In Su e in Sé - Mountaineering and psychology

The book analyses some themes of mountaineering from a psychological point of view.

In su (“upwards”), a fundamental part of mountaineering, refers to verticality, to reaching the summit. But not only that! It also refers to the side of the mountain: that is, to everything that lies between the start and the finish, which gives material form to the “ideal mountain”.
In sé (“within oneself”), the main subject of psychology, refers to inner, psychic and emotional balance. It also refers to the search for the path to introspection, for the relationship between inside and outside, through experience in the world.
Mountaineering answers the need to give concrete form to the relationship between man and nature, body and environment. The mountaineer moves in a third dimension: the interspace, represented by what lies in between: he moves on the side of the mountain, feels it in its materiality. So not just start and finish, base and summit! The sensory experience, the exploration and discovery of matter. Elements at the root of play, of art, of spirituality and of the search for oneself; oneself in the world and in the relationship with others.
The authors have given a voice to ten mountaineers, very different from one another, who answered their invitation to tell their own story. Through their accounts, these mountaineers have been able to pass on their experiences, their uniqueness.

“… climbing in order to exist, as if we were mountains; to keep our soul, having their nature inside us; to see how we are made; to look for the meaning of life; to stay, still, with our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds” (Saglio G., Zola C. – In su e in Sé).

Authors:

Giuseppe Saglio, psychiatrist, teaching analyst of the Società Italiana di Psicologia Individuale, lecturer at the School of Specialisation for psychotherapists of the Società Adleriana Italiana Gruppi e Analisi, has been in charge of coordinating a Mental Health Centre in Valsesia for over twenty years. He has long been going to the mountains as a mountaineer and hiker and has taken an interest in the psychological and anthropological components of mountain culture. He is the author of numerous scientific publications. His writings are part of the Quaderni di Cultura Alpina series by Priuli & Verlucca.

Cinzia Zola, born and raised in the Bernese Oberland region, practises alpine skiing, sport climbing and caving. She is a psychologist and psychotherapist, trained at the Società Adleriana Italiana Gruppi e Analisi. She works at the hospital in Asti, mainly with adolescents and adults with eating disorders. Author of numerous scientific publications.

Contents of the book:

7    Foreword by Enrico Camanni
11    Introduction by Giuseppe Saglio

The mind of mountaineers: speaking, representing, imagining, by Giuseppe Saglio

26    Reason and science: the beginning of the passion
32    Exploration: discovering unknown space
39    Romantic rêveries: ecstasy and the sublime
45    Heroism: the human as if it were the divine
51    Feats and expeditions: the mythology of the summit
59    Height and verticality: the vertigo of the mind
67    Spirituality: the cult of mystery
75    Lightness and heaviness: a leap into the sky
82    Movement and stillness: walking with your head and thinking with your legs
89    Aesthetics and expression: the drawing of ideas
94    Inner search: the voice and the silence of the soul
100    Sport, competition and records: testing the limit
104    Play, risk and adventure: learning to exist
109    Useful and useless: revising our needs

Mountaineering and individual psychology: from experience to knowledge, by Cinzia Zola

117    The feeling of inferiority and the striving for superiority
124    The will to power (or feeling of self-assertion) and social feeling
131    Fictions and fictitious goals
136    Style of life and the creative Self

The voice of the mountaineers: doing, thinking, telling, by Giuseppe Saglio and Cinzia Zola

145    Giovanni Bassanini
156    Cristian Brenna
166    Pietro Dal Prà
183    Alessandro Gogna
196    Luisa Iovane
204    Cesare Maestri
211    Andrea Mellano
223    Nives Meroi
231    Enrico Rosso
241    Giovanni Turcotti

Analogous mountains and analogical mountaineering, by Giuseppe Saglio

263    Inside and outside
265    In-betweenness
269    The playroom
271    The analogical space
276    The mountain as therapy

Bibliography

Another read on the meaning of going to the mountains is La Filosofia della Montagna di Francesco Tomatis.