Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of GRUPPI (1/2012)

Presentazione del numero

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Flavio Nosé

New ideas on unconscious defences in groups

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Ferdinando Vanni
The author begins by commenting on transference and countertransference in the psychoanalytical approach to group psychotherapy in order to contrast their classical meaning with the outcome of some recent theoretical perspectives of group psychology proper, such as: transference relationships without an object, secondary partial transference, ethnological anonymous persecutory transference. The Author’s proposition is that within the small therapeutic group those aspects of one’s own identity which are not regarded as belonging to one’s own Self also contain early cultural inputs, i.e. well defined ethnical products which emerge regardless of each individual’s history. Therefore, the Author states that within the group, mind processes are not necessarily regressive insofar as group interaction does not allow participants to keep their usual Self representations. This occurs when group interaction is aimed at comparing Self representations with one another. This being the case, group members are compelled to produce defences that are different from repression, projection and negation, since the continuous feedback process blocks them. .

An experience between passion and reason

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Donata Miglietta
The author retraces the beginnings of group psychotherapy in Italy, which developed thanks to the pioneering work of Ferdinando Vanni - whom she met as a student and then as a colleague - and other psychoanalysts. Through her direct experience, the author leads the reader from the first training in psychodrama to the discovery of group analysis and of the psychoanalytic approach to group psychotherapy. In particular, she traces the birth of the Centre of Group Research "Il Pollaiolo" (Rome), characterized by a Bionian orientation, and the supervision group, called the modellizzazione (modeling) group, led by Francesco Corrao, as places where knowledge and thought generated in a continuous fluctuation between passion and reason. The author describes her role in the cultural and scientific development of the CRG and conveys to us a vivid description of another great master of psychoanalysis and group psychoanalysis: Francesco Corrao, the masterly leader of the Pollaiolo Centre, which later became the Italian Institute of Group Psychoanalysis (IIPG). The author’s personal and direct memories thus go from the foundation of the CRG in Rome to the CRG in Milan (1994), and, finally, to the birth of COIRAG.

On the wave of memories

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Silvia Corbella
On the wave of her personal memories, the author gives us a picture of Ferdinando Vanni in the totality of his person, in the complexity of the different aspects of his character and features. She presents Vanni as an individual and group psychoanalyst, a teacher trainer, a lecturer and supervisor, and as a friend, gratefully highlighting his peculiar authenticity, originality and generosity, which he showed in all contexts throughout his life. By showing him under a new light, this article brings the reader closer to one of the major pioneers of group psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Italy.

Originality and heuristic value of Ferdinando Vanni’s thought on group psychotherapy

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Angelo Silvestri, Emilia Ferruzza
This essay illustrates some of the main aspects of Ferdinando Vanni’s thought regarding small groups and their therapeutic applications. Its aim is to prove the original and heuristic value of his thought, both for research on small groups and for daily psychotherapeutic practice. The first issue the essay deals with is whether the mind functions in a specific way while in a group: this part articulates Vanni’s concepts regarding the matter. The essay then proceeds to illustrate the author’s theory on the limits and possibilities of observation in groups, and finally, with the help of original clinical cases, it stresses the importance of the concept of spontaneous thematic development for therapy.

The topicality of Vanni's work

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Gianolino Roberto Peraldo
In this article, the author integrates some of his own personal memories as a patient in a therapeutic group led by Ferdinando Vanni with his theoretical considerations after having read "New ideas on unconscious defences in groups". From these considerations some questions arise about the connexions between therapeutic experience in a group and individual psychoanalytic experience. The author especially highlights the converging and diverging motions deriving from the two theoretical/clinical fields that Vanni dealt with.

From Cronus to father and from mother to Crohn: dreams, protomentality and mythopoesis in a small therapeutic group

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Graziano De Giorgio
Four fragments of sessions in a small therapeutic group reveal the oscillations between individuality and a primitive mental condition. This is considered as a way of eluding thought, seeking to avoid the dark and frightening dimensions of life. Through instances of unsaturated intervention, the conductor indirectly encourages the development of group elaboration, giving rise to the narrative organization of the dreams of some of the group members, thus stimulating the mythopoeic sphere. From this mythical-relational reciprocity, the development of an individual thought was triggered through the recognition of their own hatred towards parental figures on the part of some of the group’s participants. A particular weaving between the physical symptoms of a patient and the dreams of another opens the door to questions regarding the ties between the prenatal sides of the personality and psychosomatic organization.

The group analysis view in paediatric oncology

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

When an institution cares for paediatric oncologic diseases, the theme of suffering and the possibility of death are likely to saturate all mental areas of patients, their families, and the health professionals involved. Language becomes packed with "facts", while, due to the high density with which it emerges, the emotional life of the involved subjects takes the form of "turbulence". In considering the disease in the completeness of body and mind, the institution which fosters a group view of care offers the opportunity to reflect on critical issues of working with dying patients, according to the extent of shared awareness.

Writing therapy. Writing experiences in psychiatry

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Maria Galati, Annalisa Pasqualini, Corinna Albolino
In a former paper (Groups, 2011, XIII, 1) the authors had presented the personal experience of "writing about oneself" as developed at the LUA, or Libera Università dell’Autobiografia (Free University of Autobiography), broadly considering the possible role of selftherapy. In this paper, they describe the experience that each of them has drawn from having freely introduced the use of writing itself into daily clinical and therapeutic practice. What has resulted are accounts of therapeutic experiences where - in the cases followed individually - writing represented a possibility of continuity, extension and completion of the therapy underway, or it became a mediator in therapeutic groups with borderline patients. Writing then represented the nucleus of a training proposal for nurses at an SPDC (Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment Service): involvement through a personal path of autobiographic writing allowed to face the cases that unfold in psychiatric work at its various levels, avoiding passive learning in the classroom and increasing levels of participation and satisfaction.

Recensioni

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT

Abstracts

Sat, 15 Mar 2013 8:00:00 GMT