https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/italy-and-psychoanalysis/
Sergio Benvenuto (b 1948)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Benvenuto
English Language Publications
- “The Son's Room” or: Analysis is Over”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, n. 12-13, 2001, pp. 163–172.
- “Psychoanalysis and Mimetic Theory: Difference and Identity. A Conversation of Sergio Benvenuto with René Girard”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 14, Winter-Spring 2002, pp. 3–25.
- “Freud and Masochism”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 16, Winter-Spring 2003, pp. 57–80.
- “On Perversions”, Journal for Lacanian Studies, vol. 1, n. 2, 2003, pp. 243–260.
- “Perversion and charity: an ethical approach”, in Dany Nobus and Lisa Downing, Perversion. Psychoanalytic Perspectives / Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, Karnac, London 2006, pp. 59–78.
- “Dora flees…”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 21, 2005/2, pp. 3–31.
- “Simplistic Complexity: A Discussion on Psychoanalysis and Chaos Theory”, World Futures, vol. 61, n. 3, 2005, pp. 181–187.
- “Anatomical Women”, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 22, 1/2006, pp. 117–122.
- “Wittgenstein and Lacan Reading Freud”, Journal for Lacanian Studies, vol. 4, nr. 1, 2006, pp. 99–120.
- “Resistances”, Jean-François Lyotard, A conversation with Sergio Benvenuto, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 24, 2007-1,
- With Anthony Molino, In Freud's Tracks. Conversations from the Journal of European Psychoanalysis, Washington, USA, Aronson, 2008.
- “Introduction to the Italian Edition of Daly & Žižek, A Conversation with Žižek”, JEP. European Journal of Psychoanalysis, IPOC, 26-27, 2008 I-II, pp. 67–97. ISSN 2038-5196
- “Sublimation and compassion”, JEP. European Journal of Psychoanalysis, 29, 2009/2, pp. 49–76. ISSN 2038-5196
- “Perversions Today” JEP. European Journal of Psychoanalysis, 30, 2010-I, pp. 27–40. ISSN 2038-5196
- “The Monsters Next Door”, American Imago. Psychoanalysis and Human Sciences, 69, Winter 2012, n. 4, pp. 435–448.
- “The Earth is Evil: On Lars Von Trier's Melancholia”, DIVISION/Review, A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum, 7, Spring 2012, pp. 41–43.
- “The Idiot's Tragedy”, Sara Fortuna & Laura Scuriatti eds., “On Dogville”, Dekalog 5, Columbia University Press, Wallflower (London-New York), 2012, pp. 22–37.
- “The Dandy Dentist (Review of : Elisabeth Roudinesco, Lacan, envers et contre tout, Paris, Seuil, 2011)”, DIVISION/Review, 5, summer 2012, pp. 4–7.
- “Happiness for Dismal Science”, The Candidate Connection. Newsletter, January 2012, vol. 14, issue 1, pp. 4–7,
- “Failing Democracies”, Magyar Lettre Internationale, 88, 2013, pp. 39–42.
- “Does Perversion Need the Law?”, edited by Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Ingrid Scholz-Strasser, Herman Westerink, Psychoanalysis, Monotheism and Morality. The Sigmund Freud Museum Symposia 2009-2011, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2013, pp. 175–184.
- “Ethics, Wonder and Real in Wittgenstein”, in Ylva Gustafsson, Camilla Kronqvist, Hannes Nykänen, eds., Ethics and the Philosophy of Culture: Wittgensteinian Approaches, 2013, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, pp. 137–159.
- What are Perversions? Sexuality, Ethics, Psychoanalysis, 2016, Karnac, London.
- Conversations with Lacan. Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan, 2020, Routledge, London.
- Contributor to Coronavirus, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy Conversations on Pandemics, Politics and Society, edited By Fernando Castrillón & Thomas Marchevsky, 2021, Routledge, London, ISBN 9780367713669
What are Sergio Benvenuto’s ideas about the Real? (ChatGPT, 2025-4-2)
Sergio Benvenuto, an Italian psychoanalyst and philosopher, develops a distinctive understanding of the Real, especially in dialogue with Lacan, Freud, Wittgenstein, and philosophers of language and ethics. While he inherits Lacan’s use of the term, Benvenuto gives the Real a more ethical, pragmatic, and existential twist. Here’s a summary of his key ideas about the Real:
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1. The Real as What Resists Symbolization (Lacanian heritage)
Benvenuto begins from the Lacanian definition: the Real is what cannot be fully symbolized, what escapes language, what disrupts the symbolic order. But he doesn’t stop there.
For Benvenuto, the Real is:
“That which escapes all our explanations, all our rationalizations, all our stories.”
He describes it as the limit of sense, the place where discourse fails—and where something still insists.
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2. The Real as Evental and Ethical
Benvenuto gives the Real an evental and ethical dimension:
• The Real is not just trauma, but the encounter that forces a reconfiguration of meaning.
• It’s not always tragic—it can be a strange, absurd, contingent, or hilarious disruption.
• The Real demands a response—it is what interrupts our daily routines, ideologies, or self-concepts and makes something new possible.
Example: Falling in love, losing a loved one, facing a political upheaval, encountering something radically Other—all are Real insofar as they shatter the continuity of the symbolic.
He says:
“The Real is what never stops coming back to us, what doesn’t let us sleep in peace with our illusions.”
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3. The Real and Disbelief in Sense
A key contribution of Benvenuto is his critique of our obsession with “sense” (meaning). He sees the Real as that which interrupts sense-making and reveals its limits.
He writes:
“The ethical subject is not the one who finds a new sense, but the one who resists the compulsion to make sense.”
This aligns him more with Wittgensteinian ethics: there are moments when we must simply be with the enigma, endure ambiguity, refuse premature closure.
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4. The Real and the Subject
Benvenuto rejects a simplistic “subject of truth” or “subject of emancipation” model. Instead:
• The subject is someone constituted by their encounter with the Real.
• This subject is split, vulnerable, often not heroic.
• The Real does not ground a project—it interrupts one.
For Benvenuto, the analyst’s task is not to restore the ego, but to stay close to the Real, to help the analysand find a way to live with the unassimilable.
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5. The Real is Not a Hidden Truth
Unlike some versions of Lacanianism that treat the Real as the truth behind the illusion, Benvenuto insists:
The Real is not the hidden truth of the symbolic.
It is the failure of any final truth.
In this sense, he’s close to post-structuralist ethics: the Real is irreducible to knowledge, and that is precisely why it is ethically potent.
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Summary of Benvenuto’s View of the Real
|
Theme |
Benvenuto’s Take |
|
Definition |
What resists symbolization, meaning, and explanation |
|
Relation to Lacan |
Inherits the concept, but expands it beyond trauma |
|
Ethical Function |
The Real disrupts ideology and demands response, not mastery |
|
Subjectivity |
Subject is formed through encounter with the Real, not coherence |
|
Against Sense |
The Real resists our obsession with “making sense” |
|
Role of Psychoanalysis |
To dwell near the Real, not to explain it away |
Benvenuto’s Real is perhaps best captured by this tension:
• It is the failure of closure.
• But it is also the opening of the ethical.
Let me know if you want some key texts or quotes where Benvenuto elaborates these ideas—his Psychoanalysis and the Real is a great place to start.
