PieroSogno

Krista: thirty plus years of treatment in a borderline group

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Abstract

This article describes as a patient, Krista, after twenty-five years of group therapy begins to resolve her capacity to mourn. She has resolved her aloneness issues and has developed the capacity for sadness. She has taken in the solid introject of Dr. Shaskan and has been able to remain “affectively connected to the therapist…in the face of current ambivalence, that is, libidinal object constancy must have been achieved”. Krista has moved from a state of aloneness to one of lonliness in which she can miss Dr. Shaskan and long for him, all manifestations of libidinal object constancy. At the same time, her primitive guilt is modified so that she can experience his loss with anger with minimal destructive self-punishment: she develops a psycho-somatic illness shortly after his death. In conclusion, what happens for Krista is that in her capacity to mourn Dr. Shaskan, she develops the capacity to mourn for her own life and her own tragedies. In so doing, she begins to explore the issues that are illustrated in Dr. Adler’s phase three; namely, the reliving of old experiences. She begins to confront the sexual abuse she has received from her father and uncle and to begin a life long task of repair from this horror. Krista is able to sustain a long-term relationship with a male figure and begins to confront and resolve conflicts in her life.

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PieroSogno

Myth making, social transition and transformation: exploring the age of dreaming

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Abstract

The paper will be presented in three sections. In section 1 a working hypothesis about transition will be formulated. In section 2 illustrative material will be presented for analysis and in section 3 the social function of dreaming in Read more

PieroSogno

Social Dreaming: a paradox accepted (a psychoanalyst’s condensed thoughts on Social Dreaming)

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Abstract

The text addresses the Social Dreaming of Lawrence and its functions, offering a reflection on the potential of this instrument in contributing to the increase in shared creativity, to achieve a democratic balance between the parties in the act of dreaming, investigating and evaluating aspects more subjective and personal related to the very act of dreaming and can do it Read more

PieroSogno

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

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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

PieroSogno

The group as place and substance of dream

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Abstract

The dream reported in a therapeutic group is one of the events which incisively characterizes its development; its frequence is comparable with that of other forms of psychotherapy and in any case its merit depends on the way the therapy is carried out. The dream considered in this contribution refers to that kind of group that achieves, even if in a discontinuous way, that state of emotional fusion among the members (Neri et al., 1990), so that it can be considered as “psyche-group”, set as such against the “socio-group” Read more

PieroSogno

Two dreams by Piero della Francesca

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Abstract

The author studies the contribution that emerges from Piero’s dream vision. He notes the relationship doctor/patient is replaced by the painter/viewer one: the dream isn’t the problem but the solution, it isn’t a puzzle that needs to be reconstructed piece by piece, but rather a global narration governed by the painter/viewer’s eye, controlled by the laws of Read more

PieroSogno

The rush of political dreams in analytic group

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Abstract

The author formulates the hypothesis that the group – analytical “resounds”, at a emotional/cognitive level, also because of the deep macro – structural transformations. To bound this resonance he presents a methodical observation, about 2 years long, of two groups of analytical therapy, to notice the influences over the subjective backgrounds (especially the dreams) of the presence of strong changes or national and international socio – political crisis (for example the immigration from the Third World). He has observed how these events have influenced the inter – psychic and intra – psychic ways of disaggregation and aggregation, ways that determine new Read more

PieroSogno

Fiction Film as Group Dreaming: Criteria, Interpretations

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Abstract

The authors describe a technique of work with some patients, that they name as film analysis, sometimes called film therapy, cinematology et al. They find the work with films most advantageous for the clients who are the inhabitants of the former Soviet Union, because in Soviet times psychological work with clients was prohibited. Their work is based on the idea that the image Read more

