Posts

CappelliNarcisismo

Primary narcissism and the group

/in , /by

Abstract

Beginning with the question : how it turns to become the imaginary “group” unit? the author compares and brings into discussion some postulations derived by the same question in S. Freud, W. Bion, J. Bleger, D. Anzieu, A. Missenard, R. Kaes. She proposes that between narcissistic primary groupality – this means the psychological unit formed by the mother and the baby – and the Ego, object found-created by anaclisis in that other, exists a link in several ways. On one hand, both structures are indistinguishable in the point where they converge and confuse, on the other hand the first one is revealed metaphorically inside the Ego that modulates over it. Finally, narcissistic primary groupality is the negative of the Ego, that what the Ego had to lose-leave to be. From there it is taken that the group is for the Ego what it will never stop to intend recovering and that “make group” or “make one group” is first in the desire of each one, to be a group and to make coincidence borders from the Ego and Read more

CappelliNarcisismo

“The Narcissistic Wound in Diabetes” Reflections on a Group Psychotherapy with a Psychoanalytical Approach with Children Suffering from Diabetes

/in , , /by

Abstract

The objective of this work group, played with children aged between eight and twelve years with diabetes, and ‘was one part to bring patients to the acceptance of the disease, and the other to help them break free attitude overprotective parents. In this sense, the psychoanalytic therapy helps to come out of isolation and to rebuild a balance between mind Read more

MatisseIcaro

Silence in intensive therapy: from an experience of the senses to an experience that makes sense

/in , /by

Abstract

A short-term homogeneous group of young patients who experienced cranial trauma and recovery in intensive therapy is presented. Once the somatic and sensory experiences triggered off by the trauma and its treatment were mobilized in a group experience, elaboration and transformation of unthinkable elements into emotional, recognisable and narratable elements Read more

MatisseIcaro

Body tattoo and body injured, the vicissitudes of omnipotent control over the body in adolescence

/in , /by

Abstract

In the paper, tattoos and accidents are seen as two expressions of the omnipotent control that every adolescent feels he can exercise over his own body. The tattooed body expresses a form of control over the body that may even result in colonizing one’s skin. The injured body instead expresses the total loss of control over one’s body. I have tried to focus on some ways in which the attempt is made to exercise omnipotent control in adolescents.
One of the outcomes of the loss of control that the adolescent if exposed to is the fall, understood as the collapse of the grandiose self as intended by Kohut. In this regard, I have highlighted a reaction to the mental trauma, which follows the physical trauma, consisting in the attempt to restore the infantile grandiosity violated by the accident. In order to restore the grandiose self, the adolescent often refuses to deal with the traumatic area and to come to terms with the usually unpleasant reality which the accident exposes the body to. According to the paper, the group with adolescents conducted by an adult therapist makes it possible to approach and work through the trauma, instead of becoming isolated from the traumatic area in an attempt to relive the infantile grandiosity lost. The group with an adult can also help to contain the anxiety produced by the fear of losing the reference group of peers (Carbone, 2009), that is the group that continues to exist after the accident, albeit in different places, in meeting points that may vary and that for some time are surely distant from the fixed places the injured adolescent is forced to frequent. I have considered two different types of accidents, the traditional ones (including accidents during play, of which I provide an example) and non-traditional ones (including accidents induced by risk behaviour, like the ones Read more

ChagalFiaba

Presentation, The Ordering Function of Thought in Folktales

/in , , /by

Each of the articles in the volume relates to unique aspects regarding the affinity existing between fairy tales, or tales which share common characteristics with folktales, and the therapeutic process – either individual therapy, or a group workshop. Several articles in this issue deal with the ways in which fairy tales function in the therapeutic process.
The connecting thread of the articles is the use of the fairy tale as a “mediating object” in psychotherapy, as well as in educational situations: fairy tales convey profound topics, both in therapeutic and educational contexts and provide indirect access to these topics.  Lafforgue, citing Kaës, defines them as a “prêt-porter” for thinking, emphasizing their “ordering function”. Read more

