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
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
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
Abstract
Individual stories of women victims of violence from their partners should be analysed in the light of a commune denominator, their future in a social context, a culture, a system of roles, prejudices and stereotypes still marked by the idea of subalternity of the female gender. To support the women to cope in this perspective with the events that have wounded them represents a focal point of specialized reception, as it allows the “victims” to unravel a series of doubts, inadequacies and personal guilt in a clear vision of the general context, which formed the “background” of their biography. This allows the professional helper to address them with an empathic, non judging attitude and Read more
“To talk about gender violence in relation to the widespread violence against women and children would mean putting light on the “sexed” dimension of this phenomenon in so much as […] the manifestation of a historically unequal relationship between men and women that has led men to bully and discriminate against women. ”
(United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women).
Putting women at the centre of the discussion, now, more than ever, is not a habit nor a boast nor a kindness: it is a necessity, a social emergency. It is in fact the actuality of the news that leads us to focus on the most abused genre in the history of mankind. It’s not my duty and maybe not even within my ability, to reconstruct which and in how many cultures and historical periods women have been subjected to violence, both physical and psychological, but for sure it’s today that the most important match is Read more
Abstract
Grete Stern was a german fotoghaph ad designer. Due to her jewish origins, during Nazism she had to migrate to Argentina. In the 1948 she started a collaboration with the magazine for women Idillio, on Buenos Aires. Her task was to represent on a photomontage the dreams of the female readers reported on the letters addressed to the Italian-argentine psychanalist Gino Germani. She looked for and created new immages that allow to part with real world and point out an idea of interior world. In her work she represents dreams through a special critical analysis that, at the same time, record argentine women’s concerns of that time: she represented with humour, irony Read more
Abstract
The paper I present to you refers in a certain way to a traditional work: the process of finding and giving sense to some recurrent dreams in long-term psychoanalytically oriented therapeutic women’s groups. But I propose to you, though not being in the specific setting, to “treat“ now these dreams in the mental attitude suggested by Gordon Lawrence in his “Social Dreaming”, almost “dreaming them again”, giving space to the echo, to our associations. As they come from the shared experience of our cultural context where our fears and desires as males and females take shape. Moreover, though relating to a “traditional” work of giving sense to dreams, the process through which the sense came to light was due to a long staying in the “negative capacity”, to the “attentive passivity” David Armstrong underlines in his contribution to “Social Dreaming”. The “attentive passivity” is always necessary in our therapeuts’ life but it has Read more