Abstract
In this presentation I briefly tell the story of this volume and the problems encountered, to describe the difficult situation that the group psychodynamic therapy with children is living, in our country and in Europe, due to multiple factors related to the social and cultural crisis that we are facing.
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 space can be transformed into a psychic space, an “imaginary place” where young patients can experience deep fears and anxieties.
The therapist’s countertransference, who moves inside the room and interacts with the children, changes anger and destructiveness in representations such as the volcano, the lava to become “moving emotions” (acted, named, told, in any case lived). These are the foundations for building a mental space, a way Read more
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 these groups almost always present an ego fragility, that makes them particularly anxious and defended in front of the others, the difficulties and the unexpected events, with a poor grip on reality and ability to control the impulses.
The small group offers them a place to re-model the behaviors, the relationships with others and with things in a setting where it can be possible to work on the imagination, the emotions and the encounter, looking for new ways to cope with the experience.
The imaginative play, both individual and collective, helps children to break free from the compulsory actions and vicious circles of fears.
Finally, it allows them to imagine new strategies and narrative plots in which they can play Read more
Abstract
This paper describes the TOPS (Tavistock Outreach Project in primary schools) experience of running a psychotherapy group for latency girls. The group consisted of five girls in their final year of primary school whose teachers felt could benefit from support in their relationship difficulties. The group ran in the school for just under two terms of weekly sessions and was led by a Child Psychotherapist and an Assistant Therapist. Susan Reid’s Psychodynamic group approach (1993) underpinned the therapeutic approach used in the group.
A description of TOPS – a school based therapeutic provision, opens the paper, followed by a brief description of the school setting, the rational for group work and the selection criteria. The group’s development over time and the powerful processes that took place in it are demonstrated through the emerging themes discussed: Falling apart and coming together, the therapy box as a trigger for chaos as linked to the mythological story of ‘Pandora’s Box’, the group’s relationship with the group leaders, anxieties about changes and endings with the girls imminent move to secondary School and the group’s move from a Basic Assumption group to a Work Group (Bion, 1959). Accordingly, over time, a slow shift in the group’s’ state of mind could be observed; from ganging against and excluding a member or the Group Leaders, to gradually becoming more thoughtful, integrated and better accepting of what the group and the Group Leaders had to offer – but in the context of many returns to a gang mentality along this path.
The paper concludes with some reflection upon the outcomes of the work and discussion of these. Read more
Abstract
This paper explores one aspect in my view of great value of the group therapy, the possibility to benefit from the presence of several children simultaneously, element which leads more easily and immediately to the manifestation of the dysfunctional relationship dynamics that accompany the emotional disorders. The groupal space is particularly favorable to the reproduction of interactive situations of the everyday world of the child; through the direct observation and identification with peers, or with the help of a “corrective interpretation during the dysfunctional action” made by the therapist, the children can reshape their relationship patterns. The analysis focalizes the interest on two levels. On the one hand on the development of socialization skills (empathy, understanding, listening and confrontation), on the other hand, on a more purely intrapsychic side, on the internalization of a higher reflective function as an acquisition of the Ego. The repetition of “corrective relationship experiences” promotes a better process of recognition, management Read more
Abstract
This work originates from the idea that the use of a mediating object (Privat P., Quélin-Soulignoux D., 2000) such as the narration of stories and dreams that emerge in the group, may create a new potential space where children may discover the dialectical relation between reality and imagination through the direct experience of what Winnicott D.W. (1958) defines as “me” and “not-me”.
The author will describe through clinical material, how children once engaged in group psychotherapy,, start to build together a common language of meanings, from chaos to a shared play in which they may talk about their feelings, fears and “bad dreams”.
Eventually, group psychotherapy is considered as a new creative space of symbolization, where Read more
Abstract
In this article, the author gives an account of the treatment stages that a child and his family may undertake, starting from the initial request for help to the child participation to a Psychodrama Group and the parent’s consultations with other therapists.
The characteristic of child psychotherapy is that the initial help request is brought by the adults and not by the child. Hence the importance of a preliminary work, designed to untangle the parents request in order to have access to the child subjective demand.
The entry into the group gives to the child one of the possibilities to access to the experience, which is shared with other peers, in order to recover the symptomatic root in his discourse, as a subject in the relationship with the familiar Other. The child’s symptom is in essence a response to the desire of this Other. Therefore group and Play will assume a particular dynamic through the sessions.
The references to Freud and Lacan, followed by the description of two clinical vignettes, highlight the participants’ emerging issues that develop around the construction of the family romance according to the founding father of psychoanalysis and the reinterpretation of the French psychoanalyst on The Neurotic’s Individual Myth. Through the structural categories of Imaginary, Symbolic and the Real, the child’s discourse is analyzed in its relationship with the sexuation, which recalls Freud’s Infantile Sexual Read more
The group framework is the cause of a first moment of identity-based anxiety, characterized by the non-differentiation of the group members and the projection of cleaved aggressive and libidinal elements. The group becomes a real object, represented and invested by its members as they organize it into a container/ constructor of their primal anxieties. The identification processes, whether to the group or to its members, are constructed and help the psychological person’s Read more
Abstract
Starting from the experience of slow-open therapy groups of children and preadolescents, we will consider what happens in the group process when changes in the group composition occur , due to the arriving or leaving of the members.
With the help of clinical material we will show the differences between Read more
Abstract
The work is based on the results of a clinical research project made over a fifteen year period on open groups in which children of different age groups participated. In group with children, the prevailing language is the primitive one of body language, whose alphabet, represented by sensory and motor functions, directly addresses the emotions. With children it is necessary to start with this archaic language of actions because their thought processes are concentrated on motorial “explosions”. The alpha function transforms the beta elements into that which Bion calls alpha elements, namely into those psychic elements that have characteristics that can be used as thoughts. The conductor collects the beta elements and after removing the distressing aspects, returns them to the children, thereby giving them the basis of an ability to think. The transformational path for the children is based primarily upon this passage from motorial action to the ability to describe what they feel. It is therefore necessary to note how narrative in groups of children is generated through forms of bodily contact, which often arrive at the borders of action.
Consequently, the function of the conductor must be based mainly on an Read more