Emilio Rivolta is afflicted by a mood disturbance. To be precise, he is a type two bipolar personality. For years, aware of his condition, he has entrusted his thoughts and experiences to psychiatrists and psychologists who were more or less communicative and more or less bearded. He undertook lengthy and cockeyed therapies, often not very effective, but always costly. The failed attempts at healing are countless, as are the erroneous diagnoses. But In the Needle Room, in the hospital ward where the Alchemists, a team of neuropsychiatrists act as angels, Emilio gets drops of relief and finds someone from his past. After leaving the Little City of his childhood for the Big City where he works with scarce enthusiasm as a freelance journalist and was abandoned by a woman unable to accept his disorder, Emilio joins a Self-help Group where, In the midst of “blood brothers”, he feels at ease and bonds with some. Then, tired of useless and costly specialists, he takes up Word Therapy with women in nightclubs and prostitutes. Convinced that his method could also be good for others, he spreads it and makes proselytes. Emilio’s days are marked by breakdowns, rehabilitation, relapses and then, comebacks, euphoria and the abyss. Every morning, when he wakes up, life gets under his skin, fierce, intense and shocking. Perhaps this Malaise of Living in the final analysis is just a cursed form of intelligence, an orientation for people who feel tossed back and forth between soul and matter, between the desire for light and the dark reality of the world.