Posts

Donne

Women in groups in Italy today and yesterday. Social change and inner transformations in three decades

/in , /by

Abstract

Author’s reference theory
As group Psychoanalyst the author refers to Ferdinando Vanni’s Interactive Group Theory (1988, 1992).
In F. Vanni’s theory Interactive groups are characterized by interactional communicative exchanges among participant. In these exchanges an “interactive” self emerges: the “self-in-others”.
This “self-in-others” presents itself as an indifferentiated Self which allows parts of personality to be projected, reflected or induced in others. The leader of an interactive group will then, as a first step, activate feed-backs from participants in order to recognize projections and inductions. He/she will, as a second step, begin the psychoanalytic working through, thus allowing the remodelling of self through group exchanges.
Interactive Group Theory refers to mixed gender groups.
In all women’s groups interactional communicative exchanges have revealed specific therapeutic power.
Relaxations of boundaries between individual selves derive from the affective quality of women’s interactions in group cultures like Interchangeability (Cantarella, 2002; 2005), Read more

ANCESTRALSTORIES

Facilitating Change: Boundaries and the Human-Nature Dialectic

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , , , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

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