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
Abstract
This article is a commentary on the paper by Maciej Zbyszewski concerning his work with soldiers who returning from war missions. My work with Holocaust survivors and consequences of working with homogeneous groups are discussed in the context of war trauma. In my opinion therapeutic group Read more
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
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
Abstract
Bion’s paper ‘On arrogance’, written in 1957, came at a cross-roads in his life. Evidence from his various writings is used to demonstrate a change at this time in Bion’s attitudes to himself and to others. In consequence, Bion’s paper could be read as an insightful exposition of what underlay his own contempt and Read more
The preparation of this issue proposed by Paola Carbone on trauma and accidents during adolescence has had a long period of incubation that created a network of exchanges. First of all it produced an unusual editorial event (what authors treat such a specific and dramatic theme?) Secondly, a network of research (clinicians, theorists, and students exchanged pertinent information and questions), and ultimately creative communication and contacts (the large number of competent, courageous researchers with narrative capabilities in this field created dense and warm exchanges).
The painful theme of this issue paradoxically, had a regenerating effect on the curators, the authors and the editorial staff, so much so that we could even go as far as saying we sowed the seeds of knowledge, bonds and reparative hopes, and above all we were able to see a dimension of experience (the adolescent condition) recognised and individuated, not an occasional or a chronological dimension, but one that is part of the nucleus of subjectivity and the process of ‘subjectivization’: part of that field of shared elements of the group to Read more
The present issue deals with three closely connected arguments: adolescence, group and accidents.
When adolescence from a latent quietude bursts onto the scene, it evokes metaphors that more often than not have to do with the negative effects of trauma. The transformations that come about in puberty brusquely invading the experience of the Self, are often seen as an accident (‘adolescence suddenly hit me’, explains a young girl pointing to her chest with a frightened air of someone who had been hit by a car) these transformations have a certain momentousness on the continuity of existence.
Similarly, the accident –the primary cause of death between the ages of 15 and 24 years, is not as it seems a casual event, but is an expression of ‘acting-out’, in other words an action with two sides to it, both equally significant, on one hand the action offers the subject a flight from awareness, and on the other, stages a trauma without speech.
When we consider the group we wonder what relation there is between group, adolescence and accidents. Frequently, parents and teachers ask themselves (and ask us also), what are the risks connected to the adolescent and the group, often threateningly seen as a ‘gang’.
We have observed that adults usually see the adolescent/individual (‘their’ son or‘their’ pupil), substantially level-headed and the group of adolescents as a risk factor. On the contrary, adolescents perceive the relation between risk and group in a completely different way: failing a year at school, bad health or losing the affection of their parents is not a priority problem. The most extreme risk for an adolescent is losing his/her place in the group, and so he/she believes it’s worth the trouble to expose oneself to Read more
Abstract
The author presents a specific training methodology for road safety education which he called “Pact for Acceptable Risk”. This method, in contrast with the traditional techniques of road safety education, involves a mutual commitment among the younger generation and the previous ones, and expects the acquisition of the meaning of the rule is linked to the acceptance limit, the result of an educational journey around the meaning of the codes and their regulatory function relationships. The acquisition of the Highway Code is the culmination of this path, which can only be achieved by involving the adolescent group. The peer group is proposed as a valuable social resource for the prevention and as a laboratory in which to prepare the individual to carry it from the destructiveness of unnecessary risk, Read more
Abstract
The prelogical nature of the accident in adolescence talks about mind’s crushing when the time of a second birth implies the return of that automatic and primitive anguish when faced with ineluctable biological propelling forces of the body. This anguish is what the adolescent is not able to historicize in the inevitableness and at the same time, in the way entirely fortuitous of the accident happening, because the repetition of the traumatic situation is vital for his survival. The absence of the Other’s answer to the traumatic experience of the birth, introduces the tragic dimension that lives the reoccurrence of self- harmful behaviours. The tragic dimension of trauma is related with shame, and it subjugates adolescent to repeat it unless or until, an Other can at last respond and not confirm that trauma as the only way he is awarded to exist.
Abstract
In this article is described how the elaboration of a massive traumatic experience can find some support and resources in the psychoanalytic process of group’s psychodrama. The characteristics of the groupal psychoanalytic situation qualify for a psychic particular work whose modes, dynamics and economy profit by the work of intersubjectivity, the groupal associative process, the plurality of figurative references and the polyphony Read more
Abstract
This article testifies about the work of short intervention realized in a camp of evacuees built and managed by an Association of Civil Protection’s Volunteers, two weeks later the earthquake which damaged Emilia Romagna on the 20th of May 2012.
This paper is questioned by the two founding arguments of the experience discussed in it.
1) What kind of the emergency’s treatment is it possible where the natural catastrophe dictated the advent of a “before and after” which irreversibly draws the familiarity with the usual everyday life?
2) And what kind of presence is it requested to the psychologist called to intervene in a circumscribed time within the community which Read more
Abstract
Within the theoretical and clinical framework of Attachment theory, the present pilot study aims to assess whether and how potentially traumatic experiences suffered by women victims of trafficking may have negative consequences on emotional-relational functioning and intends to consider the role of mediation of attachment assessed by using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). The groups consisted of 5 women victims of trafficking and 5 women matched by age who were randomly selected in a non clinical population. The phenomenon is considered from a clinical, sociological and legal perspective, in order to collect data and information to suggest and implement intervention programs aimed at the recovery of the person. In accordance with the international literature, data obtained after administration of the assessment protocol in the group of women victims of trafficking have shown a prevalence of insecure Read more