“TRACES” Presentation

A Conversation with Jen Dragon and Luca Caldironi

Jen: Let's begin with a simple question. Why did you write Traces?

Many people write books to explain something or offer answers. Traces seems to do something different. What first moved you to write it?

Luca: I didn't write this book because I felt I had answers to offer. I wrote it because I kept encountering questions that refused to disappear.

As a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and someone who has spent many years immersed in the world of contemporary art, I've spent much of my life working with people and artists trying to make sense of experiences that couldn't immediately be explained. Over time, I came to realize that psychoanalysis and art share something fundamental: neither begins with certainty. Both begin with attention.

Traces grew out of that realization. It is an invitation to remain close to experience before we rush to explain it.

Jen: Although you're Italian, you chose to write Traces directly in American English. That's a rather unusual decision for a first book. What inspired that choice? Was it simply about reaching a wider audience, or did writing in another language actually change the way you experienced and developed the ideas in the book?

Luca: People often ask me that.

Of course, writing in English allows the book to reach a wider audience. But there were several deeper reasons as well.

Writing in a language that isn't my native one forced me to think more carefully. I couldn't rely on familiar expressions or cultural habits. Every sentence had to be rediscovered. In many ways, writing in English became part of the very experience the book describes: remaining in uncertainty long enough for something genuinely new to emerge.

There was also a more personal reason. There is an old Latin saying, Nemo propheta in patria—"No one is a prophet in their own land." I don't interpret it as a criticism of one's homeland, but as a reminder that sometimes distance allows us to see more clearly. Stepping outside my native language helped me hear new resonances, discover unexpected meanings, and think in ways that might not have been possible otherwise.

And finally, writing this book in American English was also my way of expressing gratitude. Over the past several years, New York—and especially the extraordinary artists, scholars, friends, and colleagues I have met here—has welcomed me with remarkable generosity. This book is, in part, a way of giving something back. Not as a gesture of politeness, but as a sincere expression of appreciation for a community that encouraged me to think, create, and continue exploring new paths.

So presenting Traces here, in the Hudson Valley, feels especially meaningful to me. In some sense, it feels less like arriving with a finished book than like bringing a conversation back to the people and the place that helped make it possible.

Jen: The title is Traces. Why "traces"?

What does a trace represent for you, and why do you believe it is such an important image for understanding contemporary life?

Luca: A trace is different from a map.

A map tells you where to go. A trace simply tells you that someone—or something—has passed through before you.

I think contemporary life constantly asks us for certainty, while traces ask something different. They ask us to pay attention.

A trace doesn't eliminate uncertainty. It allows us to move within it.

Jen: Throughout the book you return to uncertainty—not as something to overcome, but as something to inhabit. Why?

Today we are surrounded by systems promising certainty, prediction, and quick solutions. Why do you believe uncertainty has become such an important ethical and psychological space?

Luca: Because uncertainty is not the opposite of thinking.

Very often it is the condition that makes thinking possible.

Today we live in a culture that values immediate answers, constant productivity, and prediction. But human experience doesn't unfold that way.

Love doesn't.
Grief doesn't.
Creativity doesn't.

The capacity to remain with uncertainty is not weakness. It is one of our deepest human strengths.

Jen: The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion is a central presence throughout the book.

For someone who has never read Bion, what is the single most important idea you hope readers take away from his work?

Luca: If I had to summarize Bion in one sentence, I would say this:

The mind grows not by accumulating knowledge, but by becoming capable of transforming experience.

Bion taught us that thinking is not simply processing information. It is an emotional achievement.

His famous idea of approaching experience "without memory or desire" isn't about forgetting everything. It's about remaining sufficiently open for reality to surprise us.