Entries by @dmin

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 […]

Psyche and enviroment

Abstract The psyche, in the totality of conscious and unconscious processes, is revealed through the image, thought, and language, and within the group phenomena in relation with the environment. Within this framework are the concepts of protomental and psychoid, respectively, in Bion and Jung, as well as the implications of transference and countertransference, but also […]

Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytical Field: the experience of alterity

Abstract Freud postulated that going through “an experience of the unconscious” is the only possible way of becoming an analyst. Psychoanalysis is a method, an asymmetric device that carries in its core the seed of the interplay of relationships of which this experience consists. It is a novel form of social link that promotes tan […]

Women in groups in Italy today and yesterday. Social change and inner transformations in three decades

Abstract Author’s reference theory As group Psychoanalyst the author refers to Ferdinando Vanni’s Interactive Group Theory (1988, 1992). In F. Vanni’s theory Interactive groups are characterized by interactional communicative exchanges among participant. In these exchanges an “interactive” self emerges: the “self-in-others”. This “self-in-others” presents itself as an indifferentiated Self which allows parts of personality to […]

Of monsters, spirits, soldiers and the power of imagination. A psychoanalytic lens on Victor Erice’s “The spirit of the beehive” (El espíritu de la colmena)

Abstract My article on Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) looks at the ambivalent fantasies of two Spanish young girls, excited by the screening of the film Frankenstein in their village town-hall. I offer an interpretation of their fantasies in the context of those children’s psychological development, of their relationship with emotionally distant […]

Experiences and thoughts on training in psycho-oncology

Abstract Those who wish to concern themselves with training in the psycho-somatic field and, in particular, in the psycho-oncological field need to face the constant work of working through the passage from defensive splitting to operational splitting. A psychoanalytically trained observer, who comes into contact with an institution, as G.Vetrone says (1986), is quite soon […]

The Myth of the Self Made Man realistic and function of dreams in patients with eating disorders

Abstract In this paper we analyze the case of a patient who comes in for consultation conducted of binge eating. We intend this as an eating disorder that shows early alterations in the psychic structure, caused by the dynamics of dependence of the patient towards the mother who adopted as a way of disinvestment affective […]

The Mind as a space to play: creating bonds within the group

Abstract Through the clinical material taken from the experience with therapeutic groups held at a Public Mental Health Service for children and adolescents in Rome, the group thought emerges as the individual play encounters, clashes and interweaves itself with the collective one, opening children’s minds to a multifaceted creativity. The children who are involved in […]

On the concept of “institutional container: an introduction

The subject of this monographic issue was inspired by an hypothesis which the three authors of one of its papers had shared from their own work: that the real object of the so-called “supervisions” within healthcare and social institutions is not so much the clinical case, or the quality of the provided service, or the […]

The median group as an transcultural device in treatment and formation Comparison between the Groupanalytical and the Ethnopsychoanalytical model

Abstract In this article the author compares the Groupanalytical model (in particular the Italian approach) and the Ethnopsychoanalytical model (in particular that developed in France by Tobie Nathan and Marie Rose Moro); moreover she compares two therapeutic devices: the median group for Group Analysis and Transcultural Consultation for Ethnopsychoanalysis. Beginning from these comparisons, the author […]

Day treatment programs for personality disorders: a review

Abstract This paper is a modification of a chapter that will appear in the forthcoming volume: “Handbook of Personality Disorders: theory, research, and treatment,” edited by W. John Livesley, PhD, MD, FRCP, published by Guildford Publications: New York, release date April 2001. The original chapter will be entitled “Partial Hospital Programs.” It suggests that more […]

Experiencing interaction: what makes up the bonds of relations with the world?

Abstract The author of the article identifies a constant interactive relationship between people and the world to which they belong, and describes the personal experience of using the interactive link with various outdoor environments. The testing of unknown landscapes opens new routes and new knowledge. experience is not separable from perception, emerges through interconnected systems, […]

Infantile anorexia and the child-caregiver relationship: an empirical study on attachment patterns

Abstract This study has the following aims: 1. To point out a higher rate of insecure and/or disorganized attachment patterns in the mother-child dyads with a diagnosis of infantile anorexia, as compared to a control group; 2. To show a concordance with respect to security/insecurity between the mother’s and the child’s attachment

W. Bion, D. Meltzer. Social and Individual Thought in Psychoanalysis

Abstract The purpose of this work is to focus on the psychoanalytical concepts which, after Freud, Ferenczi and M. Klein, were developed by Bion and Meltzer, who are the ones who continued their work. Bion (1961) is usually identified as an author who, due to his great creativity, has conceptualized institutional and group phenomena. In […]

Agoraphobia is feminine? Some reflections on the relationship between the agoraphobic syndrome and femininity

Abstract The more recent psychoanalytic conceptualizations, relating to the genesis of agoraphobia, have increasingly illuminated – going beyond the Oedipal contribution of Freudian memory – the serious structural deficits of the ego, the presence, therefore, of that “emptiness” in the basic structure as the real nucleus problem (Milrod, 2007; Cartwright, 2006, La Scala, 2010). These theories […]

Group, psychoanalysis and cinema. Notes about a formative group and cinema experience

Abstract In this essay we are willing to bring out some remarks on the usage of movies within experiential groups. As it is already widely acknowledged, there exists a strong relationship between cinema and psychoanalysis, especially between Freud’s theory of dreams and the cinematographic language. It is indeed interesting to highlight that they both are […]

Group and dream in departments of organic illness. The homogeneous group in the hospital department

Abstract So that what seems significant to us, relative to the theme of the groups iconic and oneiric production, concerns its specific function in the group dealing with organic illness. This function is connected with the need to represent the bodys internal events, to give them a shape and communicable expression, to provide them with […]

The Myths of the Group

Abstract You want to show how the analytic group to organize the first expression and sharing narrative needs to develop old and new myths. The ancient myths and formalized are especially useful in the early stages of the process by encouraging the natural myth-making of the group and allow you to approach the unconscious worlds […]