Pop pedagogy and adolescence

This communication aims to describe a psycopedagogical research path started in 2011 and still in progress. In 1994, Luisa Santelli Beccegato claimed a «more aggressive pedagogy, towards the past, in psychological and psychoanalytic terms» (1994: 306). In 2003, Michele Corsi wrote: «Supported by academic pedagogy (I do not consciously use the term: “scientific”, because both pedagogies: the popular and the academic have the right and duty to define themselves scientific), the popular one must instrumentally allow society to finally happen» (2003: 10). Thus, it became necessary for Italian Pedagogy to combine the new frontiers of Catholic Personalism (Neo Personalism) with psychoanalysis and popular culture. The newborn, according to Donald D. Winnicott, is equipped with spontaneity and a potential real Self, which effectively needs adequate answers by the mother (1980: 183). A good enough mother makes order in the omnipotence of the baby, by answering promptly and frequently to the needs of care: the immediate appearance (following the crying), within the perceptivity of the newborn, of the face of the mother (her looks, breast, cuddles, cares), gives the illusion of creating the world, granting the spontaneity of the Self (ivi: 184). The show’s magic and illusion are, from this viewpoint, revalidations of the early objective relationships. Biological birth corresponds to adolescent social birth. That’s why the Theory of Affective Myths (Charmet, Rosci, 1995; Miscioscia, 1999) can help researchers to better understand adolescence.