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Introducing Bion and Jung

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The comparison between Bion’s and Jung’s thought has become, in recent years, a field of growing interest, for a part at least of psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists, the one more open to dialogue and a ‘pluralist’ attitude towards knowledge. This issue of Funzione Gamma stems from Stefania Marinelli’s invitation to explore this field. As a result, authors from various backgrounds (including psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, and group psychoanalysis) have come together here. Therefore, it seems necessary to make a premise regarding the ‘small group’ constituted by the authors present here with their work.
There is a highly complex interweaving of historical and phantasmatic issues whenever a comparison (or confrontation) between authors can be traced back to the vicissitudes of the history of psychoanalysis.
The event that first united and then separated Freud and Jung is considered a sort of mythical antecedent with traumatic aspects, still needs to be thoroughly elaborated. So, it has indeed left traces through transgenerational transmission in the various generations of analysts of both schools, even more than a century later.
Therefore, I think that all the stratifications of the dynamics that have Read more

GruppoAdozioni

Meeting Elsewhere. The Group in Adoption

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Abstract

In this article, after brief considerations of the characteristics of the “towards and beyond adoption” formative path and after a personal testimony that wishes to give voice to the children met in several institutions in the Ukraine, the consequences of the trauma of abandonment are commented on. There follows a taking under examination group modality that can be productively utilized in the sphere of the process of adoption, in all its phases with various actors on the adoption path.
In particular, we examine more closely the group applied to post adoption, in its value as facilitative setting of “elsewhere”. This “elsewhere” is a place far away in which the ch Read more

PsichiatriaGruppo

Presentation

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Abstract

In this presentation I describe the positions of this issue alternating between the crisis areas of psychiatry and the resources of groups in their various forms, without forgetting to look at the social and clinical Read more

MusicaGruppo

FOR PLEASURE. A sound/musical associative process

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Abstract: This text reflects a very special group experience, centered on sound, music, relationship, in a functioning of free association. It focuses on musical practice and its pleasure, in groups. This experience, still relevant, has actually lasted for 17 years, she questions what “holds” such a group. The reflection also focuses on the transition from physique pleasure to spiritual pleasure, and on the resonance, in the sound, from below to beyond language. Read more

PolifoniaCorpo

Fusional experiences and fantasies in the analytic group

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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

PolifoniaCorpo

“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

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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

PolifoniaCorpo

Group therapy with bodily mediation for obese teenagers. Therapeutic containment when loosing weight

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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

PolifoniaCorpo

The psychoanalyst and the yoga lesson

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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

EscherIstituzioni

The necessary institution

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Abstract

The institution which works well is the institution we become aware of only when it fails, like the air we breathe, so necessary but so little present to our conscience. Some psychoanalysts, in particular Bleger and Kaës, have theorized about this condition which is necessary for the psychic life of the individual in groups and of groups themselves. Both theorizations entail a further narcissistic injury, the fourth one, after the ones inflicted by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, to a concept of the human subject as master of the universe.  The ego becomes such in the group and from the group. The institution is a necessary vital organization: the first one is the body itself in its synergetic and silent functioning that, when everything goes well, allows the subject to sleep with the freedom of dreaming. Other institutions are the developmental environment in which the child can grow up, and the social organization where he/she can have the freedom to play, love, work, and think.
Which institution? Certainly not an institution that demands to discipline our dreams and behaviour, but an institution that allows us to live as one and many, as a singular plural. It is not utopia, but a need that nevertheless requires working through a narcissistic injury in order not to transform the institution into a disciplinary apparatus  that pushes the narcissism of one subject to annihilate the narcissism of the other, even though it appears with new features that are only apparently plural. Read more

EscherIstituzioni

From the organization-in-the-mind to the organization as subject: conceptual maps for psychoanalytic consultancy in institutions

