Before even opening the book of Paolo Milone, The art of connecting people, scrolling through the synopsis brings to mind everything we have read about Freud, Jung, Alda Merini, Vincent Van Gogh and more recently Daniele Mencarelli. Mental illness it frightens as much as it fascinates, whether told by those who try to cure it or by those who suffer it; thus, there are innumerable writings that the history of literature has given us in this regard.
Yet, the theme never ceases to be current, because in the space of a few years the techniques and methodologies for treating the patient with personality disorders have evolved in an incredible way: from electroshock to today, a sea of differences; yet, still many points in common, knots to be solved that perhaps will never find an answer or solution.
Einaudi recently published the first literary work of Paolo Milone, a psychiatrist who served in a Mental Health Center and then in an emergency psychiatry ward.. His is the doctor’s point of view, scrupulous, compassionate and sometimes civic; at the same time, however, it also incorporates the vision of all doctors, health workers and more generally the people who have decided to dedicate their lives to the other – or rather, to the care of the other -; finally, it contains between the lines the experiences of the sick, each one different and therefore unique, difficult to understand and even more to tell.
“There is nothing theoretical or abstract about these pages. There is the life of the ward, the thirst for humanity, the intimacy of grasping and escaping, the fury of the sick, the fury of colleagues, the weight of the keys in the pocket, the death always lurking, the unspeakable loves, the alleys of the historic center and the beautiful secrets of the sea “.