Research journey
Research through books and encounters
Sauro Tronconi’s books and meetings address a question concerning everyday life: what enables a human being to stay in touch with themselves as time, culture and their environment transform their experience?
Since the late 1970s, this work has developed through study, travel and encounters with people. Philosophy and self-knowledge intertwine with writing, the development of the Self Method and seminars. Today, memory, attention and freedom of choice are central, including in our relationship with technology.
01
Origins
The research took shape in the late 1970s through engagement with anti-psychiatry, humanistic psychology, bioenergetics, philosophy and Eastern traditions. Its starting point is not allegiance to a school but observation of the human being as a bodily, emotional, mental and cultural system.
02
Field research
India, the United States, London, Japan, Indo-Tibetan regions and the Middle East have been places of study, encounter and examination. Not a collection of journeys, but direct engagement with practices, symbolic systems and different conceptions of the human being. This work has made it possible to distinguish what belongs to a tradition from what can be translated into contemporary life and tested there.
03
From experience to method
This phase gave rise to Espande, the Self Method and sustained work on attention, the body and self-awareness. Seminars and lectures became a workshop for testing languages, techniques and hypotheses. The aim is not to build a closed system but to offer tools that each person can test in their own experience.
04
From training to current research
Over time, predominantly experiential work broadened into philosophical and cultural research into memory, identity, automatic patterns and personal continuity. The digital environment introduces a new question: what happens to the ability to remember, choose and judge when attention and memory are progressively delegated to platforms and automated systems?
05
Today’s work
- A body of essays, fiction and short stories: published works on self-knowledge, inner life, memory and culture. Zombificazione digitale develops the theme of attention in the technological environment.
- The publishing programme includes the complete manuscripts Il principio della memoria, La specie inaffidabile, La vita in nostra assenza and L’industria dell’altrove. The status of each work and materials for publishers are presented on the Es·Books page.
- Seminars, lectures and programmes in which ideas, attention techniques and symbolic languages are explored through experience and dialogue.
- The Research & AI line, devoted to the relationship between human consciousness, memory, metacognition and responsibility in the use of intelligent systems.
- Article writing, fiction and audiovisual work, and dialogue with publishers and cultural institutions.
06
Verifiable credits
Sauro Tronconi has published essays and fiction with Castelvecchi, Pendragon, EdUP and Il Ponte Vecchio, alongside his seminar work. In 2010, he co-authored a pilot study on self-awareness published in Psychological Reports and indexed in PubMed. He wrote the original story for the animated short film Lo specchio di Lorenzo, produced by beQ entertainment for Rai Ragazzi and broadcast on Rai Yoyo. He founded Espande, established the Self Method and participates in the cultural and audiovisual work of beQ Entertainment.
This journey is also reflected in programmes from the libraries of Coredo and Merano, reports of lectures in Cosenza, and recordings of meetings in Turin and Forlì. A selection of these documents is available in the press kit with sources.
Biographies, references and materials for journalists, universities and institutions are collected on the Media & Institutions page.
The thread is not the succession of activities but the continuity of the question. How can human beings remain present to themselves as the tools, languages and forms of collective life change?