RISULTATI RICERCA

Origin and Parenting Clinical study on the unconscious parental fantasies concerning autologous IVF through embryo cryopreservation This paper presents the results of research based on interviews with sterile parents who have had several children after autologous IVF, of whom one was born after thawing the zygote. The aim of this research was to understand how these sterile parents had assimilated IVF involving zygote cryopreservation in terms of their filial bond to the child. To explore this new reality we developed a method of psychoanalytical clinical research which combines the advantages of case studies with the objectivity of quantitative data. We also used a specific linguistic methodology that enables analysing recorded interview discourse in an objective way. Results report on parents’ conscious imaginings on cryopreservation that were found common to the studied couples and show the psychological vulnerability for posterior parenting of a specific clinical situation: several children born after a single ovocyte retrieval thanks to the embryo cryopreservation. Results have led to particular fantasies about the child born after thawing the zygote as a survivor coming from only one parent’s body, and about the sterile filial bond conceived like a repetition of the parent themselves. The specificity of IVF parents’ unconscious fantasies regarding normal reproduction is evaluated and several psychological clinical guidelines are proposed. Keywords: psychoanalysis, cryopreserved embryo, parenting, IVF, children

Index, Icon, Symbol? Can Peirce’s Descriptive Classification be of any Use to Psychoanalysis? The author of this paper describes and explains from the clinical and theoretical viewpoint the existence of an intermediate state between what the Kleinians call symbolic equation, and true symbolization. To support this initial hypothesis, he presents some emblematic clinical vignettes regarding the oscillation between quasi or absolute de-symbolization represented by the symbolic equation in psychotic disorders, and symbolization. The author maintains that all borderline syndromes could be seen in this way, and he emphasizes the need to interpret this oscillation to the patient in order not to incur a confusional generalization. Following a theoretical examination of the origin of the notion of symbolic equation, and by means of a few Kleinian observations - although limited to the first years of life - the author suggests the theory of symbolization of the American philosopher and semiologist W. Peirce as a valuable instrument for reflection; in particular, the use of Peirce’s notion about semiotic tripartition as it was interpreted and developed by the great linguist and communications theorist R. Jakobson. Particularly important is the notion of iconicity that the author attempts to link to certain observations of Bion. The last part of the paper regards a suggestion to re-consider, on the basis of semiotic teachings, Bion’s alfa function as a kind of semiotic function potentially active since birth that would help the infant to gradually organize all the various signs and signals of preand non-verbal communication (perceptive, acoustic, olfactory, etc.).

Between identification and thinking: some notes on internalization Using clinical material, an identificatory process is described, in which analytical listening articulates the intra-psychic and drive-related to what is historical and intersubjective. It is postulated that this process attacks the subject’s capacity to think, condemning him to repeat compulsively a past that could never be. The author thinks that, even though identification is inevitable from the diachronicdevelopmental point of view, because it facilitates subjective structuring, it is only a moment of transit, not of arrival, since it contains the possibility of heteronomy.

Freud and the Shadow of the super-ego The analysis of his Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis led Freud to make an enigmatic aphorism: It seems as though the essence of success was to have got further than one’s father and as though to excel one’s father was still something forbidden. Freud postulates, therefore, a primary identifactory rivalry with the father that indissolubly tethers the desire for success to what makes it necessarily transgressive. It is the core of the Ego-Ideal-superego that would perpetuate such a fixation, in spite of the evolution of the post-oedipal identificatory models and the symbolic displacements that qualify such success. The author attempts to show how the ego-superego differentiation, by supporting an indefinite work of subjectivisation, keeps the shadow of the superego from falling on the ego, without the ego claiming to jump over its shadow. What was bequeathed to you by your forefathers, earn it, if you want really to possessed it. If the shadow of the Freudian heri tage is likely not to fall on his heirs, it is because the essence of what he has transmitted remains the fundamental rule the foundational one.

