Published: March 2026
Keywords:
Pietro Barbetta, Giulio Macacaro, Arthur Kleinman, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Singularity, Delusions, Gilles Deleuze, Language, Power in Clinical Practice, Individual, Dividual, Multiple self, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Graham Harman, Ontological Anthropology, Ιndividualisation, Carl Gustav Jung, Relational Singularity, Trans-cultural perspectives, Universalism, Linear narrative, Relational narrative, Novel, Pathography, Sigmund Freud, Art, Poesies, Phenomenology and Object-oriented Ontology, Lexicography, Diagnosis, Power relations, Culture, Systemic Therapy, Relational Approach, Delirium, Creativity, Philosophy, Contemporary Physics, Ontology, Principle of Non-Contradiction, Multiple Perspectives, Flux, Becoming, Οbjects, Withdrawn Reality, Paranoid Delusions, Social Context, Subjectivity, Sanitization, Normalization, Education, ADHD, Dyslexia, Critique of Psychology, Control.
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
Book Presentation
Pietro Barbetta on Lexicografia
The well-known thinker, therapist, and writer Pietro Barbetta engages in a conversation with Metalogos (F. Triantafillou & M.-S. Voulgari) about his new book Lexicografia (Lexicography – The Lexicon of Diagnosis).
The book is not presented as a manual for formulating diagnoses, “but as a work intended for people who wish to protect themselves from diagnoses.”
Diagnosis is approached as a linguistic practice, imbued with culture, rather than as a neutral descriptive term, with its meaning shaped each time by the context and the relations of power that traverse it.
With his vivid, “rhizomatic” way of speaking - echoing the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - Barbetta extends his reflection across multiple fields, including culture, philosophy, contemporary physics, and art. At the same time, he offers examples from his own therapeutic conversations with people experiencing delusional states, which he does not treat solely as pathology, but also as potential sources of creative expression.
He revisits “older” tools, such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and genograms, through experimental approaches inspired by literature, poetry, and music. Within this perspective, technique. - though important - remains secondary to the individual’s unique “call,” or even “delirium,” which may function as a driving force for creation.
The discussion extends into contemporary philosophy and physics, questioning traditional ontological and logical principles. Thinkers such as Manuel DeLanda and Graham Harman, drawing on Edmund Husserl, explore the “dark” or withdrawn dimension of objects, suggesting that they are never fully accessible nor static.
From this perspective emerges a critique of the principle of non - contradiction (that A cannot be both A and non - A at the same time). Barbetta, instead, argues that life and reality are inherently contradictory: they are shaped by multiple perspectives and are in constant flux, beyond simple binary oppositions.
He distinguishes between “radiating” (paranoid) and “segmentary” delusions. Radiating delusions are characterised by a high degree of rationality and are linked to an obsessive need for control. This relates to Guattari’s idea that the repetition of symptoms is often connected to external structures of power rather than to internal features of personality.
Consequently, Barbetta emphasises that psychology should turn toward the social world and relations of power, rather than confining itself to intrapsychic structures. Subjective expression is thus understood as a response to events, forces, and pressures emerging from the external environment.
In the final part of the discussion, Barbetta offers a critique of the widespread “sanitisation” or “sterilisation” of contemporary society, particularly with regard to children. He expresses concern about the proliferation of diagnoses such as ADHD and Dyslexia, arguing that psychologists risk harming children by pathologising natural developmental variations. Educational and social systems, he notes, appear to be increasingly organised around an obsessive - almost capitalistic - pursuit of control and normalisation.
This obsessive need for control, he concludes, constitutes a trap - one from which systemic relational therapy, along with a critical stance toward diagnosis, may help individuals to disengage.
