Stephen Pagliarini
There are those who live life with hatred, with such a need for antagonism that some may have even experienced Silvio Berlusconi’s death as a provocation. It has to be like this. Otherwise I don’t understand why, even today, so many have hastened to remind us how much Silvio Berlusconi was, in their opinion, the incarnation of evil.
As to why Silvio Berlusconi divided Italy so much, as he is doing now after his departure, there are several explanations, some of which must be sought precisely in the shadows of his experience, which can neither be denied nor minimized. However I want to try to remember Silvio Berlusconi in a different way since for me he was a psychoanalyst of Italian politics. The psychoanalyst is an important figure today. He can help rework an unconscious conflict, establishing more mature defense mechanisms, thus helping to make that conflict less in contrast with our life experience, our history.
Berlusconi tried to unite the country
In the same way, Berlusconi has tried to get Italians to overcome the inner conflicts that stemmed from the trauma of the Second World War. He attempted to free Italy from the ideological dogmas that tore it apart, giving Italians renewed flexibility, through new principles, such as liberalism and freedom. Models around which he tried to unite first the country and then the world.
He did it in Italy, in Onna in the historic speech of April 25, 2009 when, with an Anpi handkerchief around his neck, a few days after the earthquake in L’Aquila, he celebrated the Liberation with a historic speech. The one in which, starting from the memory of the partisans, divided by political ideas but united by a common goal, he rejected the idea that in politics there are enemies (if anything, adversaries) declaring that he was convinced that “the time was ripe for Liberation Day can become the Day of Freedom and can remove from this anniversary the character of opposition that the revolutionary culture has given it and which still divides rather than unite”.
He did it again internationally on May 28, 2002 when, during his second term as prime minister, he led George Bush and Vladimir Putin to shake hands, with the two world leaders close in signing the Rome Declaration: the document which opened the doors of NATO to Russia, thus attempting to overcome the chill of a hidden war with a collaboration agreement between the Atlantic alliance and the former communist bloc. Sure, a psychoanalyst is moved by a feeling of altruism and care. Hard to believe that Berlusconi took the field in that spirit. But with all the differences of the case, placed outside the political ideologies of contemporary Italy, Berlusconi has put Italian politics on the couch, freeing it from historical conflicts.
Berlusconi and the third way
He proposed a third way to the right and left dichotomy. He gave a “home” to those who grew up crushed by a sense of guilt for having betrayed their “fathers”, refusing to embrace both post-communist and post-fascist culture. He gave the Italians the project of a society that could be defined as liberal; he was the voice of those Italians and, with Forza Italia, he also gave them a party. Like it or not, we have all been in that psychoanalysis and something has changed in us.