Baby gang of Siena, Barillà: ‘Serious facts but we are not talking about a young emergency’
The case of young girls who humiliated, offended and mocked their victims on social media, then lured them with threats or deceptions in secluded places to beat them has recently opened the debate on what is hidden in adolescents who perform similar gestures. “This is a very serious story, but fortunately it is not the norm”, explains the psychotherapist
The violent attacks on other girls by the female baby gang of Sienaas well as generating dismay, raising a number of important questions about the younger generation. Questions that are added to those that have emerged in these two years, a time of pandemic and, lately, also of war. We wanted to speak with Domenico Barrilà, an Adlerian analyst and psychotherapist, author of numerous volumes, often translated abroad, several of which are dedicated precisely to the stages of personality development. Let’s start from the end and then from the very recent events in Siena.
What is happening to our kids?
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That of Siena is a very serious affair, but fortunately it is not the norm, most kids live their lives taking it very seriously. In the morning they get up, many go to work, even more go to school, sometimes enduring the pains of the teachers much more than they endure those of the boys. The unpleasant facts of Siena cannot be generalized, yet we cannot avoid asking ourselves how great the exasperation, the sense of failure, the inner suffering are, if they lead us to decide that the only way to respond is blind destruction. .
An invitation to prudence, yet there is much talk of youth emergency.
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Keep in mind that youth represents a huge and thriving market, which is why it is newsworthy. These premises amplify the resonance of the phenomena they produce, making them always excessive, even when they are. A market that is also of great interest to professionals, who know the sensitivity of society towards young people and pitch a few tents in the new generations. Let’s assume that I found a center against youth violence and I appoint myself president. If you enter the words “youth violence center psychology” in a search engine, I will come out and become a reference for the press. If you then ask me questions about juvenile violence, which is the reason for my existence, you can imagine what I will answer.
On the cover of his volume “Tutti Bulli”, released a couple of years ago by Feltrinelli, there is a very explanatory subtitle “Why a violent society wants to try our children”.
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There is no earthly paradise around children, but rather a violent, Darwinian and overwhelming society. Asking them to be better than us is not a stroke of genius, because we cannot take children where we ourselves are unable to go.
So you don’t share the most pessimistic positions on the new generations?
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One cannot be ideological when the new generations are involved, one must adhere, as far as possible, to reality, which is rarely so radical, not to mention that young people do not even make a tenth of the disasters that we adults make, war is there to testify. Some say that men make wars and women have to fight, add that adults declare wars and boys have to fight.
What is the risk of ideological standpoints when speaking of children, also with regard to the effects of the pandemic on them. Do you think there has been an overestimation of the effects of the pandemic on children?
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I really think so. Even in ordinary conditions it seems impossible to me to dare a serious reading of the child and youth universe, more variegated than the adult one, compressing it into some stereotyped traits, nor does it seem serious to me to drag the children and young people who have measured themselves against Covid into a psychological hospital. 19 and now with the war.
What can you see from your station?
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Keep in mind that my work does not take place only in the clinical space, I often travel around the country, holding seminars and conferences, within these my interactions there have been many young people with whom I have confronted, often in meetings dedicated exclusively to them. It has not happened to me to register particular manifestations of malaise, on the contrary they have often been admired by the balance and composure of their contributions. Not even among my young patients did I seem to grasp a sensational criticality. This does not mean that the children in these two years have enjoyed themselves, but I certainly feel that they have faced and passed the exam better than many adults.
What are your impressions and your judgments on the new generations?
I am a lover of bi-directional education, I consider the contribution of children and young people in the construction of the evolved educational act to be inevitable, often their gaze captures details that escape us. Excluding their version is equivalent to running with only one leg, which is why listening to them is not an act of magnanimity on the part of enlightened adults, but an advantage, a chance to take advantage of whenever it is offered to us.
Does it also apply to these years of pandemic and war?
