Portraits of Claudio: the butterfly, the dragon and the marmot

Received: 18 September 2005 Revised: 23 September 2005 Accepted: 28 September 2005 Among the many memories I have of Claudio there is one I would like to tell. Many many years ago, probably in the mid-1980s, we were having dinner with other people at the house of a mutual friend in Milan. We were playing a game – one of those after-dinner psychological party games. Each of us was asked to write secretly on a piece of paper the answer to the following questions. Each answer was to be given in terms of animals, associating a specific animal to each answer, with each answer then confronted and cross-evaluated. It was basically an exercise in selfdescription and self-exposure: