Free Sweet Dreams by Massimo Gramellini Page A

unemotional tone and using the third person.
    In the chapter entitled “Diagnosis” I wrote: “Since the trauma caused by his mother’s death has alienatedthe patient’s real self, everything he does, thinks and says does not originate from his own self but rather from a dysfunctional personality which has developed over the years and might be said to have taken over his life.”
    But how could the patient recover his real self? The chapter entitled “Prognosis” dealt with this question. It had as many “shoulds” and “musts” in it as any politician’s hustings speech.
    â€œWe must deactivate the intellect and the senses, both of which have been unavoidably compromised. The instinct, as the only structural component of personality unaffected by the trauma, should be freed.”
    These were not straightforward problems. What could put me in touch with that “structural component” if not my—now completely superannuated—intellect and senses? But, even more important, who was to say that this entire dossier was not the product of the dysfunctional personality who had usurped my life rather than of my authentic self ?
    In this way my self-analysis got so tangled up in itself that it took weeks to find a way of extricating it. Then, one Sunday morning, as I was opening the windows to air the smoke-filled room, something suddenly dawned on me: if I wanted to recover my real self, I needed to open the windows there too and let the fresh air in.
    It had nothing to do with setting off in a car or on a train: it was an interior journey I had to undertake. I would erase my past life, setting the hands of the clock back to the first morning I’d woken up to find I was without a mother. I fixed the precise time my new life would begin: 11:11 on the following day. But, when the time came, I happened to be sitting on the toilet, hardly the best place for an initiation ceremony.
    So Belfagor agreed to give my real self another twenty-four hours, which turned into forty-eight—and then seventy-two. I’d got stuck again.
    After further bouts of reclusiveness and raving, one evening I exultantly burst open the door of my bedroom to tell Sveva, the only person with whom I’d maintained at least the appearance of human contact, that I’d finally found the solution. In order to find my real self I needed to readjust the balance which had been destroyed when my mother died by bringing her back to life as well, through imagination.
    If I could have done, I would have drawn her—this time without a bunch of grapes in her hand. All I did, instead, was try and bring her ID details up to date.
    She’d have been fifty-six years old—still looking young for her years, although (I liked to think) perhaps a tad overweight: she’d always had a sweet tooth.
    What would her voice be like when she spoke to me? I no longer remembered how it sounded. Her blond hair—I’d lost the sensation of its fragrance—what color would it be now? And her clothes? Would the wardrobe in which I used to play hide-and-seek as a child still be full of the same two-piece suits?
    I circled round and round my mental cage. It was a prelude to madness.
----
    One day I ventured out onto the landing and saw Palmira—now on her own after Tiglio had died—surrounded by shopping bags. She took a look at the dark rings under my eyes, the scrappy beard and the thinning hair at the back of my neck. Despite her understandable hesitation, she stroked my cheek.
    â€œYou’re no longer the laddie I remember. You’ve got cold. If you’d had some warmth round you when you were growing up, if your poor mother had been alive . . .”
    â€œOnly failures use the word ‘if ’! You achieve greatness in life in spite of . ”
    I’d defended myself by parroting Father Nico’s How to Become an Übermensch , but I knew