Mostly. I always learn from the encounter with the younger generations, it has been like this even in these singular years. It is a question of understanding whether we want to emphasize the exceptions because they make an audience and to gain inhabited benefits, or if we want to dare to the inhabited reality, without being disturbed by the young, even if it was not easy for them.
Excluding excesses, what prices could children and young people have paid in these 26 breathless months?
You reverse your question, asking me what benefits can come from this demanding crossing. In the last fifty years it had never happened to live such a testing existential condition, the minors have nourished themselves from these events, maturing significant reflections and learning, while for us adults forced stops were only the pretext to take the momentum and leave more still strong, as if nothing had happened. I would definitely say that the kids have learned more.
Yet, there are those who speak of a real explosion of malaise in the youth groups. Where does this phenomenon come from?
It should be asked of those who one day yes and the other also launch alarms and foresee cataclysms, with the kind collaborations of the media who, obviously it seems, between a reflective reading and an alarmist one are more attracted to the second, forgetting, for example, to ask themselves how children and young people were doing well before the pandemic, which has now turned into a large incinerator of responsibility.
So, does children’s malaise precede the pandemic?
Look, the pandemic was just a big reveal of previous frailties. The people who felt more exposed in the face of this event – and not only for the boys – are the same ones whose inner landscape already showed sometimes predisposing turbulence. There is a serious lack of meaning that often runs through people’s lives, under water from the personal categories, often fueled by unprecedented expectations, which also infiltrate everyday language, investing the new generations head on. Vulgar expressions such as winning, great, top player, are a pedagogical suicide, this is what gives psychology not viruses.
As a mother, I am very struck by this reading, not spectacular but very close to what we parents experience in everyday life.
In these long months, also marked by conspicuous and painful time wasters, we have been accompanied by science, which has avoided catastrophic outcomes. Here, it is a certainty to be given to the younger generations, we must remind them that we are not alone in the face of adversity and this too at the mercy of chance.
There was no lack of criticism of science, doubts and closing positions.
Humanity wins its battles only with the division of labor and trust in its cooperative nature, in this game science plays a decisive role, especially if it is not treated as a religion. Sunday I was visiting the cemetery, I passed in front of an old sector, it housed people born in the second half of the nineteenth century, well the sixty years was a wall that only a few exceeded. Today that wall has moved, it is placed after the age of eighty. It is the consequence of a collective action, made up of study, research, tenacity. We say thanks to those who have engaged in this great choral action, the wonders which are only at the beginning. If we find ourselves here today, after two heavy years, it is because we have put the virus on the ropes, we are in the end who are about to win.
What role could the school play in all of this?
We consider that students represent one sixth of the Italian population, not counting teachers, school staff and all those who live from school, such as booksellers, stationers, service providers. If we add the parents of the students to these individuals, we come to 30 million stakeholders. The school, therefore, is not an enclave, a creature in itself, but represents the entire country. Its role could be revolutionary if it were accompanied with greater shrewdness, even by a good psychology which, instead of continuing to prefigure catastrophic scenarios, should imagine how it can be useful.
A final message for young and old.
In recent weeks, a leaflet appeared on the internet, reproducing a sentence, which I had written in an article published in a national newspaper, in which we spoke precisely of the issue we are addressing. “There has been a lot of malaise around, of course, sometimes a lot, but luckily it was not monopolized only by the boys. Maybe you should lose the habit of talking about them not to talk about us ”. I hope the message is clear, to adults, children and specialists who see pure diseases in the buttonholes of the coat.
Domenico Barrilà, Adlerian analyst and writer, is considered one of the leading Italian psychotherapists.
He is the author of about thirty volumes, all reprinted, many taken abroad. Among the last ones we remember “The bonds that help us to live”, “What I don’t see of my son”, “The super-connected”, “Tutti Bulli”, “We stay together. The strength of interdependence to be reborn “, all published by Feltrinelli, as well as the Bildungsroman” La casa di Henriette “(Ed. Sonda).
In his production there is no shortage of works for children, such as the series “Growing without collateral effects” (Ed. Carthusia).
He is the author of the service blog, for educators, https://vocedelverbostare.net/