Salvo Pitruzzella

What is imagination? On the one hand, it is what preserves the continuity of existence. We close our eyes, and the world vanishes: what does make us sure that it is still there, if not our imagination? On the other hand, it is the womb of possibilities: of what is not yet, and of what might be. But also, of what is not and never will be: in this sense, it is the root of falsehood and chimeras. We will see how its ambivalence is also its force, and we will discover how imagination has been differently judged: sometimes praised as a key function of our being in the world, sometimes condemned as a treacherous deception and self-deception. And we might grasp why, as Gaston Bachelard affirmed, “the journey in the far-off worlds of imagination may guide a dynamic psyche along a path in the land of infinity”

Salvo Pitruzzella is a pioneer of Dramatherapy in Italy. For over twenty-five years he has been Dramatherapy Course leader at the Arts Therapies Training Center – Lecco. Until 2022, he was also Professor of Arts Education and Creative Writing at the Academies of Fine Arts of Palermo and Bari. Member of the Executive Board of the EFD (European Federation of Dramatherapy). Honorary Member of the SPID (Società Professionale Italiana di Drammaterapia). External Examiner of the MA in Drama and Movement Therapy Program at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK. Italian Regional Representative at ECArTE (European Consortium for Arts Therapies). International Member of the BADTh (British Association of Dramatherapists), and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Dramatherapy Journal. He held workshops and lectures in Palermo and in many cities of Italy, as well as in the UK, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Belgium, Greece, USA, Malta, Germany, Poland, and Israel. He has written and edited several books, both in Italian and in English.