BronzinoBionFoulkes

Reflection on Foulkes and basic assunts, “Italianiter”

/in , /by

Abstract

The group becomes a place where bygone lacerations are exhibited, and where in the meantime hopefully a remedy will be found. The scars are the concrete evidence of our tormented stories, that show us our limits and those of others, we are aware of the objective difficulties, but we are closer to finding an area where we can express our life project. To remember, and to be remembered by the group ascribes value to the memory, contributing to our being responsible for our present and future. A profound sense of continuity of the Self, makes it possible to face solitude with contentment, time and space become a potential area of creativity. The group constitutes the ideal family, where it is possible to learn to modulate time and the individual-group dialectic. Nucara, Menarini and Pontalti explain: “the family matrix should be a transitional space (or unsaturated family matrix), from which the child (or person) gives meaning to the precedent generations and culture and contemporaneously gives signification to the new, evolutive project that is unknown”. This quotation for me assumes a fundamental model in my conclusion on Foulkes, Bion, the story and the time. Today we can say a group culture is firmly established in the world thanks to the Read more

FormeCircolari

Presentation: Anorexia, Adolescence, Group

/in , , /by

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

Photolanguage© : a method for use with groups in a therapy or training context

/in , /by

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue is to provide information to the reader about how a Photolanguage© session actually works. Before presenting the setting and its specific features, a few words about the origin of the method and a Read more

Photolangage® and institutional crisis

/in , , /by

Abstract

This paper describes the application of the Photolangage® mediation during a training intervention at a healthcare institution going through a Read more

The function of vacuum in a Photolangage group

/in , /by

Abstract

This short paper was a small part of an interesting research work during the academic year 98-99 at Lumiere University in Lion, in collaboration with Prof. Claudine Vacheret and Prof.Bernard Duez. My interest in this topic was due to my participation (as trainee) in a group through the Photolanguage method. It took place inside CE.S.A.P (Centre de Soin et d’Accueil Psychothèrapeutique). This centre is a C.A.T.T.P; that is a part time therapeutic reception Centre; its purpose is to promote the rehabilitation of suffered subjects from mental disorders and their reintegration in a social context through their participation in therapeutic groups. It was a group made up of six women (they were five in January only, because Florence left the group) between thirty and fifty years old animated by a psychologist, a psychotic nurse and me. The session took place from October to July, on a Read more

SeuratAdolescenti

From the top to words: conduction and transformation in a therapeutic group of children

/in , /by

Abstract

In my experience with groups of children (beginning age 4-5 years old, children with an intellective level in the average and with development blocks more or less important: sometimes I also included a child with a psychotic personality structure) I noted that the conductors have different functions, according to the group’s different moments, functions that I will try to illustrate through the history of this group. I would like to specify that these functions, in a developmental spiral model, cross each other and overlap, allowing the group to pass and the integrate itself from a sensorial, motorial, corporeal communication modality of affects to verbal communication modalities, using, as a bridge, the transitionality of playing. On a technical level in the expression they are free (playing, drawing, words, etc.) in a work trim in which the conductor himself can intervene in an active way, if the children ask his participation in playing and in moments in Read more

SeuratAdolescenti

Reality and fiction for the therapeutic couple

/in , /by

Article already published in the Notebook n. 14 – July-December 2001 of the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy of Milan edited by the Pisa-Rome International Polygraphic Institutes

Abstract

The necessity to have a precise time and a limited place where the group processes could take place, is a fundamental requirement for the survival of the group. This is to say that a stable setting with clear limited space must to be respected and offered to the group and to the therapeuthic couple’s mind. The group allows some important dynamic movements for the adolescent, allowing the displacement of the infantile unsolved dependence conflicts in regard to their parents on the group of peers. This permits the working-through of the object-relationships in function with the relationships connected with actual experiences and unsolved conflicts Read more

