Biopsychosocial approach to pain
Abstract
The Author deals with the issue of subjective pain and correlates it with several factors, investigated by the biopsychosocial model according to various perspectives that interact with each other. Read more
Interview with Marco Fierro
edited by Adelina Detcheva
Question: The first question concerns osteopathy seen a little more closely. What is it about?
Answer: Osteopathy is a mainly manual technique that tries to find a balance in the person. A balance both from a mechanical point of view but also from a physiological point of view. Having said this, it acts both on the most bony, joint and muscular tissues but also on tissues such as fascia, visceral organs, or even more deeply at the level of the head, skull and sacrum. So there are techniques that concern the musculoskeletal system, techniques that concern the visceral system and techniques that concern what we call the craniosacral system. All this, done with mobilizations or in some cases always very targeted manipulations that go on a segment and only after having done very specific tests on all systems that can act on the problem highlighted during the anamnesis. So these techniques, which are always manual, are used to find or create a new specific balance for each person. That is, each of us has his own balance, his own status where he is more comfor Read more
Interview with Maurizio Koch
by Adelina Detcheva
Question: Well, I would be very curious to have some information regarding your choice of field and the profession of physician and gastroenterologist in particular.
Answer: So, the story begins like this: I was fascinated by our family doctor who lived in via del Governo Vecchio 67. We were then in via Zanardelli. We were a family with 9 children, so this friend of my parents came to visit us regularly. Or we went to his study: there was this famous pediatric bed, with the underlying parquet corroded by the pee of the children he visited and during the visit the children regularly peed on the floor every time. He was a real gentleman, he accompanied towards adolescence. Then there was another very elegant thing: he rode with the driver in a vintage Lancia and I really liked this thing then. He made home visits without any problems. He was a very friendly gentleman with my parents, they were family friends. Then at the end of the year, he made a kind of note for all the visits made to the different children and the Read more
The skin screams what my voice cannot express
Abstract
The skin as the first image of ourselves, the first contact with the outside world and with our mother, is a privileged organ in relational life.
It reveals what is going on inside us, as it is a visible organ that blushes, pales, sweats, freezes, etc. It represents the organ of touch, harbinger of sensations of vital importance. The skin, mirror of our soul and our feelings, is a kind of maternal Read more
“When I took drugs I felt better.” Considerations on the body, from the abuse to the therapeutic community
Abstract
The article explores the anatomy of the body dimension in drug addiction, it considers how body changes at the same pace as the transformations of relationships that the individual has with the substance of abuse and with the context.
The word anatomy, derived from the Greek ἀνατέμνω that means to cut, manages to represent the intent of the text: to dissect drug addiction in its becoming flesh.
This is an experience strongly oriented by bodily sensations than for theirs strength require – or rather impose – constant attention to the somatic aspects. This happens in the body that abuses, this happens in the abstinent body.
Read more
The “Mente Ampliada” as a living body of the Multifamily Psychoanalysis Group
Abstract
Between the two references of Peter Brook (1968), in which this reflection on the body of and in the group begins and ends, there is that empty, creative space, indispensable in the theatre as in the work of the Multifamily Psychoanalysis Group. In the background, the containing function of the group as of the choir in Greek tragedy. The reflection will be articulated around the pathogenic and pathological interdependencies underlying the relational patterns in different families (of a Roman DSM and the Centro Ditem in Buenos Aires), to arrive to metaphorical mirroring and multiple transference and countertransference within the gr Read more
Fusional experiences and fantasies in the analytic group
Abstract: The present article aims to explore the fusional levels of the analytic group. First of all, a definition of the term fusionality is reported, taken mostly from the work of Neri et al., (1990). Then the fusional functioning of the psychoanalytic group is investigated. Given that these conceptualizations are still in their infancy, it is important to emphasize that this text is an initial food for thought that certainly needs a more i Read more
“Support beyond the Distance”: the creation of a working group and its function of containment. New settings in psychological intervention in COVID-19 care contexts
Abstract
The article presents the professional and emotional experience of the working group of psychologists engaged in home care and the management of the COVID-19 emergency.
