Published: October 2025

Keywords:
Pietro Barbetta, Language Without Sense, Language and Communication, Meaning and Non-sense, Philosophy of Language, Psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein, Bion, Deleuze, Theories of Communication, Barnett Pearce, Paradigmatic, Syntagmatic Communication, Aesthetics of Complexity, Maria Esther Cavagnis, Transcontextual Jumps, Relational Thinking, Art, Literature, Poetry, Delirium, Schizophrenic, Philosophy, Sense and the Embodiment of Meaning, Unpredicable, Social Unrest, Reflective Dialogue, Mary Barnes, Therapeutic Art-Expression.

Pietro Barbetta

Past director of the Milan Center of Family Therapy, current director of the International School of Systemic Therapy in Transcultural Contexts (ISST).

He has published, among others, Locura y Creacion (2016, Gedisa) with U. Telfener, Complessità e psicoterapia (2019, Raffaello Cortina), and with M. E. Cavagnis, I. B. Krause and U. Telfener, Ethical and Aesthetic Exploration of Systemic Practices (2022 Routledge),

pietro.barbetta@unibg.it

Abstract

On the occasion of the English publication of his book Language Without Sense—his “last child,” as he affectionately names it—Pietro Barbetta meets with the Metalogos team (Anastasia Geitsidou, Maria Pantelaki, Fany Triantafillou) for a conversation that unfolds like a living text.

Through his familiar, impassioned rhythm of speech, ideas emerge and intertwine, calling us to pause, to listen, to dwell within their resonances. Reading from the opening chapter, he takes us on a flight that begins among the artworks of his office and drifts through the landscapes of philosophy, poetry, theories of communication, psychoanalysis, social unrest, and the evocative aesthetics of complexity.

His thought moves in constant transcontextual leaps—movements that might leave us slightly dizzy, yet at the same time awaken the pleasure of flight: of wandering and wondering along those uncertain, shifting lines where sense and non-sense meet.