IL DECLINO DEL DESIDERIO

A ground-breaking in-depth study on a trend, written by an internationally renowned Italian psychoanalyst, writer and former president of International Association of Analytical Psychology.

A trend is underway in our Western society: sexual activity is steadily declining, especially among younger people, while the average age of first intercourse has increased. Not even the success of dating apps has corrected this course, proving even counterproductive. Yet, around such a crucial issue, unprecedented and full of implications, no real debate has yet been built. What is the origin of this abstention? And how is it possible for such a phenomenon to occur in societies that, thanks to the sexual revolution, seemed to have freed themselves from taboos and constraints? Psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja tries to answer these questions, starting with numbers and (international) data to discover the reasons for a general "escape from the intimacy of the bodies", in an attempt to finally bring sexuality back to the center of discourse, as Freud first did over a century ago. "Today one encounters endless 'prefigurations' of sexual desire. They no longer come from within the personality, like what we call eros, but come to us already packaged by the market, or by the pressure of certain groups. It is a total freedom only in words, which in fact is often experienced as imprisonment within the body and its functions." Luigi Zoja is a world-renowned psychoanalyst, born in 1943. He studied at the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich. He practices his profession in New York, where he writes and teaches psychoanalysis. He is president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and has served as president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. He has won two Gradiva Awards. Among his latest books: Il gesto di Ettore. Preistoria, storia, attualità e scomparsa del padre (2000), Storia dell'arroganza (2003), Giustizia e Bellezza (2007), La morte del prossimo (Einaudi, 2009), Paranoia. La follia che fa storia (Bollati Boringhieri, 2011) and Dialoghi sul male. Tre storie. (Bollati Boringhieri, 2022).