Massimo Recalcati, a Lacanian analyst, takes the Gethsemane episode of the Gospels and reads it as a psychoanalyst reads a case: Jesus in the garden after the Last Supper, praying while his companions sleep, then given up to the guards by Judas's kiss. Recalcati moves between the biblical text and psychoanalytic theory, treating the scene as an account of what it is to be abandoned by one's closest companions and left alone before a silence that does not answer.
The argument turns on betrayal as a structural rather than merely biographical event, and on the particular exposure of asking for presence and meeting withdrawal. Recalcati reads forsakenness as the point where dependence on the other is most naked.
First published in Italian by Einaudi in 2019, the book appeared in Ann Goldstein's English translation from Europa Editions in 2020. It runs to eighty pages, closer to an extended essay than a treatise.
About the author
Massimo Recalcati
Massimo Recalcati (born 1959) is an Italian psychoanalyst and writer who works within the Lacanian tradition. He is known for his clinical and theoretical work on eating disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia, and for books on love, contemporary subjectivity, and the reading of myth. In 2003 he founded Jonas Onlus, a network of centres for the psychoanalytic treatment of new symptoms, and he serves as scientific director of IRPA, the Institute for Applied Psychoanalysis Research. He teaches at IULM in Milan and writes regularly for the press.
Details
- 2019
- 2020
- La notte del Getsemani
- Italian
- Ann Goldstein
- Europa Editions
- Europa Editions
- 80
- 9781609456221