The Tartars and the desert. Reflections of a psychoanalyst from "Il deserto dei Tartari" by Dino Buzzati

Abstract

Buzzati’s romance suggests to the analyst, even in the best dreaming style of the author, as a long dream that develops from a situation of "passage" of a phase of life in which the capacity to containment of emotional experience is deeply into crisis. The crisis of the container, which is expressed from the very first lines of the story, set in motion the self-containment systems that should ensure avoidance of the traumatic experience: the negation of time, resulting in the suspension of the experience in a state of "waiting”, obsessional and “homosexuals” mechanisms tending to avoidance of any experience of different that can disrupt a seemingly reassuring homeostasis, are represented in the characters and situations of the “dream", to finally reach a dramatic vision of their consequences.