PieroSogno

The fate of transference: infinite transformation of original fantasies

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Abstract

Understanding new forms of psychic suffering in our society, especially in the border-line states, is much more relevant if we are able to consider their conduct as being an occurrence of the primal fantasies pertaining to two orders : that of the ritual and that of the myth. Very often, the antisocial behaviour of this type of personality is misunderstood because it is not considered for what it is. It is an expression of primal fantasies, dreams and nightmares whom, when transferred in the social realm, are transfigured into rituals or into private myths. I will attempt to outline this constant transformational form, which operates in dreams, in groups, in myths but also in rituals. Since the publication of the groupal psychic apparatus according to R. Kaës, we can consider as a fact that primal fantasies Read more

PieroSogno

Presentation, Mith, Dream and Group

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In May, 1999 the first issue of Funzione Gamma went on-line. The theme was Dream and Group. Not long after, a second issue on that same theme came out. Three years have gone by and the ninth and current issue focuses on the theme which is Dream, Myth and Group, once again. In a few days time, there will be a further issue which deals with this theme. The scientific committee and the editorial staff believe that this theme is of fundamental importance not only for those who work in the group therapy field, but also for those who come from other disciplines which deal with the relationship between individual and group. A large number of dreams Read more

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Supervision of institutional groups: myths and dreams

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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

PieroSogno

One dream for two people: dreaming in the psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy

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Abstract

In this paper are presented the role and functions of dreams analyzed within the couple. Elements of applied clinical triggers a reflection towards the possibility of the dream on and helping to foster the communication process within Read more

PieroSogno

Notes on Space – time memory throught the dream

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Abstract

Dreams represent the activity of the unconscious mind that can transform and digest unbearable emotional states of mind into a “theatre of mind”. In this theatre, dreams play to the audience of the dreamer, want to be listened to and understood. Ella Freeman Sharpe, the English psychoanalyst, wrote that “the only dreamless state is death”. In group analysis, we recognise that the internal and external are always in flux, so in dreams we need to pay attention both to the social context in which the dream has occurred, and recognise Read more

PieroSogno

Group and women’s dreams

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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

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Dream telling as a request for containment – approaching dreams intersubjectively

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Abstract

The dream as a means of access to the contents of the individual and unconscious element in the psychoanalytic discipline is revisited in the light of inter-factor, considering the functions it performs within the group context, with particular reference to the nature of communication and relational request . Food for thought comes from clinical practice and require the viewer a ‘study Read more

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Dreaming and Thinking in the Group

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Abstract

If we consider the group and the individual as different points of a continuum, the commonly accepted ontological dichotomy between the individual and the group will become obsolete, from the moment that specifically human individuality will be seen in relational terms, resulting in an encounter not only between different individuals but also an encounter between different forms of groups. When group therapeutic work starts, intrapsychic aspects become communicable through the interactions that transform the unconscious and archaic aspects of communication into socially shared experiences; thus, the experience and the story of the group become individually and internally represented, in a sharing of reciprocal transformation. My principal references in psychoanalysis are the theories on object relations that have largely contributed to psychoanalytical studies thanks to the relational paradigm. This paradigm emphasizes above all the Read more

PieroSogno

Dream or Myth? The two forms and the two fates of the imaginary

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Abstract

The author distinguishes between two imaginary group. The first is an imaginary explorer, organized by the primary processes of representation of the unconscious: the dream. The second is an imaginary explanation, featuring a ghostly background and whose goal is to create a self-representation of common and shared by the group: the myth. Dream and myth work at their own level through the same material of unconscious processes. The myth acts through tertiary processes, which create the connection between the primary and the secondary, while the dream is governed by primary processes. The following are then developed: describe the function mythopoeic into groups (Kaes R., 1976). The myth occurs after a disaster such as the representation of repair of group identity. The creation and expression of the myth of thought generate content from a source of anguish and of non-thought. They therefore worth re-establishment of the origin, the order of the world and its purpose. The myth acts as a “replacement” of ‘dreaming. It is designed as a meta-interpretation of the dream. The myth acts as a significant predisposition used by the preconscious. E ‘in this light that we can better discern the difference between the Read more