SeuratAdolescenti

The therapist and the group of deviant adolescents

/in , /by

Abstract

I chose to talk about a sexual crime because I think it’s particularly interesting following the working-through in the group of a crime against a person and not against property, that represents the most diffused kind of adolescent crimes. It is also interesting, for describing the therapist’s position difficulties, that she not only represents an adult in regard to the adolescents, but she also Read more

sogno e gruppo

An Image Mediator in a Dream Mediator within a Group

/in , /by

Abstract

The image as a mediator in individual therapy and in group sessions provides the occasion to mobilise the primary process of the unconscious, in a movement of regression necessary to any initial visualisation. Starting with this type of visualisation, it is possible to reach an authentic process of symbolisation. By “symbolisation”, I mean the process of connecting primary and secondary processes through “tertiary (intermediary) processes”, as André Green has defined them. Thinking in images favours this liaison through the use of a mediating image which condenses within itself the image of the subject and of the group.  Some images presented in the group exemplify Read more

sogno e gruppo

“Istitution’s dream” in the groups of supervision

/in , , /by

Abstract

We would like to take advantage of this meeting on dreams and the group to propose reflections relating to a particular working context with which we have been dealing in the last few years. We are referring to the supervisions carried out as external consultants in the mental health structures with groups of operators of the services. In fact “group supervision” has become a stable practice in many psychiatric services, starting off from the pilot experiments carried out by some of us in the early 1980s. Previous meetings of occasional consultation had occurred in certain groups, however in our opinion without taking their place in the working set-up and Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Dreams in a group session: telling a dream as an instrument to develope one’ s own individuality

/in , /by

Abstract

In this paper some reflections will be formulated about a possible use of the dream as a useful tool to understand and have a view on the state of individual mind, related to group work, in a brief number of sessions of a psychotherapic group, managed in a Psichiatric Public Clinic. Then the process of telling dreams within a group, seems to bring meaningful traces of such an immersion in the inter-subjective plot, which I consider our original condition of being in the world as humans. Within a group, such a plot is alive and present, can be seen, listened, and this experience facilitates a possibility to gather access to personal, remote memories, and touching such ancient roos seems to allow a significant Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

A Sense of Place: Matters of space, mind and personhood

/in , /by

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of the place, which acquires profound significance in the mind of the group, influencing moods and emotions. The space itself, and ‘neutral, while the place and’ a cultural landscape on which are projected and constructed meanings. The trainers, through experience, using the effects of nature on the body and mind, and outdoor Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Bulimic images. Interpersonal rereading of a dynamic of a Photolangage© group

/in , , /by

Abstract

The Photolangage revealed to be an instrument able to stimulate a dialogue among people closed up in the silence of their own experience.Preceding studies and clinical experiences demonstrated its strength in providing a container for the emotions emerging in group paths.This important feature of it permitted us to use the instrument respecting its own rules, experiencing a “new pair of glasses” to read its dynamics: the psychoanalytic interpersonal pattern. Listening to the world of images means listening to elementary sensations they cause “in the here and now” giving voice to the contents of one’s own experience. The photo images and the following comments are, for us interpersonalists, the metaphor of the relation which works between the therapist (parental figure) and the group participants (children). The therapist plays the role which is attributed to him/her in the participants’ phantasies , but recording what is said about the images Read more

PieroSogno

The sheaves. A dream recounted in Group. (From “The Young Joseph” by Thomas Mann. From “Genesis”, Chapter 37, Verses 1-32)

/in , /by

Abstract

The biblical story of Joseph, intertwined with “the young Joseph” by Thomas Mann and analytical affairs of a patient illustrating the vicissitudes of narcissistic object links within the pervasive and influenced, of Read more

GiocoLegame

Introduction

/in , /by

Abstract

In this introduction, after a brief account of the advantages and application areas of group psychotherapy as a method of intervention in developmental age, they are briefly summarized all the articles that make up the volume. In this way, it is given an overview of the content, following a Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Traumatic representations associated with separation. Acting as dreams that can not be dreamed