The Shadow of Heritage: Lost and Found... When speaking of the influence of past experiences on the present, we might individuate three pathways, tightly interwoven with each other, within which the shadow of the past may transit through the psychic apparatus. An intrapsychic pathway starting from early experiential traces in quest of meaning; an intersubjective interplay that gives the imprint to either structuring or traumatizing inter-generational or trans-generational transmission; and, finally the institutionalized transmission of our discipline and practice since Freud discovered and formulated it. The Author discusses questions related to the conceptualization of identification in relation to psychic organization, to the different definitions of superego introjects and internal objects as well as to the quality of the objects that cast their shadow on the ego. Primary and secondary identifications as well as its metapsychological place are relevant to the understanding of ideals and idealization from the perspective of transmission and the formation of ego and superego boundaries

The contribution of Group Analysis to the treatment of organic pathology: variations in Parkinson’s disease The authors reflect upon the contribution that clinical psychology and Group Analysis can give to medicine in the treatment of organic pathology. They propose consideration of the entire system related to the treatment not only that of the relationship between the doctor and patient, but that of the whole system involved, including the places, space and time of the organization itself. The article describes and analyzes an experience with couples in a residential setting for a limited period of time. In each pair, one has Parkinson’s disease, and the other is the caregiver; the group is an important therapeutic factor. The complexity of the residential experience is evaluated, planned and structured as a group engaged in a dialectic relationship. The specificity of the described institutional intervention is not simply to be found in the utilization of the group, but rather in the conception of the same as a system of organizational functioning composed of an assemblage of groups in which both the patients and the operators transit (the patient group, the caregiver group, the couple groupe, the association group). This also includes the relationship between formal and informal groups. Seen as a sort of psychic medication with powerful potential, the group thus becomes the key factor in a socially oriented clinical medicine. Key words: group, limited residency, social medicine.

Research in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, research and institution Research means wondering not only on the clear aim of a specific study but also on the hidden meaning and on the counter transferral emotions that the study’s object induces in the researchers and in the research team’s dynamics. In this paper, psychoanalytic approach and research related to this approach developed in COIRAG (Confederation of Italian Organizations for Analytic Research on Groups), particularly in CSR (Study and Research Centre), was analyzed. This type of research considers subject not only as individual subject, traditionally considered, but emphasizes the internal group which exists in every subject independently from its dimension and nature. A habitus of specific observation and research results either of the prescriptive frame, that creates particular processes, or of the relationships’ configuration, which can be explicit <=> implicit, and can be generated by individuals, groups and institutions. Referring to a project carried out by COIRAG named The Dream and the Organization, which collected data for three years and has tried to reach that kind of dream state which is largely present in every institution (all the individuals of an institution dream in relation to their institutional context) and which is able to assume different forms accessible to knowledge, it is noticed that institutional emotional clime comes before and goes with the possibility of take care of the institution and that healthy institution’s increase can lead to an increase of groups and individuals living in a healthy level. It is possible to say that the taking care of the emotional distress, and the research about this, could be achieved by two ways: one which, using the traditional psychotherapy, works on individual and, using groups, makes benefits on institution; and the other, which takes care of unhealthy institutions. In this way it is possible to consider in a planning view many problems and experiences, related to the institutional individual’s mental working level. Key words: psychotherapy, research, institution.

Gino’s group senseThis work invites readers to appreciate Gino Pagliarani’s remarkable ability to work on here and now, a relational dimension that has been pointed out as fundamental for the group process in other texts, as well, and here is meant as the foundation of negative capacity. Pagliarani’s working method reminds the present author of a number of technical aspects to which in-depth study has already been devoted by empiric research on group therapy, although Pagliarani has not written much about or worked much with actual therapeutic groups. Special attention is given to the inevitable link between beauty and the constitutively chimeric and protean aspects of groups, as well as the relationship between metempsychosis and somatopsychosis. After a technical note on the therapeutic community, the article concludes with a reflection on Pagliarani’s position in regard to pyshoanalysis and group analysis. Keywords: psychosocioanalysis, group analysis, Luigi (Gino) Pagliarani.

