Posts

ChagalFiaba

Finding and hiding: Winnicott’s potential space and Raspberry Juice’s home

Abstract

The paper discusses some analytical dynamics and terms as reflected in a Hebrew children tale, named “Raspberry Juice”. The tale deals with the question of closure and disclosure, with the need to be discovered as against the fear to be found, or in fact with the existential tension described by Winnicott in innumerable variations between the need to be understood and recognized and the fear to be completely understood or inadequately exposed. It also deals with the process of creating one’s identity, taking place within the potential space, enabling one’s mobility between “me” and  “not-me”, between imagination and reality, between the need to hide and the need to be discovered, and perhaps thereby – between the need to take part and the need to Read more

ChagalFiaba

Wandering through the dark forest: dreams and fairy tales in a group workshop

Abstract

The paper touches upon the role that fairy tales play in a group therapy, as it works through processes relating to dream contents.  It exemplifies the way in which the interdisciplinary dialogue existing between group analysis and folklore research provides some interpretative options that would be unavailable unless one is familiar with the collective material existing in fairy tales. The example presented in the paper deals with the tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and demonstrates the way in which fairy tales are, in some cases, so integral to the shared cultural repertoire that it is almost impossible to deal with the dream narrative without relating its contents. The paper demonstrates the ways in which fairy tales and dreams might present a complementary or even compensatory dialogue, similarly to the way in which different voices in the group portray the outlines of conflicts and dynamics that the group will be occupied with in the phases to come. It is possible that this example Read more

ChagalFiaba

Archaic songs for preserving and transmitting the mystery of birth, love and time

Abstract

Since the most remote times oral tradition has passed down linguistic-communicative materials that the adult uses for the caring relationship in the “nursery”: these pluri-semantic materials (consisting of sounds, rhythms, gestures, words, etc.) are structured in sequences that accompany the birth and evolution of the child’s mind, from the symbiotic relationship to the perception of duality and, finally, of the social environment.
These materials originate from and have their foundation in the mother’s experience regarding the birth and growth of the child. A sort of progressive catharsis accompanies the worried imagination with the sweet music of the lullabies, toward the more urgent rhythms of the games on an adult’s lap or on the changing table, to reach the veritable polyphonies of the first group games of the child.
The “ready to use” characteristic of this linguistic material and the thoughts contained in it make it memorizable, interesting and available for the child and the adult who enters into a relationship with him.
At the centre of interest and pleasure present in the preservation and use of the oral patrimony of the poetic production for early childhood, there Read more