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The only truly alien planet is Earth. - UniCA Eprints - Università degli ...

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all’epoca era rivolta verso la ricerca del proprio ‘vero sé’ che m<strong>is</strong>tic<strong>is</strong>mo orientale e cultura<br />

l<strong>is</strong>ergica parevano permettere di raggiungere e far emergere. 127<br />

Uno <strong>degli</strong> slogan più famosi della controcultura psichedelica era “turn on, tune in, drop out”,<br />

coniato dal guru del LSD Timothy Leary. Lo stesso Leary raccolse in seguito sotto questo titolo una<br />

raccolta di saggi riguardanti, tra le altre cose, Aldous Huxley - nel suo Brave New World troviamo<br />

una droga chiamata ‘soma’ -, la neurologia e le droghe psichedeliche. Negli anni in cui la cultura<br />

dell’LSD era al suo apice Ballard volle sperimentarla personalmente. Accadde una volta sola, ma<br />

gli fu utile per dare alla v<strong>is</strong>ionarietà che caratterizza <strong>The</strong> Crystal World e <strong>The</strong> Unlimited Dream<br />

Company una connotazione dec<strong>is</strong>amente psichedelica. Non sorprende peraltro che, in funzione di<br />

quella costruzione mitologica dello ‘scrittore Ballard’ come personaggio della vita reale, notata<br />

dalla Oramus e da altri studiosi, l’autore abbia rilasciato in alcune interv<strong>is</strong>te dichiarazioni<br />

contrastanti quanto alla data e all’impatto della sua esperienza con l’LSD.<br />

Correttamente Stephenson individua un legame comune tra Ballard, Laing e Huxley in<br />

relazione al rapporto tra l’io conscio e un sé più profondo. Ballard condivide con lo psichiatra l’idea<br />

che ognuno di noi abbia atteggiamenti ambivalenti r<strong>is</strong>petto alla propria identità individua le e quella<br />

sociale 128 ; con l’autore di Brave New World l’idea che es<strong>is</strong>tano diversi livelli di consapevolezza 129 .<br />

Emblematica, per quanto riguarda la concezione della follia di Laing, la paradossale affermazione<br />

di un personaggio di Running Wild, secondo il quale «in a totally sane society, madness <strong>is</strong> the <strong>only</strong><br />

freedom» [p. 84]. Gli stati alterati di coscienza sono strettamente connessi ad alcune forme di<br />

creatività, tra le quali il sogno e la scrittura automatica, ma anche la follia e il delirio, nel<br />

J. G. Ballard’, in Vale and Juno (a cura di), Re/Search, pp. 42-52, p. 45].» Jeannette Baxter, J. G. Ballard’s Surreal<strong>is</strong>t<br />

Imagination, op. cit., p. 28.<br />

127 «[R.D.] Laing in fact writes more sympathetically of Jung’s therapeutic technique and Jung’s conception of the<br />

psychic apparatus <strong>is</strong> indeed more “affirmative” than Freud’s. Without any apparent theor<strong>is</strong>ation of a bar of repression<br />

between conscious and individual unconscious, and without any sense of the foundational necessity [corsivo<br />

dell’autore] of the unconscious for the constitution of subjectivity, the process of individuation <strong>is</strong> simply a union which<br />

arrives at the (re)possession of the Self, the completely self-knowing, self-intending apocalyptic consciousness. Th<strong>is</strong><br />

can be connected, in inadequate shorthand, to the process of “tuning in”, establ<strong>is</strong>hing a relation to the <strong>alien</strong>ated inner<br />

self as that “true self” suppressed by Western culture, that so dominated the Sixties “regime of truth”.» R. Luckhurst,<br />

op. cit., p. 359.<br />

128 «<strong>The</strong> ego, according to Laing, <strong>is</strong> a self-validating but <strong>only</strong> very partial and limited mode of consciousness. […] we<br />

repress and res<strong>is</strong>t the Self, or our inner identity, while desperately cultivating the ego, our instrument for adapting to the<br />

external world. […] Again, like Jung, Eliade, and Campbell, Laing views the evolutionary direction of consciousness as<br />

that of a movement from ego to Self, from the illusion of “identity-anchored, space-and-time-bound experience” [<strong>The</strong><br />

Politics of Experience, p. 96], to the experience of transcendence. One way of accompl<strong>is</strong>hing th<strong>is</strong> journey, especially in<br />

the context of our secular, material<strong>is</strong>tic culture, <strong>is</strong> to go mad. Madness, Laing observes, “need not be all breakdown. It<br />

may also be break-through”[ivi, p. 93]. <strong>The</strong>re are some striking parallels between the writing of Laing and that of J.G.<br />

Ballard. Both share the notion that we are profoundly ambivalent with regard to our individual identities and our<br />

collective social identity, that we are clinging determinedly, apprehensively, to an illusion while at the same time forces<br />

within our psyches are working to overturn that illusion. Both writers also share the belief that “breakdown” and<br />

“break-through” are inextricably intertwined […].» G. Stephenson, op. cit., p. 7.<br />

129 «Beyond ego-identity, according to Huxley, there are higher, larger degrees of awareness, including what he calls the<br />

“not-I”, which possesses “a greater power and a completer knowledge” than the ego-mind, as well as other unknown<br />

modes of consciousness that ultimately are identical with Universal Mind.» Ivi, p. 8.<br />

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