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"The Deadly Torsions of War and Confinement and the Path of Mindfulness"
A Meeting with Claude AnShin Thomas, Renato Curcio, and Nicola Valentino
 

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NICOLA - First of all I would like to tell you how we decided to have this meeting with Claude. Roberto Mander, who is well acquainted with the researches on reclusion that Renato and I are carrying out within the cooperative  Sensibili alle Foglie, decided to tell  us about Claude. In Spring 1997 I had the pleasure to have Claude at my house, where we had lunch together. We took to each other immediately, and we both had the feeling that our life experiences had something very deep in common. Later I read the book Claude wrote about the war he had to fight once he was back home from Vietnam. I read it very carefully, together with Renato. The ways in which Claude is facing a war after the war helps us to deeply understand the experience of reclusion that we are living and to consider the issues of a prison after the prison, of a mental hospital after the mental hospital, of  a concentration camp after the concentration camp.

For many years Renato and I have been dealing with the experiences of  people confined in total institutions, as in our case. The question is: How can secluded people manage not to die? What resources do they have to be able to survive day after day?

A total institution is a deadly experience for those who are confined in it.  These individuals are humiliated as social

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