This paper aims to be a philological contribution to the study of the language used in the Human BirthTheory by Massimo Fagioli. We investigated specifically the language of the 1972 edition of DeathInstinct and Knowledge because of two main reasons. First of all, on that occasion, a new language,able to set forth a new theory about human reality, was born in the field of psychiatric medicine. Infact that language expounded for the first time a revolutionary and previously non existing psychiatrictheory about human reality and the functioning of the human mind. Moreover, the language of DeathInstinct and Knowledge, although previously used by the author both orally and in writing, like inpsychiatric articles, was embodied in a book for the first time, creating a disruptive culturalmovement, leading to a revolution of language in the cultural, artistic, linguistic, and literary spheres.We think that this topic has not yet been explored to its full extent.Massimo Fagioli began his research on words before the writing of Death Instinct and Knowledge.Then he wrote it, presenting various considerations on language. Later, in 1976, he reviewed some ofthe passages of the book and wrote about his research regarding words and language morespecifically. Our study began thanks to a 1976 footnote concerning the distinction between fantasyand fantasizing. In the footnote Fagioli also enclosed a declaration of intent over future research aboutlanguage. By that time he had already authored his first three theoretical books and was thepsychiatrist of the Analisi Collettiva. Fagioli continued to deepen his research about language onmany occasions, reaching the highest peaks of it on the pages of the Transformazione column in Leftmagazine from 2006 to 2017.Our research aims to detect and document the force and disruptiveness that already characterized thewords Massimo Fagioli used in 1972. The completely original sense, sound and, in some cases, evenmeaning that the author’s ideas attributed to the terms used, made these words “new,” “never existed”.They needed a great deal of strength and endurance to be forged, and they imprinted a radical changeon the Western, rational, religious, and existentialist culture of those times. These words still soundcourageously revolutionary today. Massimo Fagioli dug them out of the rocks of the past, identified<\/p>\n
them from the different contents that the dominant culture had attributed them. On a case by casebasis, these words have been rediscovered, extracted, distilled, enriched, transformed, poeticallycreated or, finally, used in a new language that was necessary in order to speak of something neverdiscovered and verbalized before.<\/p>\n
The assumption of such a research is that every word used by an author reverberates of their ideas,images, feeling and experience. It contains, within itself, a condensation of ideas and refers to thewhole underlying thoughts of the person who chooses and uses it. Therefore, starting from thisSaussurian perspective of difference between langue and parole, which obviously does not questionthe universality and comprehensibility of the used language, we propose that the sense and meaningof each word used by Fagioli defined in itself and promoted new and revolutionary contents about theview of human reality and truth, because of the absolut originality of his thought and his theory.In our research, we consulted etymological dictionaries; we investigated the cultural history of thewords under our study; the use that artists, men of letters and scholars had made of them. Finally, weidentified some distinctive features of Massimo Fagioli’s language, referring to terms and categoriesfrom linguistics, such as Tullio De Mauro’s concept of parola polirematica or that of a complexlexeme, in comparison with what we identified as compositions of words. In the end, we proposed apreliminary cataloging of the identified words. And, in conclusion, we traced a possible horizon forthe linguistic field, considering the Human Birth Theory as an indispensable content and tool for itsown future development.<\/p>\n
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The words of Death instinct and knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n Scientific language and poetic language. \u25cf new content because new anthropology [e.g., fantasy; infantile]. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/b><\/p>\n
\nVerbal thought when the subject is the unconscious: a new syntax. [possible further study: editor’sreactions].
\nNew words.Words borrowed from literature [e.g., death instinct; indifferent].
\nLatin expressions adopted [e.g., hic et nunc etc.] and\/or renewed [e.g., vita tua vita mea]Foreign words [e.g.setting]
\nCompositions of words [e.g., disappearance fantasy; annulment pulsion; unconscious calm sea].
\nDerived but new words [e.g., anaffettivit\u00e0 (noun lack of affectivity) from anaffettivo (adjective lackingof affectivity)]
\nWords that have been given a meaning they never had:<\/p>\n
\n\u25cf from material reality to unconscious dynamics, semantic neologisms [e.g., absence; annulment;relationship; vitality].
\n\u25cf differentiation of terms used as synonyms [e.g., fantasy-fantasizing; understand-know; realize-actualize].
\n\u25cf definition of words [e.g., desire; envy].
\n\u25cf clarification of words from psychiatry or psychoanalysis [e.g., identification; introjection;projection; frustration] and their specific identification [e.g., pulsion].<\/p>\n\n