Entries by @dmin

From the top to words: conduction and transformation in a therapeutic group of children

Abstract In my experience with groups of children (beginning age 4-5 years old, children with an intellective level in the average and with development blocks more or less important: sometimes I also included a child with a psychotic personality structure) I noted that the conductors have different functions, according to the group’s different moments, functions […]

Reality and fiction for the therapeutic couple

Article already published in the Notebook n. 14 – July-December 2001 of the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy of Milan edited by the Pisa-Rome International Polygraphic Institutes Abstract The necessity to have a precise time and a limited place where the group processes could take place, is a fundamental requirement for the survival of […]

The adult therapist in health services: between parents and public institution

Abstract We could affirm that in the Institution’s base, that has mental health as an aim, in a paradoxical way we can find a primitive psychic functioning, thus infantile. This infantile position seems to constitute the link between the three original objects: Institution, therapist, parents. The three objects are linked by a common affiliation and […]

The therapist and the group of deviant adolescents

Abstract I chose to talk about a sexual crime because I think it’s particularly interesting following the working-through in the group of a crime against a person and not against property, that represents the most diffused kind of adolescent crimes. It is also interesting, for describing the therapist’s position difficulties, that she not only represents […]

By our selves or in pairs? Problems and resources of two different group conduction modalities

Abstract We shall conclude asserting that the comparison between mono-therapy and co-therapy has to be pursued according to the fact that they are to be considered not only like two interchangeable dispositives, but like two technical fundamentally different, with the possibilities of different applications, according to the needs to which the therapist is called to […]

The poliphonic texture of intersubjectivity in the dream

Abstract My research on the Dream are based on the hypothesis that it is developed in the polyphonic texture of the interdiscourse. This assumption owes a lot to the work of M. Bakhtine and his followers. Bakhtine introduced the idea that the literary structure is elaborated at the crossing of several structures, just as the […]

Dreams: are they personal or social?

Abstract The history and lineage of dreams is ancient, mysterious and revelatory. Dreams have been used for prophecy, fortune-telling, for access to the spirit world and for extending our vision beyond our diurnal limits. Ancient Greece sought healing through sleep and dreams; Bion asserts the psychotic hallucinates because he cannot dream, cannot use normal dream […]

An Image Mediator in a Dream Mediator within a Group

Abstract The image as a mediator in individual therapy and in group sessions provides the occasion to mobilise the primary process of the unconscious, in a movement of regression necessary to any initial visualisation. Starting with this type of visualisation, it is possible to reach an authentic process of symbolisation. By “symbolisation”, I mean the […]

Dreamtelling as a request for containment and elaboration in group therapy

Abstract The traditional, intrapersonal way of working with dreams has been enriched by an interpersonal approach (Ferenczi, 1913, Kanzer 1955). Dreaming may no longer be viewed as an exclusively internal and autonomous working-trough (event) occurrence, as classical approaches suggest (Freud 1900, 1932, Meltzer 1983). Containment and elaboration of the exciting and the dreadful in dreams […]

The advent of a dream in a group of children

Abstract This paper follows the perspective suggested by Francesco Corrao in his writings on groups (F. Corrao, 1998), taking up some of the elements present in clinical practice that help to describe the question of dreams in a small early-childhood analytical group. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first I treat the […]

Children who dream in groups

Abstract Working with a group of children borders on an oneiric experience, a tale, a cloth so complex as to make it hard to pick out the warp and woof of the dream. The group and its members rarely “relate” the dream; they tend to “dream” the dream. What follows is drawn from an experiential […]

Primordial group and oneiric images

Abstract The purpose of this communication is to present configurations that become evident as dream- or oneiric images. These images are expressed mainly in ludic activities of children during parents-children’s therapy sessions with the approach named by me as “Parents-Children Joint Therapeutic Interventions”. Such approach was inspired on Esther Bick’s Observation method, as well ason […]

A treatening dream in a homogeneous group of patients expecting kidney transplants

Abstract This is an account of a Brief Analytic Group Psychotherapy experience with patients with chronic renal damage who were being dialyzed while waiting to receive kidney transplants. This practice was carried out in 1997, in the Psychiatric Liaison Unit of the Psychiatry Division of Hospital El Salvador, in Santiago, Chile. The authors had the […]

Psychoanalytical field and process

Abstract The conception of a psychoanalytical process derives from the mental models within which we operate. The epistemological perspective of mental phenomena considers emotionality to be the source of meaning for links and the seed of the thoughts which will develop the thinking aparatus. The elaboration task lies on the ways of processing emotional experiences […]

Research on the gender in the composition of a workshop of photography for schizophrenics, its role in the therapeutic efficiency

Abstract  The present research studies the effects of the gender, in a workshop of expression of a photolanguage type within schizophrenic adults. The initial question was the one of a possible influence of the composition of the groups of therapy, in terms of gender, during the observed processes What is the incidence of the distribution […]

Bus as therapy group setting metaphor: Lista de Espera, a journey inside the group

Abstract Bus as therapy group setting metaphor: Lista de Espera, a journey inside the group. Abstract-This work aims to analyze the film “Lista de espera”, from the perspective of group dynamics working among the passengers of a bus station. The interest is placed on the foundation of the group and the conflict that is generated […]

Dream telling as a request for containment – approaching dreams intersubjectively

Abstract The dream as a means of access to the contents of the individual and unconscious element in the psychoanalytic discipline is revisited in the light of inter-factor, considering the functions it performs within the group context, with particular reference to the nature of communication and relational request . Food for thought comes from clinical […]

A ten moons journey: Women groups and birth support

Abstract Today women are more and more exposed to a stressed way of managing their pregnancy and to a cultural contest dominated by birth fear and by the expectations for the newborn health. These fears dominate many pregnant women’s brain and emotions causing a rising in the stress hormone production. This causes a chronic stress […]

Group psychotherapies: new answers to new questions

Abstract Group for the Recovery of Functions wants to be a new therapeutic resource available to operators, with its specificity. Specificity which consists not only of a group setting as a scenario that generates symbols i.e. a place where it is possible to conceive of what was until then inconceivable but also of limited time, […]

Dreaming and Thinking in the Group

Abstract If we consider the group and the individual as different points of a continuum, the commonly accepted ontological dichotomy between the individual and the group will become obsolete, from the moment that specifically human individuality will be seen in relational terms, resulting in an encounter not only between different individuals but also an encounter […]

The physical space to the psychic space: the shark and the journey of the group

Abstract The discussion deals with the construction of a psychic space that borns by uses real parts of the room as a mental setting of the therapist. The article describes a fundamental issue, common to the setting of child psychotherapy (both group and individual): the importance of physical space, represented by the child’s movements. This […]

From Trauma to Memory The “internal group” of origin and belonging in migrant children

Abstract The intertwining between identity and memory in young underage immigrants is examined through a series of sessions that took place in a Welcome Centre. In the specific situation that involves children occupied in a migratory transit, the construction of the individual memory finds itself engaged on two fronts, as it implies not only a […]

A model of group psychoterapy for persons with cronic mental illness

Abstract Significant advances in the pharmacotherapy of many major psychiatric syndromes occurred in the final decade of the last millennium. However, medications neither proved to be an ultimate cure nor did they eliminate the human suffering attendant with these illnesses. As a consequence, a great number of individuals remain significantly impaired by their illness. Persons […]