Dal soggetto neuro al soggetto pulsionale. Quali istituzioni?

The spirit of time is characterized by a biological reductionism, that is, it tends to reduce the mind to the functioning of the brain: the subject is its brain. So, its behaviors, its thoughts, its actions are the expression of what it really is, a series of neuronal circuits stimulated by the environment. In this cultural context, every discipline is made credible only if it has a label to certify it the “neuro” label. The latter gives an image of science wherever it is placed: neuro-psychology, neuro-sociology, neuro-economics and so on. In other words, neuroscience has become a point of reference for many disciplines and, for many, the validation or falsification of the-ories. But what becomes of the subject when it is interpreted with such an approach? Nevertheless, in this supposed scientific knowledge, which presents itself as a homogeneous whole, there is - as always - a diversity of paradigms that, summarily, can be circumscribed in two positions, the adaptationist and the extended. If the first is ultradarwinist, because focused only on the activity of genes, the second does not untie natural selection from the historical-cultural context. But the opposition is only apparent. The work, therefore, presents the two neuro paradigms most in vogue today, demonstrating how reductionism becomes inevitable, even for those who tend not to want to confine subjectivity to a link between synapses. Then, every form of deviance becomes something «sick» that must be «adjusted». Institutions can therefore only turn into a hospital-reformatory, where everyone must learn the right way to be in society. On the contrary, with Deleuze, Guattari and the institutional psychotherapy, another way of accommodating the so-called deviance has been created, a way where this is not to be re-educated but to be listened to.