Contents
Professional Acclaim
“Meeting Vincenzo Sanguineti was an event that shaped my next steps, a bifurcation point, and the ensuing results were very fruitful, in that we arranged together two courses at the national meetings of the American Psychiatric Association that were a great success. On those occasions I could appreciate his broad mind and deep knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurochemistry, and his expressed discomfort with the current existence of only a few theories of the mind and the fact that psychoanalysts and neuroscientists are often too dogmatic and closed in their own convictions to be able to cooperate in a positive way.”
From the foreword by Dr. Donatella Marazziti
Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Neurobiology, Pharmacology and Biotechnology, University of Pisa; Director, Laboratory of Psychopharmacology, University of Pisa; Author of “ La Natura dell’Amore” (“The Nature of Love”, 2002)
“Working at a level that transcends individual academic disciplines, Dr. Sanguineti sees three main subcultures that need to be introduced to each other. The first of these is mathematical science, with its ancient traditions, curious logic, and symbolic jottings that seem meaningless except to those who (strangely) find them exciting. Second is the subjective domain, from where we retrieve descriptions of that inner space that we call our psyche and that finds its finest expression in the arts, which predate recorded human history and continue to fascinate and confuse (not necessarily in that order) those trained in the sciences. Yet art springs directly from spirit and cries to be heard. Finally are observations of human mind and spirit by those who deal directly with it without preconceived limits on what they are allowed to see: the author's "objective observers.”
From the foreword by Alwyn Scott
Emeritus Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona; Professor, Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modeling, Technical University of Denmark; Author of “Stairway to the Mind: the Controversial New Science of Consciousness” (1995); “Nonlinear science: Emergence and Dynamics of Coherent Structures” (1999); “Neuroscience: a Mathematical Primer” (2002)
“What this ambitious project captures is the necessary, inalienable mystery of the self, the fact that each of our languages for it remains provisional and open. Yet far from being locked in the domain of the religious, the obscure and the esoteric, this mystery is connected with the rigours of scientific investigation and intellectual analysis. To me, this seems appropriate to the task: only the full, unreserved powers of the human intellect in all its variety can deal with the mystery of the human self, without ever absolutely reducing the awe, curiosity and sense of open-ended challenge it will always provoke.”
From the foreword by Nick Mansfield
Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy Macquarie University; Author of: Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway (2000); Cultural Studies and Critical Theory (with Patrick Fuery, 2000); Masochism: The Art of Power (1997); Cultural Studies and the New Humanities: Concepts and Controversies (with Patrick Fuery, 1997); To Die of Desire. (1993)
“As Dr. Sanguineti concludes from his courageous exploratory plunge into the historic phantasmagoria of the human psyche, the recognition of the sovereignty of subjectivity is the great missing link and, therefore, the crucial reality that has eluded conventional scientific explanation of such a vast and seemingly undecipherable challenge as the human psyche. The subjective experience of reading Dr. Sanguineti's Rosetta Stone was quite interesting and relatively unique. At the conclusion of reading most books, there is a feeling of conclusion, a sort of "well; that's that" finalization that the subject matter has supplied information and now the experience of its perusal is over and relatively "done with." This book resulted in an altogether different response in that, at its conclusion, there was the feeling of having really just started to understand its content. I found myself rereading the book which, in itself, is quite unusual.”