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ANCESTRALSTORIES

Facilitating Change: Boundaries and the Human-Nature Dialectic

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Abstract

The author examines the relationship between man, nature and the tightness’ of the boundaries of the species. The individual relates to family and community, as  a set of individuals from which it derives its integrity, and self-awareness.
Expand the boundaries and ‘a way to open new possibilities for exploring human culture and its relationship with nature. The classical psychoanalysis has explored the cultural world as separate from the outside. But the individual and the group are placed in the broader Read more

Comments to the interview with Balbino

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Abstract

The interest that such an interview brings about is in comparing an interpretative system of dream that is different to the model proposed by psychoanalysis and that was initially elaborated around the clinical individual cure. The interview poses questions that we must solve using other analytical systems, such as that of group analysis or family therapy: Who dreams in the dream? How can telepathic dreams be understood, the shared and mutual dreamlike space? The practice of shaman dreams, the different traditional therapeutic practices used via the means of dream, the dreamlike journeys of the Pumé of the Andes, all these issues that have been highlighted and analysed by numerous anthropologists 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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Presentation of clinical material about a therapeutic group of teenagers

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Abstract

The author presents a group of duration of one year, which is constituted by six members aged between 16 and 22 minutes. The sessions are weekly duration of an hour and thirty minutes. In the first session the therapist has been an active dreamer with his eyes open for the entire group. Through the image of the “History endless” returned to the members of their existential position of “waiting for the dust grains destructiveness of anything,” however, able to bring to life “the world of Fantasy.” Making possible an imaginative capacity even on content so deadly has mobilized members in the hope of salvation, enabling them to project themselves in a constructive future. In the next session in fact, the boys lead the group through dreams-nightmares, anxieties related to their representation of self. The character Zero represents the part of self-restraint miserable and therefore feared. Its representation in ridiculous allowed them to tolerate, accept and make be faced by themselves. In this way the children were able to produce a dramatic shift from existential emptiness (Zero), forced to imagine a magical and omnipotent force (God), which alone can deal with it, hope to be able to use at least “that one grain of dust, “as a Read more

MatisseFormazione

Working with the nursing staff of an in-patient admission ward

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Abstract

What follows is a clinical description of some experiences and observations which have arisen out of my acting as group work Supervisor for a group of nurses in an in-patient acute psychiatric admission ward, and as facilitator of a Staff Support Group made up of the same nurses, over the last three Read more

Donne

About female repair in the group. Review of an experience of women with breast cancer

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Abstract

A reinterpretation of a group experience composed of women affected with breast cancer which took place at the UOC of Surgical Oncology at S. Filippo Neri in Rome, in an attempt to find a specifically female element in the work of reparation in the camp following the traumatic events.
It raises the hypothesis that the group, offering itself as a container-maternal body, has favoured, in this women-only experience having Read more

MatissePsicoterapiadiGruppo

Day treatment programs for personality disorders: a review

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Abstract

This paper is a modification of a chapter that will appear in the forthcoming volume: “Handbook of Personality Disorders: theory, research, and treatment,” edited by W. John Livesley, PhD, MD, FRCP, published by Guildford Publications: New York, release date April 2001. The original chapter will be entitled “Partial Hospital Programs.” It suggests that more partial hospitalization programs dedicated to the personality-disordered patients should become available and that more rigorous studies need to be conducted in the future, considering the main difficulties with the treatment in the day hospital, the therapeutic program to organize, the relations with the 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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Group and dream in departments of organic illness. The homogeneous group in the hospital department

