The relationship between philosophy and psychology could be introduced by resuming freely two episodes occurred to the first two recognized exponents of the respective disciplines, Talete and Freud. The fall of Talete in the well and the astonishment of Freud in front of the picture of the Monna Lisa can symbolize the characteristic of surprise, but also of encounter-clash of the philosophy and the psychology with an unexpected reality, reassumed in both with the smile, the smile of the servant Tracia (...) and the smile of the Gioconda: two smiles that show the presence of a greater wealth of the knowledge which they inaugurated. These two smiles can highlight the tasks of instruction and criticism to which philosophy and psychology refer reciprocally: to be aware of the risk of reductivism, the conceit to enclose the complexity of man and life in a banal formula, a risk always existing and fascinating, in order to face the effort of undertaking more complex and multiple ways, open to the mystery of existence. (shrink)