirdly, the person who is one-down in the relationship 
is not able to get out of the pattern and therefore to dissolve the paradox 
through “metacommunication”. 

Indeed, the role of the “comment” on the paradox is interesting, and 
therefore of metacommunication, which represents, together with irony, 

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the means to overcome or unmask the paradox itself. But this possibility, 
which we would say to be a sort of counter-manipulation strategy, cannot 
be adopted by the one-down person who is not aware of the paradox since 
it is subordinate: this is the “role” or position, in the dysfunctional educa-
tional relationship we are delineating, in which it is conceivedor “put”, 
more or less voluntarily and knowingly, the child or the faithful. 

We understand, then, through the form of communication, the 
nature of the relationship that is the basis of the interaction we are talking 
about: from the pragmatic paradoxes, moreover, it is possible to “go back” 
to the origin of the type of communication that animates that relation-
ship and therefore to the relationship itself; we look at an example of a 
complementary relationship to analyze its communication and trace the 
injunction that generates the paradox by “paralyzing” the one-down person 
in the impossibility of resolving the paradox itself: we then can transfer 
what we see to the educational relationship of the insecure attachment and 
to the relationship of the faithful towards the religious community or the 
leader of the community. This is the “place” in which, through paradoxical 
communication, alienation is generated. Watzlawick proposes a series 
of examples: we borrow one that guides us both towards understanding 
parental alienation, which takes place between a parent and a child, as 
towards the religious one. 

Perhaps the most frequent form in which the paradox enters the pragmatics 
of human communication is an injunction that requires specific behavior, 
which by its very nature can only be spontaneous. The prototype of this 
message is precisely: Be spontaneous! Anyone who receives this injunction 
finds himself in an unbearable situation because to comply with it he should 
be spontaneous within a scheme of condescension and non-spontaneity. 
(Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1971, p. 190)

Alongside the formula “Be spontaneous” we can find many that appar-
ently seem harmless and absolutely legitimate, such as “you should obey 
and follow”, “don’t be so sentimental”, “you know that you are free but 
it is impossible not to say that out of here there is no the possibility of 
happiness” and so on; truly, such injunctions are paradoxical since they 
require symmetry in a relationship established as complementary, and here 
is the point: the nature of the attachment relationship when insecure and 
dysfunctional as well as the relationship of the faithful who must place 
him/herself in the position of following with respect to the leader or to the 
entire religious community, it is characterized by paradoxical injunctions 
that paralyze reflexivity and critical thinking; in the same way as the child, 
trapped in the paradoxical scheme, typical of the following relationship 
with those who lead and who participate in the community, the faithful, 

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unable to free themselves from the paradoxical injunction, suspend his/her 
judgment. 

The disavowal or rejection or avoidance of the emotional-affective 
mirroring put in place by the leader and by the members of the commu-
nity who play a role (group leader-deacons-responsible of groups) does 
nothing but re-actualizes exactly the wound created by the failed Attach-
ment; especially when the believer does not “manage” to follow or shows 
discomfort in fully adhering to the injunctions, beliefs or values shared 
by the community, the joining the community that at the beginning was 
thought it would have been a “salvation” from the “attachment trauma” 
through the “new life” promised by the vocation, tragically re-closes what 
was glimpsed as true communion and liberation, in a sort of hermeneutic 
circle, in the cage of alienation. 

6. Educate in critical thinking, personal identity 
and an authentic religious sense

“I would say then: if you want to become adults without being deceived, 
alienated, slaves of others, exploited, you get used to comparing everything 
with elementary experience” Luigi Giussani writes in one of his most beau-
tiful works (Giussani, 1988a, p. 13); the author argues that the “heart” of 
man understood as a sort of unity of reason and feeling, is endowed with 
first evidence, with criteria of judgment on the basis of which it is easy to 
compare an experience that one lives by every kind with the elementary 
needs of happiness, goodness, justice, love. 

Through this comparison of reality that impacts with one’s own needs 
that call for a sense of fullness, wholeness and satisfaction, man could make 
a sort of ascent towards his own liberation; he writes: “In fact, as a rule 
everything is dealt with according to a common mentality: supported, 
propagated by those who hold power in society” (Giussani, 1988a, p. 13). 
In this way the tradition that permeates the context in which we grow up, 
the whole of society, but above all starting from the abusive attachment 
bonds, do nothing but embody a sort of power and “settle on our original 
needs and constitute a great encrustation that alters the evidence of those 
first evidences” (Giussani, 1988a, p. 13), so that if one wants to contradict 
or critically judge by virtue of an unease one feels, he/she is faced with a 
difficult task since he/she will find him/herself “having to challenge public 
opinion” (Giussani, 1988a, p. 13). 