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Abstract

So that what seems significant to us, relative to the theme of the groups iconic and oneiric production, concerns its specific function in the group dealing with organic illness. This function is connected with the need to represent the bodys internal events, to give them a shape and communicable expression, to provide them with a sense which can be shared and mentally represented. The understanding of these representational elements, so important for re-establishing the ties between body and mind and between trauma and rebuilding, may set in hand a process of transformation and evolution. In particular, in the group considered, it was possible to pinpoint levels which were more and more touched by the affections of a central fantasy connected with the neoplastic illness: the annihilating and fragmenting invasion of the tumour, bearer of anxiety of death, corresponds to an early primitive defect, connected with problems of inseparability, which gave rise to an area of ice, devoid of life and absolutely inconceivable, invasive and generating death to the point of persecution, to be ashamed of. The organisation of this fantasy, fostered by dreaming, enables the group to pass from a concrete, symmetrical and specular arrangement, of the Read more

MatisseFormazione

Group analysis of those who deal with dying

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Abstract

To build up the trust of the participants in a group with dying patients, the therapist must make himself available as a transitional object due to the intense need for an object and the need for dependence expressed by the participants. On the other hand, the need to empathise with such strong and painful sentiments can represent a challenge for the therapist, activating powerful counter-transference reactions, such as fear of being overwhelmed, anger and negation. If the therapist knows how to deal with this delicate equilibrium, the group will be able to provide valuable aid for coming to terms with, and to integrate, the profound and ambivalent unconscious feelings evoked by 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

PieroSogno

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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

How do institutions dream

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Abstract

The author part of the box after that Freud made his topical and thanks to their rewriting topological space, he could understand that, beyond the physiological and psychological need of sleep, even the institutional groups need space for the self-representation conflicts which are crossed. These spaces, to operate according to the principles of  representability dream, must have sufficient quality transformational. Mutations topological he has shown, indicate that, in institutions, we are in Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

A quick guide to the papers in this issue

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Paper Title: Genius Loci: A function of a group’s affective regulation

Author: Claudio Neri (Italy)

Summary

This paper builds a picture of a characteristic that is shared by both places and groups. Each place and each group has a “Genius Loci” which can be compared to a deity whose constant presence gives character, coherence and ‘spirit’ to that place or group. In nature… <<The Genius Loci tries to maintain a congenial balance between water, wind, vegetation, buildings etc. Conversely, it gets irritated if the characteristics and harmony of a specific place are changed by actions or gestures which are outside its nature>>.

In groups the genius loci works in harmony with the group leader, but is not the group leader. 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

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

Campo

Group Field in the Subjective Adolescent Constitution

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Abstract

In puberty-adolescence, the group allows and favours in the adolescent the pathway towards subjectivation, transmitting a feeling of social belonging through the use of games of reciprocal identifications. At the end of this process, the adolescent may think similarly, but at the same time differently, to the other members of the group, who are travel companions in the fundamental step from endogamy to exogamy. This transition guarantees the existence of cultural order which forms the basis of the social discussion and collectivity Read more

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Dream in group experience

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Abstract

The group is a dream that cannot be explained, an experience influenced by institutional biases, that can however find reassurance in the conductor’s figure. Is dream a system of self representation for groups and persons capable of producing deep emotional meanings, unconscious language and expression for communicating Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

Presentation, Individual, Group and Nature

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The quality of our future depends more and more on environmental balance and its stability. Nevertheless, there’s a contradiction that’s difficult to explain, without entering into complex psychological processes – between the widespread interest the public opinion has for environmental issues and, on the other hand, how little this results in specific awareness, or in a different way of behaving, and ultimately in putting strong pressure on political leadership. In point of fact, how serious is the environmental issue? The greenhouse effect? Degenerative diseases? Or energy resources? These are problems that are already a reality, and today imply a dramatic prospect for our species. The greenhouse effect isn’t just a simple idea that represents the phenomenon as a gradual rise of the temperature of the planet’s soil, the melting of the polar ice cap or other flights of fancy. Today the stability of the climatic cycle is seriously effected, something our small country pays for every year Read more

ComeSpecchio

Lansquenet from “tranquillité” to play. Based upon the film Chocolat by Lasse Hallström