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Abstract

Organizational consultancy has been using methods and approaches of psychoanalytic origin for several decades now, especially when the problems involved seem to imply significant emotional and inter-personal aspects, that leaders, key figures and often the involved subjects themselves appear mostly unaware of or visibly unwilling to know.
A considerable amount of literature is now available so that those who are interested in this subject can study it in further depth in its various aspects and its multiple applications. The aim of this article is rather an attempt to better specify the “object” of these professional practises, providing some conceptual maps and tools for guidance that can help consultants (but managers as well) from an analytical or psychotherapeutic background not to get lost in a mare magnum of theories and techniques where a number of specific risks are present alongside questionable improvisations and  methodologies for every season. I am not referring so much to the various possible forms of narcissistic seduction or omnipotent vocations which can drag a consultant into disaster or into perverse collusion with a client, but rather to the danger of losing sight of the object of one’s own work, simplifying its complex nature, dealing more with the people than the processes (or vice versa), reifying the organization or anthropomorphizing it, losing the capacity to distinguish between fantasy and concrete reality; all this is a setting which  the consultant Read more

EscherIstituzioni

Why “¿Authority?” Observations on the Authority/Power Continuum

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Abstract

The title of this work refers to the title chosen by the EPF (European Psychoanalytical Federation) for their congress in Berlin in March 2016 (¿Authority?) and references the themes that were chosen by Serge Frisch, Laurence Kahn and Leopoldo Bleger for a seminar they organised, also in Berlin, in September 2014 (Psychoanalysis in 2025). The questions that underlie these initiatives are numerous. Given the scope of this text, I’ll limit myself to pointing out the question that seems to me the most interesting: what can psychoanalysis offer for the understanding of a topic of such great social relevance as authority?
The following work begins with a series of two hypotheses.
The first assumes that authority and power are not substantially dissimilar manifestations, but constitute the poles of an unbreakable continuum. It is difficult to come across an authority entirely devoid of power, just as it is rare for the power of a subject, group or institution not to come with a certain amount of authority (of course, these terms require precise definitions that will be discussed in the next section).
The second hypothesis postulates that the problem of authority, despite being rarely discussed directly in psychoanalysis, is variously reformulated in several conceptual models that develop essential aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique (it refers, as we shall see, the effects of the conflict between generations and the development of the Oedipus complex on psychic functioning: the formation of the super-ego and his ordinary and extraordinary maintenance).

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FunzioneSalute

Clinical psychology internship training and group psychological interventions in Mental Health Centres

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Abstract

To undertake a description of one’s own experience of internship training in clinical psychology means reflecting on the relationship between theory and practice within a process aimed to the acquisition of professional skills. In my case, this process took place within group experiences undertaken in several mental health centres in Rome, where I was admitted as  a Read more

FunzioneSalute

Group dimensions in an Adult Mental Health Inpatient Unit

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Abstract

Human beings are immersed in group settings of one kind or another all life long and even when individual mental suffering exacerbates to the point of needing hospitalization, people find themselves sharing space, time and emotions with others. A mental health crisis breaks the individual and family balance and expresses itself with acute and extreme thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Psychiatric hospitalization, although traumatic, gives the patient and his/her relatives an opportunity of living all the alterations in a protected environment also offering them an explanation for these alterations. Clinicians aim to intervene as soon as possible after the onset of a crisis in order to enable the individual to overcome it and to return to normal functioning, Read more

FunzioneSalute

The role of psychoanalysis in the welfare state crisis: from taking care of the patient to taking care of the healthcare institutions

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Abstract

Recent developments in psychoanalytic outreach researches have offered ever more convincing evidences of a circular, mutual relationship between the internal world, the group and the external society. From such point of view, the author explores the current crisis scenarios of the welfare and the parallel crisis of credibility and market of the psychoanalytic therapy. He suggests that in the future psychoanalysis could shift its focus from individual treatment  to the study of group and institution,  to the point of recasting itself as a “clinical approach to organizations” to improve efficiency, awareness and well-being in the workplaces. To make it happen, it is necessary for psychoanalysis to overcome the mistrust for interdisciplinary dialogue with other approaches, methods and disciplines, and the discomfort Read more

