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

MatisseFormazione

The person internal to the hospital who acts as intermediary and guarantor of the experience. Simonetta Bruni (Part two)

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Abstract

This paper is about an experience of a group of formation with doctors and nurses on the theme of cancer that we conducted in the oncological ward of the San Filippo Neri Hospital in collaboration with the Psychiatry Service within that hospital. It lasted three months with a weekly frequency. The group was conducted by the consultant psychiatrist (Dr.S.Bruni) and an external supervisor, a specialist in group psychoanalysis (Dr. S.Marinelli). We thought it better to privilege the basic and real significance of this experience, rather than use a technical and historical approach, and we have divided the work into two parts. The first part describes the events of the group from the viewpoint of the external supervisor; the dream is considered as a bi-lateral field of work where doctors of the body and the mind meet up. The second part is from the internal psychiatristís point of view, and examines the sequences in detail bringing the experience in close Read more

MatisseFormazione

Working with the nursing staff of an in-patient admission ward

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Abstract

What follows is a clinical description of some experiences and observations which have arisen out of my acting as group work Supervisor for a group of nurses in an in-patient acute psychiatric admission ward, and as facilitator of a Staff Support Group made up of the same nurses, over the last three Read more

PieroSogno

The Myths of the Group

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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 inaccessible individually, for their wide social relations and their language polysemantic. In addition, the analytic group, especially when processing faces difficult times of deprivation, tends to create new myths that have developed within the group and in which the group feel represented, as they resonate with its main elements and the narrative qualities specific a given point in the process. This production of mythical elements – narration of events, memories, dreams, styles, mythologized by the group – has the function of ensuring a deep base and continuity of identity with the group and it will return there in times of evolutionary transition complex or fear of change : the ” re- mythologizing ” in this sense would be as important as the work of producing the legendary and myth used by the group to defend themselves at the beginning or at times regressive and deconstruction of the process, from the anxiety of confusion Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Presentation, Group with anorexic patients: therapeutic factors

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Anorexia can be described in different ways, depending on what model we employ to do this. Firstly, Freud saw it as an outcome of hysteria (1895), and Abraham as an instinctual state (or instinctual failure) of the oral stage (even up to the present day, his splendid writings on the character and stages of instinctual development, continue to help us understand the anchoring to the oral stage and the transformations of sublimation). Successively, Kleinian object psychoanalysis considered it a severe deficit in the PS_D position, whilst in the reorganization brought about by Bion’s theories, anorexic somatization is described as the realization of  an inverted container-contained function (Bruni, 2002). The point of view of the failing development of the separation-individuation process (Mahler, 1975), the symbolization (Segal 1957), and Winnicott’s idea of the transitional object, all contributed to bring the theme back onto the lines of valorising its origins Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

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

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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 a sense which can be shared and mentally represented. The understanding of these representational elements, so important for re-establishing the ties between body and mind and between trauma and rebuilding, may set in hand a process of transformation and evolution. In particular, in the group considered, it was possible to pinpoint levels which were more and more touched by the affections of a central fantasy connected with the neoplastic illness: the annihilating and fragmenting invasion of the tumour, bearer of anxiety of death, corresponds to an early primitive defect, connected with problems of inseparability, which gave rise to an area of ice, devoid of life and absolutely inconceivable, invasive and generating death to the point of persecution, to be ashamed of. The organisation of this fantasy, fostered by dreaming, enables the group to pass from a concrete, symmetrical and specular arrangement, of the Read more