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Abstract

New is amazing, it affects senses, like a cold winter wind striking one’s face, like a red cloak standing out in the dullness of late winter night, like a good hot chocolate delighting even the most suspicious palate with its aroma, like exotic music attracting even the most insensible ears; new smells of spring and reawakening. On arriving inside a group it upsets its existing balance, which in some cases has become stale and stinks of death. At first new generates suspicion or even open rebellion, however it can awaken both Read more

PieroSogno

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

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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

A therapeutical community on its way towards dreaming

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Abstract

For about a year, that is since we have assumed the community project ‘therapeutic responsibility for the structure has been given to a psychiatrist (psychoanalytic psychotherapist) to which were joined a psychologist (group analyst and expert in institutional dynamics), a clinical psychologist doctor (psychoanalytic psychotherapist, expert group phenomena), a psychiatrist (psychotherapist with special training in psychodrama). The authors are two psychologists, one leads to an experiential group with members of the structure, the other part weekly group organization and planning. A brief description of some of the tracks the experiences of these two moments groupal. The authors from experience groupal, observe that in some places appear fantasies similar to those that occur during pregnancy: what seems to us to support the use of metaphor (the teacher who proposes the work on the garden perhaps testifies to a fantasy of care something that is growing, the mental group, the possibility of therapeutic work with patients, Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

The Individual, the Group and Nature

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Abstract

In this article, the author proposes to consider the complexity of the interconnections between individual, group and nature. Is there a link between mental representations of nature and psychological well-being. If the child is not, and ‘entity’ separate from the mother, the individual can not be seen isolated from its physical world. The relationship with nature and fundamental Read more

GauguinAnoressia

Monosymptomatic groups with anorexic and boulimic patients and basic assumptions: the somatic dimension in these patients and the position of the analyst

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Abstract

It is important to reflect upon Bion’s concepts about the basic group, as these groups are more and more growing. Many of them are centred and formed upon a symptomatology in which the somatic dimension is an important part in the subject disease entering the group. I believe that the first Bion purpose (1), -concerning his reflections upon basic assumptions – was to give a method and not only a theory to be tested Read more

ComeSpecchio

Group, psychoanalysis and cinema. Notes about a formative group and cinema experience

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Abstract

In this essay we are willing to bring out some remarks on the usage of movies within experiential groups. As it is already widely acknowledged, there exists a strong relationship between cinema and psychoanalysis, especially between Freud’s theory of dreams and the cinematographic language. It is indeed interesting to highlight that they both are born close to each other: the first projection of Lumière brothers’ La sortie de l’usine Lumière in 1895, and the publication of Freud’s The interpretation of dreams, in 1899. The connection between cinema and psychoanalysis can be analyzed under different perspectives: the way psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts are represented in movies (Gabbard, 1999), the psychoanalytic elements nested into movies and their narratives, the effects of movies on the spectator (Musatti, 1961, Elsaeser e Hagener, 2007 et al.), or, the usage of psychoanalysis in semiotic studies of the diegetic device (Metz, 1977). A further perspective is proposed in our work, that is the effect of a movie on a group of spectators, emphasizing the relationship between what is represented in the movie and the mental reality of group members who watched the movie altogether.  The rest of the essay is structured as follow: the next section preliminary introduces the meanings that a movie might have in a psychoanalytic model; the second section will focus on cinema and dreams; the third section, after a brief introduction on the relationship between cinema and group, describes the 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

PicassoSaltimbanchi

Oneiric constellations and group field

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Abstract

The new thoughts, not yet thought of, can become accessible through the creation, experience and discovery of what the author has called the constellation dream produced by re-dreamed by the group. The dreamer performs the function of “observation outpost” which on the whole, from his vertex, and with his autobiographical language, offers the group clues suitable to pinpointing an emerging and as yet unknown constellation of meaning. In addition, the  author puts emphasis on the responsibility of the analyst in this context. The function of the analyst is certain to develop a narrative that gives meaning to the experience of place, but also to be able to keep alive a particular “attention” (in Bion’s sense) that promotes development through affective interaction of the components of embryonic connections between the split parts (double) in the group. According to the ‘author’ s analyst 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