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PolifoniaCorpo

Evolution of the psychoanalytic theory of anorexia

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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

TraumaGruppo

Therapeutic and analytical group field with anorexic patients

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Abstract

In this contribution there are two main questions related to clinical conceptualizations in the psychoanalytic field which can be adopted in the work with the anorexic patients. 1. The first concerns the question of whether anorexia can be described as an independent psychoneurosis, such as, in Freud’s classification of psychoneurosis, the obsessive syndrome. 2. The second question concerns the possibility of conceiving that when the patients are disturbed at the oral level, or more generally in Read more

Senso

The body in the group: its presence and absence

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Abstract

Working with adolescents, and specifically with those affected by an eating disorder, makes many apparent contradictions come out. In this paper we focalized on the body which, in apparent contradiction, can hinder and become an obstacle to the expression of the real self, while continuing literally to provide the measure of the self at one and the same time. The body is seen by anorexics as a target, to be suffocated in its demands and fundamental needs, reduced to the bone and strictly disciplined. But suffocating the body means deadening the emotions expressed by the body too. It is in response to a fundamental anorexic assumption, consisting in a return to a deadly nothingness, that the group therapy approach makes sense. The group can provide a space and time where the vacuum becomes visible and can be contacted by the group as a whole. In an effort to reflect on this paradoxical situation, so central to anorexia but almost physiological in adolescence, which makes it Read more

FormeCircolari

Presentation: Anorexia, Adolescence, Group

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In 2004, Funzione Gamma introduced the 14th edition of “Groups with anorexic patients: therapeutic factors”. Today, we are glad to present the continuation of the dialogue we started back then, to further proceed in our attempt to combine theoretical model and clinical intervention in the 24th edition of “Anorexia, Adolescence, Group”. The title already hints that the theme of identity constitutes the invisible path that will guide us through this edition. As Rouchy (1987) writes, “It is impossible to declare our identity without naming one of the multiple groups to which we belong”. As human beings, we live in groups. Our sense of identity arises and develops from these various affiliations. The group is an essential element of human existence: men are born in groups, they play in groups, they fight in groups and against groups, and all religious and heathen rites are celebrated in groups. In the field of neuroscience, research has shown how the mind develops through relationships. The development of our nervous system is an experience-dependant process: in the early stages of life, significant relationships are the main source of experience, which also modulate genic expression at a brain level. Relationships with others have a great influence on the brain. The circuits that mediate social experience, are closely related to those Read more

FormeCircolari

Anorexia, Adolescence, Group

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Abstract

The overview of the anorexic disorder may be confronted through two different axes: one that proceeds through the intra-psychic depths, in search of personal factors which impede the fulfilment of individual personality, and a social axis, which pinpoints through the history of the community the roots concerning the diffusion of anorexia in Read more

FormeCircolari

Anorexia: the risk of a suicidal nihilism to survive in adolescence

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Abstract

Death as what makes possible the anorexic subject’s referring to other, in the happened admission of the unsubstantiality of what in which he previously pleasing, strove himself: the assurance of the Other’s jouissance (Lacan J., 1973). The «will of nothingness […] turned against the most basic life’s presuppositions» (Nietzsche, 1887) imposes itself in the dislike for human and corporeal, as what allows a feeling of uniqueness and extraordinariness that soon reveals the subject as a prisoner of the conformity and homogeneity of an “uniform- body” which springs the reality of its sacrifice Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Family groups and anorexia. Therapeutic and interpretative indications in systemic approach

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Abstract

Author referring to a systems oriented thinking proposes a conception of mental anorexia as a complex syndrome in which socio-cultural, family and individual components are interconnected. Particularly, following the preliminary data of a research in progress, he examines the family groups as an interactional level as well as at a mythical one. Finally he underline the complementarity  between these family aspects and the psychological Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Anorexia as a Symbol of an Empty Matrix Dominated by the Dragon Mother

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Abstract

This paper reports the author’s understanding of anorexia reached through her clinical work and using Jungian as well as group-analytic concepts. Examples of individual, family and group work are given and they constitute facets of an overall picture of devouring hunger against the background of a depleted Read more