The Kid by Charlie Chaplin: story of a masterpiece. From trauma to creativity

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA
Author/s Paola Golinelli
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/2
Language Italian Pages 8 P. 126-133 File size 141 KB
DOI 10.3280/PSP2022-002007
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Browsing through Chaplin’s autobiography and the long and painful account of the traumas that punctuated his childhood, the autor searches in the miserable esperiences in the vaudeville milieu for the roots of his need to fantasise and crete new representations that would allow him to process the grief he suffered. His appears, given the extent of his artistic production, to be a "stubborn" need to survive psychically. His parents woeked together in the theatreand he had frequented the stage as a child together with his brother; for him, the world of performance was inextricably linked to the life-giving experience of the parental couple united in a common passion, which his mother kept alive with her fantastic tales, and which would remain imprinted in the memory of the child Chaplinm even after the loss of his mother through her hospitalization. From this nucleus of vital memories will be born the unforgettable character of the Tramp, who takes on and synthesie the misery of his origins and the extraordinary energy to contin-ue to narrate and tus reconstruct the lost and rediscovered family, in particular, to recompose the father and son couple, to which "The kid" is larged dedicated. His love for Dickens, in particular Oliver Twist, provided him with the literary background to build his most famous and beloved character, the Tramp.

Keywords: trauma, creativity, internal finding of parental coupe, representation.

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Paola Golinelli, The Kid di Charlie Chaplin: storia di un capolavoro. Dal trauma alla creatività in "PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA" 2/2022, pp 126-133, DOI: 10.3280/PSP2022-002007