/in , /by

Abstract

The presentation deals with the reactions to the absence of a therapist. The re-enactment, triggered by the absence of a therapist, provokes an automatic response of hyper-arousal that deprives the patients of the ability to modulate and control anxiety and aggression. This enhances the probability of acting-out. An acting can be regarded as a reactive action disconnected from its emotional symbolic meaning, as a dream that can not be dreamed, a coded message of unbearable painful mental content Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Psycho-Dynamism of dramisation in groups

/in , /by

Abstract

The author relates the dream to a production typical of the group, the dramatic representation and tries to show the similarities and differences between the two. The author takes into consideration the thought of Anzieu (1963), who pointed out the equivalence between the small group and the dream. A group would be, in a sense, a dream dreamed by various dreamy. If we give the dream a function beyond that of satisfaction of desires processing, its reflection can get even closer comparison of the dream with the actions of a small group of psychoanalysts. The author suggests that dreams, in a group, have one of the main functions in this formalization: its function is to provide models of work and thought the group, as well as matrices for identifying its components. Spaces in which to adapt, or with whom you can establish oppositions. The dreams performing among other functions, to mediate between the production of an individual and the group. Allow it to develop models of reflection and action that can go from one form to the next myth, relatively polysemous Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

Discovering Time and Place

/in , /by

Abstract

The importance of place and displacement, represented in the mind as a clinical problem, is emphasized in this article. The movement takes on a double meaning, on the one hand that of metonymy, the other of spatial dislocation. The place and ‘built-in sense of self as an element of identity formation’. The attachment  theory describes the union with the body of the mother Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Rethiking group therapy for anorexic patients

/in , /by

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to working with groups of anorexic patients via decoding of primitive concrete Read more

PieroSogno

Supervision of institutional groups: myths and dreams

/in , , /by

Abstract

Just as the vertice of the dreamer is not the same as the one the dreamer finds himself in when he wakes up, and the vertice of the artist is not that of the interpreter of the work of art, in the same way the vertice of associations is not the same as the vertice of the psychoanalyst carrying out interpretations and the vertice of the creator of the myth is not the same as the one of the person who attempts to reformulate it, contributing to the transformations that occur in the course of institutional supervision. Viewed in this light, institutional myths become elements for the understanding of the basic functioning of the service. And if a non-rigid myth presents itself in the course of supervision, this helps professionals and the group to treat their patients. However, the discovery of a rigid myth can also sometimes give the supervisor an opportunity to make it interpretable, thereby offering it up to the understanding of the group, in an attempt to unblock it Read more

GiocoLegame

Identification Processes in Group Organisation

/in , /by

Summary

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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Who dreams in the group?

/in , /by

Abstract

The author proposes to investigate the group dimension of the dream. Shows the clinical material of a mixed group, closed, comprising six participants engaged in this approach for reasons of training or treatment, which meets once a week for two years. According to the ‘author’s interpretation of dreams is the royal road to the unconscious group, in which the work of interpretation rather to fucus of metaphors and metaphorical narratives, but it is interesting to wonder if it is possible to understand the associations Read more

Donne

From counsciousness raising to women’s groups of the 21st century

/in , /by

Abstract

Female sociality, which began in spaces and times far removed from domestic society, has been organizing itself in modern societies as the feminist movement, of whose history is evoked by the author, generating through the various historical stages new representations of women, that are able to contribute to the possibility of a new Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

The impact of the female analytic group leader’s gender as revealed in dreams of male members: a clinical exploration

/in , /by

Abstract

The psychoanalytic literature has always believed that the sex of the therapist is not a significant variable in treatment. Eroticized transference has positive potential, facilitating, restorative and invigorating. “Eroticized” capture the plasticity of sexuality, and creative ways of human beings who can be loved, and eroticize Read more