Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of RIVISTA DI PSICOTERAPIA RELAZIONALE (34/2011)

The fate of desire: liquid loves and solid identifications

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Chiara Angiolari
This article, using the work of a sociologist, Bauman, and a psychoanalyst, Recalcati, aims to identify the characteristics of a particular problem presented by modern couples: the lack of desire. The liquidity of the current society has implications for interpersonal relationships and entails profound changes in intrapsychic life, with the emergence of a narcissistic ego-worship. Currently, many couples have a disease that is characterized by the attack on the bond. One can distinguish a first condition which corresponds to a freedom delusion, a second to a bond cementing. The replacement of the human experience of the absence with that of the emptiness, underlying the liquidity of the life, preludes the cancellation of the desire for the Other. It involves two bond pathologies, very different from what we used to know. The first are those couples who can not overcome the intimacy test, where the bond is experienced as a source of personal debasement and restraint. In the second couples, the bond has only formal value, becoming a distributor of rigid roles and identities. Finally, the article describes the features of narcissistic marriage and gives directions for the treatment of this relational problem.

The destruction of a love

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Luisa Martini
The crisis of the couple relationship is dealt with in trying to find negative values that the society currently offers only models as the causes of the difficulties that individuals face in creating a stable and satisfactory relationship.

The secret language of intimacy between belonging and individuation

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Sponti Wilma Trasarti, Anna Maria Rapone
The authors, present their concept of intimacy which proved to be of great interest and help in psychotherapy of couples problems (relational, emotional and sexual). They experienced and utilized in their clinical work as systemic-relational psychotherapists. The authors, referring also to Winnicot, Stern, and Whitaker individuate in the primitive "mother-child" relationship the nucleus of intimacy. The child while experiencing belongings with mother and other relevant figures will then develops the capacity of safely individuating. They then define psychotherapy as a context in which the patients can experience regression and recognize their needs thanks to the honest authentic patient/psychotherapist relationship. The therapist "sufficiently good" will act as facilitator to activate or re-activate patients resources. During couples psychotherapy the authors take into account the multigenerational story of patients and its development and analyze and utilize the nostalgia of primitive belonging together with the actual shame and uncertainty of recovering it. Finally they suggest that the concept of "struggle of power" so often present in couples problems solving might be a poor shelter covering deeper needs looked for in a couple relationship.

Intimacy: a metaphor of the myth

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Alessandra De Col, Stefania Possemato
In this work the authors present their vision of the alliance and intimacy of couples on a journey that started from a distance, from the myths of the greek world through oriental philosophies and rituals of some primitive and archaic forms of European folklore to finally land the dance of sexual differentiation: the tango. The authors highlighted the intimacy in couples is characterized by a perennial condition of solitude without which it would have no way to exist on the very concept of couple. The human condition of sexual limit leads man and woman to a continuous research to move beyond the solitude. The "we" is therefore this in couple. The journey begins from Hermaphrodite looking for his half, her half an apple, not to be "alone" and ends with the two tango dancers. They dance in pairs loneliness. As a couple you can be "alone" but you should not feel "alone".

Love me or love me not: intimacy and fears in couple building

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Flavia Alaggio, Piera Anna Murrali
In the present article the authors want to examine the concept of intimacy in psychological literature in order to better understand how intimacy itself builds up in couples. Particularly through the results of a poll they have taken on a social network, and being inspired by cinematographic and literary fiction, the authors mean to examine the factors that probably contribute to intimacy increase, and fears rising from intimacy while the couple is forming.

Intimacy, sexuality and betrayal of couple

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Rosastella Caputi, Valentina Iavasile
It explores the dimension of intimacy as a couple, with focus on the relational dynamics of sexuality and betrayal. First, it outlines the differences between man and woman about sexuality and "unrelationable" areas in every relationship. It underlines the dialectic of betrayal. In this perspective, it describes two "types " of betrayal: that in "chat rooms", in which the other is virtual "other" and the swinging, the paradox of not-betrayal, in which the experience of other is coded by both partners.

Wandering unions: looking for the seed of contradiction

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT

Sergio Lupoi, Paola Cipolla, Simona Dell'Atti, Adele M. R. Francavilla, Roberta Menichelli
This article analyzes the evolution of couple in the XXth century, observing the change of love, that has turned into the place of the radicalization of the individualism, where men and women look for themselves in others. The individualism is a basic element of "liquid modernity", which is the product of a series of transformations (political, economic, social, cultural) of the Societies since the beginning part of this century. Relationships have become liquid, frail and empty as well, in order to be broken every time a change is necessary. Some effects of this evolution are the reduction in marriages and the coming out of new ways of livings together (LAT, Childfree, childless, homosexual couples, etc.) that let the individual choose freely how to fulfil himself. In this article our hypothesis is that the new kinds of couples are a clear sign both of a historical change and a cultural crisis, but they could be an adaptive and functional reaction to fight a sense of powerlessness and uncertainty. According to this point of view the psychotherapists should estimate the patient’s (couple or individual) request for help as a crisis into a Society in crisis. The therapeutic targets are both disillusioning the patient that there is a safe and perennial solution and helping the partners of a couple to think of the couple as an imperfect union because everyone will be always different than what the partner expects. It’s necessary to accept the own change and that of the partner. At last the psychotherapist should help patients to know the reasons of crisis and the way of facing them every time.

Elenchi

Fri, 15 Dec 2011 8:00:00 GMT