It is paradoxical to think that the very community that Luigi Giussani 
himself found with the aim of educating to the authentic religious sense 

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based on the full and correct use of human reason, would become, in his 
practices of community life, exactly a power society, characterized by a 
strong alienating power by virtue of what has been said so far. 

“The boldest challenge to that mentality that dominates us […] is 
precisely that of making the judgment on everything habitual in us in the 
light of our first evidence and not at the mercy of more occasional reac-
tions”, so sounds the warning, the fascinating existential solicitation of the 
author who presses on saying “it is always necessary to pierce these images 
induced by the cultural climate in which one is immersed, to go down to 
take in one’s own needs and original evidences and on the basis of these 
to judge and evaluate every proposal, every existential suggestion” (Gius-
sani, 1988a, p. 13); and it is precisely on the basis of this solicitation, by 
comparing everything with elementary evidence, to its “exercise”, that one 
can “realize” the alienating work that, every type of community, company, 
organization or person, when in the field a relationship of power can exert 
on man, on the child, on the faithful, at the level of representation, images 
and thought. 

We believe that an education on the authentic religious sense corre-
sponds in fact to the education of critical thinking that “rests” on the first 
evidence of reason: the personal identity that is formed starting from the 
original attachment relationship, as we have seen, is not other than the 
product, the visible result of an adequate care and education of and “to” 
this “system of evidences” of which humankind is made by nature; care, in 
its form of “mirroring”, as has been said, taking the form of a “secure rela-
tionship” can become the privileged place for an education in the “primary 
evidence of reason”, the basis of critical thinking and the exercise of reason 
and the affectivity of man, able to free him/her from any form of aliena-
tion, dependence and, ultimately, existential discomfort. 

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Riassunto

Può esistere una connessione e un parallelismo tra due “luoghi” privilegiati in cui l’edu-
cazione viene messa a tema e agita: la famiglia e la comunità religiosa, come luoghi in 
cui, paradossalmente, lo sviluppo dell’identità può cedere il posto all’alienazione. Un filo 
comune connette tali spazi e interpella la persona che può restare “intrappolata” in rela-
zioni disfunzionali: essa può “perdere” la propria identità “sostituendola” con quella del 
genitore alienante o del leader religioso. La relazione educativa ha la funzione principale 
di “formare” l’educando, sia esso bambino o adulto, ma allo stesso modo, anche la società 
o la comunità, intese come “ambiente esterno”, influenzano continuamente la forma-
zione di un individuo: lo “spazio interiore” è inevitabilmente influenzato dallo “spazio 
esteriore”, sia esso la madre, le relazioni interpersonali o la società in generale. Per questo, 
incontriamo diverse fonti educative paradigmatiche che fungono da “stimolo” per la for-
mazione umana e che, mentre si pongono come soggetti “educanti”, possono realizzarsi 
come forze “alienanti”, presentandosi, alla coscienza dell’uomo, spesso in contraddizione 
l’una con l’altra, segnate, al proprio interno, da una logica paradossale. L’intento di que-
sto studio è, dunque, quello di indagare questo “spazio interiore della coscienza”, quando 
accade che esso venga “violato” volontariamente o incoscientemente sia da parte di chi 
lo invade sia da parte di chi “concede” tale invasione. Si è di fronte ad un “potere” che, 
prendendo il posto del “religioso” o della “cura” genitoriale, “imposta” un nuovo legame 
d’Attaccamento, capace di emulare cura o significatività, infondendo in sua vece, disa-
gio, dolore e, infine, alienazione. 

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How to cite this paper:
Savino, D. (2021). “Liquid” identity and otherness in the phenomenon of religious alienation: 
The loss of critical thinking and the “barter” of the Self in the system of communion. 
Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 1(1-2), 
61-84. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-savi

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https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-savi

	Elementa_1-2021-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	Editorial
	Pierpaolo Limone

	First Section
	The Vagaries of the Superego
	Slavoj Žižek
	Nature and Pandemic

	Ricardo Espinoza Lolas
	Mask and Otherness
between Recognition and Concealment: Notes on the Self and the You

	Paolo Ponzio
	“Liquid” Identity and Otherness
in the Phenomenon of Religious
Alienation: The Loss of Critical
Thinking and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion

	Daniela Savino
	The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact in the Philosophy
of Jean-Luc Nancy

	Francesca R. Recchia Luciani

	Second Section
	Universal Design for Learning
and Inclusive Teaching: Future
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	A Historical Account on Italian
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	Cyberfeminism: A Relationship
between Cyberspace, Technology,
and the Internet

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	Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson
not to Be Forgotten

	Luigi Traetta 1 - Federica Doronzo 2
	Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection between Neuropsychology and Mathematics

	Federica Doronzo 1 - Gianvito Calabrese 2
	Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding
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