The psychiatrist: “ Extreme selfie to give importance to existence, unusual background increases recognition ”

” Being recognized is, for some, more important than life itself ”. And what ” gives importance to the subject ”, in the midst of the ” selfie epidemic ” we are experiencing, is ” the exciting context and the unusual background that surrounds ” a ” sui generis self-portrait ” . Hence ” the search for an extreme background to attract attention and recognition ”. Because the container is more important than the content, ” making us reflect on the inconsistency of existence, an absence of flesh, an anorexia ”. Thus the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Giovanni Stanghellini, author of ‘Selfie. Feeling in the gaze of the other ‘published by Feltrinelli, comments with Adnkronos the data of the Spanish study of the iO Foundation which speak of about 380 people who have died since 2008 while taking a selfie. ” The selfie is not a suicidal practice, it is not withdrawing into the art of suicide. These are accidental deaths that happen when, to be recognized, I place myself in an exciting and unusual context ”, explains the psychiatrist. ” Being seen, being recognized, for many, especially young people, passes through views and likes ”, continues Stanghellini, underlining how the need for recognition ” is not new ”, but on the contrary ” is a fundamental characteristic of human existence ” on which the definition of identity depends. ” We humans cannot do without the need to answer the question: who am I? ”, He adds. Lecturer in Dynamic Psychology at the University of Chieti-Pescara and director of the School of Phenomenological-Dynamic Psychotherapy in Florence, Stanghellini therefore defines selfies as ” one of the devices in the contemporary world of recognition ”. ” The selfie is a very self-portrait Sui generis. Because in reality the selfie, rather than portraying the subject, portrays a person in a place. And it is this place that gives me importance. It is the background, and not the figure, that gives me importance ”, he explains, underlining that ” a selfie in an art gallery or on a table in a stormy sea is not the same thing ”. Nothing new, he is keen to emphasize, if not the means. By the way he mentions the film ‘The misunderstood’ by Comencini and remembers how the eldest of the two children protagonists resorted to extreme practices, attached himself to a branch of a tree, renamed the audacity meter, counting how many times it creaked. ” I only exist if I am looked at, the boys and girls of today are telling us, ” continues the psychiatrist. Young people for whom ” the gaze of the other becomes of vital importance, the only way to feel someone. Prosthesis of the self ”. Without it there is the ” difficulty in feeling oneself in one’s body, in recognizing one’s emotions. To close your eyes and feel desire, anger, sadness. Everything that gives me content … ”.