Donne

The Love that moves the Sun and the other Stars (1) Short Presentation of the edition: “Although we are women” (2)

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I would like to a give a special thank you to Silvia Cimino and Luca Cerniglia, for their editorial collaboration; and to Claudio Neri, who gave life to the first working group within the course “Female groups”

“I do not know us” were the first words spoken by Bion, after an intense silence at the seminar in Rome where he met members of the “Pollaiolo” (3). I do not know us (not: you).
I do not know us and do not know who we are – Bion might have said, when asked to speak only of the group of women? Not men, not men and women: only women.
Recalling that seminar I ask myself: why in this edition do we talk about only one “half of the sky” (4)?
All of us have always heard the discussions on the subject of the woman (but not of the man, because in that case we would be speaking about the human race).
She was forbidden and taboo in the anthropological community. Read more

Donne

Self-help groups with women victims of intimate partner violence

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Abstract

The “social” importance of the debate concerning the phenomenon of intimate partner violence and the possible forms of intervention feasible in its regard is now well established within various scientific disciplines, including the psychological one. The specific contribution that psychology can give, as well as the understanding of the phenomenon, is specifically linked to the area of intervention, both at the individual and group level. In this regard, an interesting methodology, still relatively little explored in its implications in relation to situations of violence in an intimate relationship, is that of self-help. The self-help groups, putting the people living certain difficult existential situations as protagonists, allow the assumption Read more

Donne

From counsciousness raising to women’s groups of the 21st century

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Abstract

Female sociality, which began in spaces and times far removed from domestic society, has been organizing itself in modern societies as the feminist movement, of whose history is evoked by the author, generating through the various historical stages new representations of women, that are able to contribute to the possibility of a new Read more

Donne

The processing of traumatic events in female therapeutic groups

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Abstract

This paper offers points for reflection about the typical methods for processing traumatic events and the therapist’s role in female therapy groups.
The paper also makes a comparison with the dynamics of mixed gender groups. Clinical examples about the functioning of both types of group are also Read more

Donne

Life within death: Towards a metapsychology of catastrophic psychic trauma

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Abstract

In this paper the author offers a phenomenology and a metapsychology for the effects on the mind of catastrophic psychic trauma, defined as the reaction of the psyche to an utterly external event, which the person is helpless to resist, and against which there is no possible defense. The author affirms that the experience of ‘infinite affliction’ produces a radical break in being which disarticulates the psyche and causes a headlong descent to the most primitive levels of psychic functioning. When there is a complete surrender to the process of disarticulation, it continues until it extinguishes even the most basic level of mental activity, contact with sensation, producing psychic and then psychogenic death. The author then offers a phenomenological and metapsychological analysis of how the process of disarticulation is stopped so that the state of survival is assured, affirming that, faced with this situation of utter emergency, the Read more

Donne

School-mistresses learn from impasse

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Abstract

This article talks about the plan called Working together.. One by one!,- realized since May until September 2011in an Institute of Schools lies in Abruzzo-, composing the evolving stages of its journey, referring to the application of pratique-à-plusieurs’ device in the work with groups of school-mistresses of the nursery and primary school. The need of opening a listening space in which new answers to the question of an institution being in trouble with the promotion of a collaborative culture between its operators could ripen and settle, established the possibility of doing this experience. The intervention was thought and planned on the importance to rebuild the educational speech and the scholastic field from the two dimensions of the subject and the desire, referring to the application of the lacanian psychoanalysis in social institutions. The practicality of this experience turns in the possibility of questioning them one by one, on how invent the way to become a desiring équipe in which everyone takes is own place from which contributes together with the others to find a logic of common working that finds in the workgroup that instance which supports and orients every teacher to not give in to the impasse on which the educative practice moves question. The article reflects in its expositive organization, the real need with which the plan has to compare itself to succeed in promoting the novelty of its proposal, in other words a policy Read more

Donne

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

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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 of gender on the Read more

Donne

A ten moons journey: Women groups and birth support

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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 that is rarely recognized and that can even provoke pregnancy pathologies (like an intrauterine growth retardation) so that the Read more

Donne

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

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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 be projected, reflected or induced in others. The leader of an interactive group will then, as a first step, activate feed-backs from participants in order to recognize projections and inductions. He/she will, as a second step, begin the psychoanalytic working through, thus allowing the remodelling of self through group exchanges.
Interactive Group Theory refers to mixed gender groups.
In all women’s groups interactional communicative exchanges have revealed specific therapeutic power.
Relaxations of boundaries between individual selves derive from the affective quality of women’s interactions in group cultures like Interchangeability (Cantarella, 2002; 2005), Read more