The emotional impact of traumatic events for the individual and the community requires the set-up of a multi-level containment structure. Read more
A Primary Care Psychologist together with the Family Physician: the experience of the Health Psychology School of Rome
Abstract
It is known that at least 50% of the requests that people make to family physicians, behind the proposal of a somatic symptom, express relational/existential distress, often in very early phases, in which the intervention could be short and easy: the doctor, however, is not always in the position to offer an answer, and therefore ends up carrying out analyses and administering drugs whose uselessness he is the first to recognize. A response by referral to a psychologist appears problematic given the difficulty in identifying both the patients to be referred and the appropriate referring methods. Anyhow, the acceptance of the referral by the patient appears unlikely, since contact with a psychologist is still burdened by strong social stigma. Read more
The mind-body relationship in the development of the sense of self: reflections starting from Daniel Stern’s thought
Abstract: The article starts from Daniel Stern’s theoretical and clinical reflections and explores the development of the sense of self. The focus is on the evolution of the psychic Read more
The body between metapsychology and mentalization. Lines of research in psychoanalysis, after Freud
Abstract
The authors reconstruct the question of the body in Freudian writings, indicating its multiple theoretical and clinical aspects, and highlighting its conceptual complexity through the various phases of evolution of psychoanalytic discovery, from the origins, with hysteria, to the silent manifestations of the dead drive: extreme vertices of the Freudian research path which, on the body, has indicated articulated elements of reflection and without a univocal and concluded systematization. In the multiplicity of theoretical guidelines issued from Freudian cues, the conceptual prevalence of the “economic” Read more
From soma to psyche. The journey of the Sapiens
Abstract – for all contributions
Ferrari’s psychoanalytic hypothesis is based on the idea that the mind acquires the drive for its own evolution from the body. From this approach also derives the idea that disharmonious balances can be created between the components of the individual system, especially between the body dimension and the psychic dimension, which are in mutual relation, and sometimes also that a rediscovered balance of the body can help a path of recovery in states of mental suffering. The experience that Fausta Romano has been developing for some time, searching for practices that can accompany the path between analyst and analysand Read more
Beauty as a sichronous Object: between “Superior Object” (mind) and “Lower Object” (body). Primary aesthetics and sociability
Abstract
We propose to indicate how the experience of Beauty in multiple circumstances is to be linked to the experience of primary aesthetics and its unco Read more
Evolution of the psychoanalytic theory of anorexia
Abstract
The author carries out a brief theoretical and bibliographic review on the various psychoanalytic perspectives that have tried to focus on multiple aspects of anorexia and introduces her hypothesis by exploring new points of knowledge on the disorder through the presentation of a case of early anorexia. The article focuses on the complex intrapsychic and relational vicissitudes of the anorexic world, following the Bionian theory (1965) of “transformations into hallucinosis”; it is a question of an “other” world, wonderful and “superior”, different from the human one of the given body. By making a pact with the divinity, the anorexic produces a double movement of denial, both with respect to the breast and the “lower” Read more
Water is taught by thirst. Some reflections on the bodily self
Abstract
Starting from a verse by Emily Dickinson, this work proposes a reflection on the body self understood as a continuous and bidirectional exchange between body and mind, based on the feeling of authenticity and vitality of being. The focus is on the manifestations of conflict and rupture of this dialogue, Read more
The parental couple and the group of caregivers in the care given to the baby: hypochondriac mirrors
Abstract
The parental couple, the group of perinatal and early childhood caregivers, are subject, in the care given to the baby, to ordinary hypochondria. Taking care of a baby, a subject who does not yet speak verbally, requires work on interpreting his various signs, especially bodily ones. If the primary parental preoccupation, the primary caring preoccupation are in play, our regular clinical work in nursery, led us to propose a primary hypochondriac parental preoccupation, and a primary hypochondriac caring preoccupation. In this sense, the members of a group of caregivers offer a real welcome and treatment of the hypochondriac preoccupations of parents. Read more
Group therapy with bodily mediation for obese teenagers. Therapeutic containment when loosing weight
Abstract our reflection centers on the utility of the psychoanalytic body-based group as a way to take charge of teenager obesity. Indeed, the therapeutic group can work as a containment for obese teenagers when they are losing weight. Indeed, in this period they show a lack of both transitionality and psychic containment which results in a turbulent unconscious image of the body. In this article we will underline the psychic and bodily dimensions of these girls that lose weight and, at the same time, the individual and group challenges of a body-me Read more
The psychoanalyst and the yoga lesson
Summary This dissertation, centered on the Hatha yoga course, develops a reflection from three initial questions, stemming from the readings and practices of yoga, the experience of the carpet (hence its title). These are: the recurrent attack of the Ego, the absence of the group, and the absence of sexuality, in a reflection on the teaching of yoga. During this journey, the question of death was invited, it is addressed in the introduction. These questions have led to questions about the processes that allow us to move from the physical to the spiritual (such as sublimation), and the composition of the framework to ensure engagement in these processes (such as tempo). Read more
A Premise
What makes us human: the “Mind” or the “Body”? (1)
I put Mind and Body in quotes because for some time I no longer believe in the existence of such things, at least in the terms in which they have been defined in the tradition of Western thought (Cartesian, so to speak), that is, a mind independent of matter (res cogitans) and an inert matter body (res extensa). I rather believe in the existence of a unitary organism (Spinoza, 1677; Lorenz, 1983; Crick, 1994; De Toffoli, 1991, 2001; Matthis, 2000) and that the terms “mental” and “bodily” can refer to sets of different observations, which depend on the vertex in which the observer is placed. I also believe that we can maintain (Solano, 2013, Chap.1-2) a distinction between symbolic systems (distinct feelings, conscious cognitive processes, verbal or iconic representations, sequential functioning, explicit/episodic memory) and non-symbolic systems (primitive emotions, unconscious cognitive processes, parallel functi Read more
Polyphony of body in psychoanalysis. The body in the psychoanalytic research. New pathologies and psychoanalytic clinic
Presentation The actual curation of this journal issue began a year after it had been proposed to the editorial staff. For a full year there had been no response from the authors. Coronavirus arrived. And there came a flood of contributions, a widespread enthusiasm was animated: themes, styles, models, original and valuable lexicons multiplied with various thematic perspectives. We did not know what started all of a sudden: sometimes the engine runs, but the starter does not, sometimes the opposite happens. This time they had both had a good start after an empty time. Sometimes the unconscious, either common or single, is located in the most unexpected and difficult to see places, and it reveals itself with a movement of vital emergence. Read more