FunzioneSalute

Extended groupality and relationship building How to deinstitutionalize institutions

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Abstract

This article presents the work carried out in a Therapeutic Community in a suburb of Rome. In particular, it describes significant group interventions such as: multi-family group psychoanalysis, the “hearing voices” group as well as interventions aimed at building a relationship with the neighborhood in question. In addition, it shows how a Community of this kind can not only provide therapy but can also be a means to help guide towards recovery. In fact, it acts on the grounds that people who suffer from mental health issues are not “carrying a disease” but rather that they have particular mental health conditions which necessitate support. An external support system as well as specialized and technical help in their daily lives. The combination of all these factors are at the basis of the Therapeutic Community Read more

FunzioneSalute

The mountain as field of group experience

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Abstract

This article explores a therapeutic intervention in the area of mental illness employing an “outdoor setting”, in the literal meaning of a setting outside any classic model, namely mountain therapy. It is a new practice, where the potential transformative capacity of the mountain scenery is exploited and where even people with severe psychiatryc disabilities can Read more

FunzioneSalute

Transit from individual to group: network thinking in the foundation of a limited time group of therapy in a Public Service

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Abstract

The article intends to suggest a reflection about the process of the formation of a limited time group of therapy in a mental health care center located in Rome, Asl Roma 2. The aim is to focus on the delicate process of transition from individual  to group therapy in a Public Institution, which involves several implications.
We will try, in this regard, to point out its advantages and some critical issues related to the care service background. We will explore the functioning of the patients in group therapy and then among the staff.  We will consider the difficulties arising, and the opportunities the transition from individual Read more

GruppoRito

Group and Rite

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Abstract

This text attributes several significances and functions to social rite and its construction inside group. Certainly, these have a social value in  maintaining and keep cohesive group, but also they can stimulate new experiences, not already known and coherent.
Author poses three different notions of social rite and he compares them to other three opposed notions. First of all, (a) the containing function and creative of social rite inside group, contrasting to ceremony, which makes rite’s  structure more formalized. Then, (b) notion of rite is viewed as a shared dreaming’s narrative rite. Read more

GruppoRito

Clinical references to the group work with children and adolescents: body language

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Abstract
In this paper we explore the body dimension of group dynamics, the body language that expresses and signifies the affects. Some clinical vignettes involving a group of children and a group of adolescents are presented to exemplify the relationships as they unfold through action capable of giving a communicable form to thought. In this exploration of a field of collective forces, where both the known and the unknown are met, we observe the movements generated by Read more

GiornateRomane

Multiple transferences and multifamily psychoanalysis group

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Abstract
The aim of our presentation is to explore and  the aspects of Multifamily Psychoanalysis Groups (MFPG) that convey inner working-through and transformation. Such processes are considered just as they are usually  depicted by the psychoanalytic theory and practice. In the specific and peculiar frame of MFPG, the raise of an emotional atmosphere facilitating the expression of the emotional charge, i.e. of the transfert, is essential. Moreover, therapeutic alliance is the basic condition for the activation of an analytic Read more

GiornateRomane

Pathological and pathogenic interactions in Multi-Family Psychoanalysis

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Abstract
This text treats a specific aspect of multi-family psychoanalytic groups in which it is sometimes possible to find that the pathological and pathogenic interactions frequently visible in a session with a parent and a child, also develop in a couple, between parent and child or even between brothers and sisters.