Dialogue on Gino Pagliarani’s psychoanalytic theory and technique Annamaria Burlini Following in Gino Pagliarini’s tracks after having studied with him for a long time, the authors reflect upon the fundamentals of his thought. They refer to Pagliarani’s clinical approach concerning, above all, the anxiety of beauty, close relationships, and puer explaining their connections with current theories. They also point out how other psychoanalysts’ readings, and, especially, those of poets and novelists, allowed Pagliarani’s crossfertilization to become a way to reflect on human experience. Keywords: psychosocioanalysis, anxiety of beauty, cross-fertilization

Utopia and clinical praxis in Luigi (Gino) Pagliarani di Carla Weber This paper is an analysis of some aspects related to the Luigi (Gino) Pagliarani’s reasearch and psychoanalytic work. The current psychoanalytic discussion highlights that Pagliarani’s work anticipated many questions about the current mental disorder’s rising and is an important motivating force for further research. He considered the knowledge as strictly related to its change in action and, on the other hand, he favoured the action as a place for meaning’s and significance’s exploration. He considered the episteme of the puer, the possibility of being of everybody, and he gave to psychoanalysis the role of creating and bringing up the puer of everybody. The aim of a psychoanalytic work is a sentimental training, which gives a beauty’s awareness, holding of the angst that a real life can cause. For him, psychoanalysis is substantially praxis’ ethic, that can develop in the aesthetic conflict’s overcoming. In the human possibilities’ research, Pagliarani considered psychoanalysis as without landing place, guided by the utopia, by the vision of a place that doesn’t exist, but that could raise in the dialogue with the other, in a reality’s good analysis. A place in which it is possible to find out different ways of a responsible life. The psychoanalysis for Pagliarani is relationship and the technique is related to the possibilities of changing conditions. He suggests in the psychotherapic work to create a psychic and real space, with a continuous interaction, on which it is possible to work with the patient in a psychoanalytic view. For this reason, he searched and emphasised the value of the hic and hunc, which can be found in the setting as an original place that can also be a rising place. Clinical praxis explores conditions to create a movement of the most possible individual expression, of a metempsychotic experience, in which a re-birth could be founded, as choice to being in the word in a responsible way. A co-evolutionary approach, gathered and done till the most sustainable condition, because in the analytic relationship it can be taken in the present and lived again in the analyst- patient couple to taking on a changing meaning. Key words: psychoanalysis, psychotherapic relationship, aesthetic conflict.

L'attività psicoterapeutica nell'anzianoThe psychotherapeutic themes in the oldness are focused on the feeling of solitude, the narcissistic problematic, identity reshuffles, losses and bereavement, as well as the urgency to clarify conflicts from the past, and the fear and death anxiety. M. Klein considers all reactions to loss, bereavement and solitude as a revival of the old depressive position, if the latter hasn’t been elaborated enough during childhood. Both psychotherapeutic and analitic appraoches are possible in the old age according to Klein’s indications.

Psicoterapie psicodinamiche per l'anzianoThe Author expresses his critical evaluations about the current use of the words psychotherapy and dynamic psychotherapy and proposes a more exact scientific definition which may distinguish those words and the concept of psychological support. Owing to these distinctions and definitions, the Author is doubtful about the usefulness of psychotherapies in old aged people. Instead of psychotherapies the Author proposes a more careful education for the helping operators: they might be trained so that they can offer a right support to every old aged people

L'intervento psicomotorio con persone affette da demenza We report the outcome of a sample survey on elderly people suffering from dementia in which we focus on the benefits achieved both on behaviour and mood level. The psychomotor intervention is constructed on a therapeutical treatment that improves the self advocacy on action and communication. This cure develops on the privileged level of expressiveness and sentiment that in the relationship come out through gesture and movement. The meeting metaphor takes its place in a present time, therefore well known, and draws a space where both psychomotor therapist and patient, try out together the “corporeity” as an internal element lived and felt. The psychomotor recovery of the value of poses, postures, balances and theirs changes in the relationship led to a better understanding of the behaviour of the patient whose symptom, usually suppressed by pharmacological therapy, is the only way to communicate with the world.