The charming illusion of possession, the ritual obligation of exchanging, the difficult art of sharing.

Abstract

The paper deals with the concepts of possession and exchange. The definitional characteristic of possession, that is impossible to get, is the destruction of the object possessed. Exchange is seen as a gift according to an anthropological perspective, by analyzing Marcel Mauss’s viewpoint in clinical psychological terms. Apart these two concepts, the topic of sharing is proposed as the agreement of the relationship with a third object, that attracts the interest of the actors of the relationship itself.