Contents & abstracts



Focus
The father figure and its functions. Part II

M. G. Fusacchia. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 237-239.


V. Bonaminio. Winnicott and the “Father” in Child Development and in the Psychoanalytical Relationship. Who’s Afraid of Acknowledging that the Father is a Central Figure in Winnicott’s Works? Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 240-248.

The author revisits some of Winnicott’s famous writings and refutes the fallacies regarding the alleged absence of the father, both as a real figure and as a function. Through a close reading of the texts, he shows how, on the contrary, Winnicott recognises that the father is present ab initio. Furthermore, the author emphasises the equally significant fact that Winnicott had a very clear idea about the difference between father and mother, assigning to the former the function of third party who is called to recognise the challenge and withstand it.  Surviving it helps both the child and the adolescent to integrate aggressiveness and anchor themselves in reality, thereby also permitting instances of disidentification that have a subjectivizing function.


F. Duparc. The Father in Winnicott (Is He “Good Enough”?). Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 249-268.

The author goes back over some passages taken from D.W. Winnicott’s works. Through a careful close examination of various writings, he emphasises that although Winnicott did not pay constant attention to the father figure, he did attribute increasing importance to it over time. Winnicott’s conception progressively becomes more clearly defined in the multiplicity of the father’s functions, revealing the importance of his influence on a child’s development.

Focus
Immigration: Separations and Reunifications

S. Falanga and A. Grossi. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 269-279.


S. Lanzon. Working Through One’s Personal Story as a Way of Bridging Cultures. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 280-287.

Immigration both constitutes and requires a new frontier of knowledge, research and intervention in that it highlights loss and the fact of being uprooted from one’s culture of origin, particularly as far as second-generation adolescents are concerned. Even if they are born in the receiving country without having experienced the trauma of migration, these adolescents carry their parents’ trauma inside them. The loneliness, the depressive anxiety and the trauma of exile make every growth process fragile and constitute both a threat to identity and a factor that puts the psyche’s structuring at risk. Through their presentation of a clinical case concerning a young female Peruvian patient, the authors reflect on the trans-generational fall-out produced by the drama of immigration.


L. Zaccardi. Migration Trauma and Reunification: Two Clinical Experiences. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 288-295.

This work focuses on some psychopathological consequences of migration trauma in two young South American patients and their families. It presents some excerpts from their history and their psychotherapy. Patients’ different ways of working through the mourning caused by separating from their country of origin affect the manner in which the clinical treatment evolves.


M. P. Ferrigno. Reunification’s Difficult Road. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 296-305.

The experience of post-migration family reunification often results, for the reunited children, in traumatic experiences that can block development and make the already difficult task of entering into adolescence particularly complex. The work retraces the complicated process of working through mourning that is required of children who are reunited with migrant parents. Referring to clinical material, it highlights the need for therapy for both the children and their parents, in order to re-establish broken ties and foster the birth of a new inner hope that can permit investment in new objects.


Clinical Reflections
G. Bruno. The Child Analyst: between the Primary and the Profound. Reflections on the
Sadistic and Masochistic Elements of Relationship. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 306-324.

The author presents clinical material taken from three different contexts: psychotherapy with a patient during her latency period, psychotherapy with a three-year-old boy in a joint mother-child setting and a case of baby observation. Through these, she considers an aspect of relationship that is marked by sadistic or masochistic qualities which, varyingly, go hand in hand with specific psychic functionings of the developmental period. The author’s reading of the material draws, in the first place, on Freud’s contribution but also avails itself of a further expansion on the theme of sadism and masochism that refers to the thinking of Ferenczi and Winnicott and the attention they paid to the primary dimension of development.


B. Amabili and S. Olivieri. The Rejection of Otherness. The Interaction between Pathological Couple Dynamics and the Children’s Aggressive Acting-out during Adolescence. Richard & Piggle, 23, 3, 2015, 325-334.

The authors propose two clinical situations observed during psychotherapy with couples in which the aggressive acting out of adolescent children towards their parents emerges as a desperate attempt to secure themselves a sense of existing and being real. This within a family dynamic characterized by an inability to accept and integrate that which is other than oneself. The work discusses the relationship between the couple’s pathological collusion and the children’s dysfunctional behaviour during adolescence. It hypothesizes that the parental couple’s psychotherapy may acquire a transformative valence for the whole family. This through allowing the destructive violence to be overcome and fostering new forms of differentiation and release.

Book reviews