PieroSogno

The Myth of the Self Made Man realistic and function of dreams in patients with eating disorders

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Abstract

In this paper we analyze the case of a patient who comes in for consultation conducted of binge eating. We intend this as an eating disorder that shows early alterations in the psychic structure, caused by the dynamics of dependence of the patient towards the mother who adopted as a way of disinvestment affective behavior. The patient seems to be a myth, which is that of “Self Made Man”. In this she finds herself. So are depicted in relation to the divestment mother. This identification with the myth has generated an emphasis on the cognitive component at the expense of the body and, consequently, has developed a hierarchization for the cognitive. In the paper we analyze a Dream and also its latent sentence. This, is not a way to realize desires but is a realistic thinking, and appears as a reality that was Read more

PieroSogno

The Myths of the Group

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Abstract

You want to show how the analytic group to organize the first expression and sharing narrative needs to develop old and new myths. The ancient myths and formalized are especially useful in the early stages of the process by encouraging the natural myth-making of the group and allow you to approach the unconscious worlds inaccessible individually, for their wide social relations and their language polysemantic. In addition, the analytic group, especially when processing faces difficult times of deprivation, tends to create new myths that have developed within the group and in which the group feel represented, as they resonate with its main elements and the narrative qualities specific a given point in the process. This production of mythical elements – narration of events, memories, dreams, styles, mythologized by the group – has the function of ensuring a deep base and continuity of identity with the group and it will return there in times of evolutionary transition complex or fear of change : the ” re- mythologizing ” in this sense would be as important as the work of producing the legendary and myth used by the group to defend themselves at the beginning or at times regressive and deconstruction of the process, from the anxiety of confusion Read more

PieroSogno

The Group, The Body and Dreaming with Eyes Wide Open

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Abstract

The author describes a narration/dream narrated by a patient in a group of adolescents, with which she wants to comunicate to all the members of the group her changements. The author shows the group can stimulate a real process of transformations, properly in the body, if it is conduced in an active way and he describes a particular method G.R.F., that he uses with Read more

PieroSogno

There and back. Migrants’ dreams and myths

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Abstract

Such extreme crystallization of defensive experiences can be frequently observed in homogeneous communities or groups of emigrants of equal origin, too closed in themselves, anchored to surpassed habits, rituals, traditions and ideologies, clearly detached both from the reality of the place which hosts them (rejected because alien) and from the reality of the country they have left, since they maintain themselves still in time without ever evolving or transforming. The homecoming ideal thus looses its dreaming and Read more

PieroSogno

Daydreams of an adolescents group and of its conductor

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Abstract

The author thinks that the group as well can sometimes be dreamed like the place were dreaming is not forbidden but instead it is accepted with wide open arms and were reality can go in the background.  The meaning of the word dream that the author would like to give is the one of “daydream” typical of those youngsters that have lost or that have a very low Read more

PieroSogno

Dreams and Shamans in sub-Himalayan Tribal Groups

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Abstract

On the importance of dreams, a Shaman of the Saora tribe used to say: “I once had a teacher, an uncle of mine, a kuran (shaman) in my birinda (clan); I could easily forget everything he taught me, if I haven’t already, but I could never forget what I learned in my dreams because it’s engraved in my mind forever.” The basic task of the Shaman is to guide the tribe and keep its anxiety at bay by exorcising it. Other basic tasks are carried out by a guiding spirit. All this takes place through dreams, trance, dream-like thoughts, Read more

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The Problem Solving Function of Dreams in Children’s Groups

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Abstract

In this paper I will be referring to two dreams. The first dream was told by a little girl aged ten and a half, in a group that has been going for three years now, and is held in my rooms. The second was dreamt by a girl aged nine and a half who is a member of the same group. She told it to her mother who referred it to me. I am describing these dreams for a particular reason. Above all I wish to emphasize the centrality that I believe the problem solving function (and the narration that results from it) has in the dreaming Read more