Donne

Post-partum depression: A clinical experience with a group of women

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Abstract

In this contribution the complexity of the clinical picture of post-partum depression will be brought to light, which connects to the deep psychological dynamics experienced by women during the gestation and birth of the child. Starting with some reflections which arose from within a clinical journey of a group of women who suffer from this psychopathology, it highlights how the woman’s pregnancy is a time when childhood conflicts re-emerge, and on the basis of personal experiences with her own mother, Read more

Donne

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

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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 contribute to validate the reading of the agoraphobic syndrome as a defense against anxieties triggered by “separateness” and as “pathology of identity and of the limit”. From this perspective, in this article we focus in particular on the relationship between agoraphobia and female identity. The process of building a sense of self as a separate Read more

Donne

Pregnancy in women with Type 1 Diabetes: Bio-psychological aspects

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Abstract

The article aims to present the bio-psychosocial aspects that are found in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes. In the context of diabetes, the event conception and throughout the pregnancy are to be identified as those phenomena which are closely interrelated and are biologically and psychologically. From this interdependence generates a total transformation and reorganization of ‘psychic identity and body as well as significant interpersonal relationships (parental figures, partners) to which are Read more

Donne

About female repair in the group. Review of an experience of women with breast cancer

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Abstract

A reinterpretation of a group experience composed of women affected with breast cancer which took place at the UOC of Surgical Oncology at S. Filippo Neri in Rome, in an attempt to find a specifically female element in the work of reparation in the camp following the traumatic events.
It raises the hypothesis that the group, offering itself as a container-maternal body, has favoured, in this women-only experience having Read more

Donne

The oneiric world of women in the Grete Stern’ s photomontages

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Abstract

Grete Stern was a german fotoghaph ad designer. Due to her jewish origins, during Nazism she had to migrate to Argentina. In the 1948 she started a collaboration with the magazine for women  Idillio, on Buenos Aires. Her task was to represent on a photomontage the dreams of the female readers reported on the letters addressed to the Italian-argentine psychanalist Gino Germani. She looked for and created new  immages  that allow to part with real world and point out an idea of interior world. In her work she represents dreams through a special critical analysis that, at the same time, record argentine women’s  concerns of that time: she represented with humour, irony Read more

Donne

Women victims of violence: Taking charge and impact of the work on the professional helpers

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Abstract

Individual stories of women victims of violence from their partners should be analysed in the light of a commune denominator, their future in a social context, a culture, a system of roles, prejudices and stereotypes still marked by the idea of subalternity of the female gender. To support the women to cope in this perspective with the events that have wounded them represents a focal point of specialized reception, as it allows the “victims” to unravel a series of doubts, inadequacies and personal guilt in a clear vision of the general context, which formed the  “background” of their biography. This allows the professional helper to address them with an empathic, non judging attitude and Read more

Donne

Why today women are the center of attention

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“To talk about gender violence in relation to the widespread violence against women and children would mean putting light on the “sexed” dimension of this phenomenon in so much as […] the manifestation of a historically unequal relationship between men and women that has led men to bully and discriminate against women. ”
(United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women).

Putting women at the centre of the discussion, now, more than ever, is not a habit nor a boast nor a kindness: it is a necessity, a social emergency. It is in fact the actuality of the news that leads us to focus on the most abused genre in the history of mankind. It’s not my duty and maybe not even within my ability, to reconstruct which and in how many cultures and historical periods women have been subjected to violence, both physical and psychological, but for sure it’s today that the most important match is Read more

Donne

Trafficking and prostitution: experiences of intervention on the street

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Abstract

This contribution is taken from the encounters of both a formation day at the university and the experiences of social work spanning many years with the Magliana 80 cooperative, in Rome. The challenge, an interesting one, was to reflect on women’s groups. Rereading the work experience, a few doubts arose: women psychologists and patients/users have access to services? Is it easy, or are we dealing with an achievement/renunciation? The female specific has the opportunity to be represented? From these Read more

Donne

Women Victims of Trafficking: theoretical overview and exploratory study on the phenomenon. Attachment and emotional-relational functioning

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Abstract

Within the theoretical and clinical framework of Attachment theory, the present pilot study aims to assess whether and how potentially traumatic experiences suffered by women victims of trafficking may have negative consequences on emotional-relational functioning and intends to consider the role of mediation of attachment assessed by using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). The groups consisted of 5 women victims of trafficking and 5 women matched by age who were randomly selected in a non clinical population. The phenomenon is considered from a clinical, sociological and legal perspective, in order to collect data and information to suggest and implement intervention programs aimed at the recovery of the person. In accordance with the international literature, data obtained after administration of the assessment protocol in the group of women victims of trafficking have shown a prevalence of insecure Read more