DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8279402

Polis and psyche, thought and emotion

by Gabriele Pulli

Matte Blanco affirms that the best way to be of social and political life is based on the composition of thought and emotion in the right measure, according to his bi-logical theory of the mind. Nevertheless, he considers this theory only a first step in the direction followed by Freud. For, he traces another path, consisting in the identification of the common root of thought and emotion. By means of the identification of this common root, one can understand how thought and emotion can communicate through two entities not external to each other. In this way, their relationship does not appear as a mutual delimitation, as a compromise, but as a synthesis. The thought meets emotion by advancing into itself, intensifying; and emotion meets thought advancing into itself until it reaches its root. this means that the optimal relationship with other people is a relationship according to which the subject recognises to the other his or her diversity from anything else, his or her uniqueness, and at the same time the equality with him or herself, in the «unity of all be-ings».

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Pulli, Polis e psiche