How is it possible then, to deal with this kind of interaction in a group in which one of the members of a couple, or a symptomatic parent and his child, Read more

TraumaGruppo

Transmission of violence: sharing and transforming pain in analytical work

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Abstract

This paper intends to discuss the issue of violence in the links with the help of three case histories. It will first illustrate a case of couple psychotherapy, then a case of group psychotherapy and lastly a clinical vignette concerning group psychotherapy directed to the staff of an institution. Group psychotherapy was performed with the Read more

TraumaGruppo

Social violence and migration: the emergence of traumatic traces in a Photolangage® group

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Abstract

In a context of social violence and great precariousness, contemporary migratory flows call into question our care devices and in particular the individual setting. The issue regarding potential traumas due to forced migration put us in front of the complexity of the clinical picture in a transcultural context. Through an original device based on the use of image mediation in a group of asylum seekers, we will try to show how the use of group therapy, on the one hand, and photographic mediation, on the other, can give a Read more

TraumaGruppo

Accepting death anxiety and agliophobia and their emotional transformation in a Laboratory Group

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Abstract

A group of psychologists and psychotherapists involved in different health care services for people with severe, lethal or deeply disabling somatic illnesses discuss the difficulty of their job when tackling the pain of the limit, the loss, death and emotional resonance it evokes.
The identification with terminal or severely injured patients is a difficult process: it sometimes leads to a defensive distancing, in other Read more

EdipoGruppo

Dissolution of boundaries and identity crisis in adolescence in the Network time: a dual /group approach

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Abstract

The author, after having identified the psycho-socio-structural modifications consequent to the pervasiveness of the virtual, proposes a reading of the adolescent identity construction starting from the risks coming from the dissolution of the typical boundaries of the digital age. Starting from some dual and group clinical situations, the need for a review of the psychotherapeutic setting to reach “hyperconnected” and potentially “borderless” adolescents is underlined. Taking into account the “limit” – lived and experienced Read more

GruppoFamiglia

Presentation “Family, group and psychoanalysis”

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This issue is the second part of a first one, edited one year ago and named “Baby observation and analytic presence”. Our path has therefore started from the silent, not judging neither interpreting reflection about a new-born and its care context and now instead tries to analyse the possibilities of an active therapeutic work with the family group.
In the first issue we wondered indeed what the baby observation could teach to an analyst in training. Doing so, we particularly emphasized that this path puts the observer in direct contact with archaic psychic quotas that always remain active in the psyche and that should never be forgotten by the analyst, even when he is working with adults. We now notice that the psychological configuration of the family that is experienced “in construction” in the baby observation, remains central in the therapeutic work with families as well. Indeed, as and more than the observation, the psychoanalytic therapeutic work with the family group allows to reach and understand the original psychic structure on which the family is based and within which the children individualities are structured.
The family group is a complex system, made up of many different levels and subgroups (the same with which the baby observation allows contact). Part of the family group is, in fact, the parental couple, which originally was the conjugal couple and which is still affected by the psychic mode and history of both members; also the couple or the subgroup of the siblings, as well as the couples formed by each of the two parents with each child. Read more

GruppoFamiglia

Psychoanalytic family terapies

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Abstract
This paper is an introduction to the psychoanalytic family therapies, in a period when the expression family therapy is mostly synonymous of systemic therapy.
Departing from the history of the psychoanalytic work with the couples and the family, the most important “organizers” of the family psychic life appear to be the “phantasmatic resonance”, the “family body” and “the consort’s choice.” Read more

PsichiatriaGruppo

The Dream of Prometheus

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Abstract

The hypothesis that prompted the following article arose from aconsideration of dreams as important supports for analytical transformation. Beginning with Bionian concepts, the author demonstrates, using as a clinical example a group of patients with severe mental health disorders being treated in Read more

PsichiatriaGruppo

A severe and addicted patients group

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Abstract

This article aims to described specificities of psycotherapy’s group leading, in a terapeutical community. Community’s characteristics and dynamics, patients peculiarity and severity significantly impact on group’s thought, emotions and trend. We decided to report sessions short extracts to better describe the group’s Read more

PsichiatriaGruppo

Border areas: the experience of a group of women migrants. From invisibility to the birth of a dream space

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Abstract

This paper aims to tell about group psychotherapy at the Opera San Francesco per i Poveri Clinic. This device is made up of migrant women from different countries, of different ages and who present different clinical conditions, who share one or more traumatic events. Over the years, the group developed the ability to think and subsequently to dream.  It Read more