Contents & abstracts



Theory and Technique
R. D’Agostino. Body-Mind-Body Circuits: E. Gaddini’s (Theory/)Thinking applied to the “New Psychosomatic Disorders”. Richard e Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 205-215.

The author illustrates E. Gaddini’s theorization of the body-mind relationship and proposes an application of Gaddini’s basic concepts (with some variations) to the intermediate psychosomatic disorders, which she(/he) calls “new psychosomatic disorders”: panic attacks, purely functional damage, floating organic damage and (evident/)full-blown lesions. The author considers that these may be organized according to a “regression hierarchy” that is determined by the gravity of the regressive pathological defence and she argues that knowledge of (such disorders’ individual structuring//)the ?structural organization? of such disorders can be used both to provide specific analytical treatment and for preventive purposes.

Focus
Cyberspace and the Digital Technologies: A Challenge for Psychotherapists Working with Adolescents

V. Giannotti. Introduction Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 216-217.

V. Bonaminio. A Perfect World. And its Imperfections. Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 218-228.

The author goes back over an experience he had many years ago, when he was almost at the beginning of his career as an analyst working with children and adolescents. His purpose is to show how things have changed internally and externally both for analysts and for their relationship with their analysands during the course of this thirty-year period. The work of analysis with an eleven-year-old pubertal boy is described. At that time, approximately thirty years ago, the author had considered him to be a child in the last phase of the latency period, on the threshold of pre-adolescence. He emphasizes that had he understood just what the boy and his symptom were heralding, he would certainly have employed a slightly different treatment technique: from a different perspective,/he would have understood/seen the boy’s uncontrollable desire to “concretely enter” the two-dimensional world of cartoons in order to share their life and be one of them /in a different light. But who could have known it, in those days, and how? The author develops his clinical reasoning along the lines of the “precursor boy in analysis and the analyst who was unprepared”: unprepared for the changes that were shortly to come about with the exponential expansion both of the virtual world and of the means of accessing it.


A. Bonaminio. Early Adolescence Through the Screen: Clinical Implications stemming from Psychotherapeutic Experience/An Experience of Psychotherapy. Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 229-242.

The author uses the presentation of a clinical case to offer his reflections on the potentially therapeutic function that digital devices – and, more specifically, videogames – can acquire during psychotherapy with young/early adolescents. The (//therapist’s) use of such tools in the analytic space – through listening, sharing and the therapist’s (//his/her) interpretive function – can, in some cases, foster the processes of psychic representation/that make psychic representation possible, as well as a mastering of the drive-related and sensorial dimension that is characteristic of puberty and the deployment of instances of transference and counter-transference/an unfolding of transference and counter-transference phenomena.


D. Biondo. Technology at the Inter-generational Crossroads. Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 243-250.

The author comments on the two clinical histories presented by Vincenzo Bonaminio and Angelo Bonaminio, emphasising how they offer the opportunity – and a rather original, fresh one//an unprecedented and rather original one – to see two generations of analysts at work.  Two generations belonging to two completely different eras: the first to the pre-revolutionary era of the digital revolution and the second to its post-revolutionary era. The revolution that occurred in between is challenging psychoanalysts not only to find a shared/common vocabulary/language but also to review/revise their epistemological categories, in order to construct a new psychoanalytical technique for use with digital adolescents who are forcing them to revise their use of certain categories: representation; the difference between imaginary reality and shared reality and between hallucinatory reality and digital reality; the concepts of space and time within these three different types of reality and the use of the medium within the setting.

Clinical Reflections
D. Bruno, L. Calzolaretti, E. Fondi, S. Oliva and A. Scanu. New Forms of Parenthood: Gestational Surrogacy. Themes/Topics and Problems. Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 251-273.

The article describes the practice of commercial, altruistic and payment-based gestational surrogacy currently existing in California. For approximately the last thirty years, this has been giving rise to new types of filiation and male or female homoparental or heterosexual families. After briefly mentioning the anthropological and socio-economic perspective on the subject, the authors identify some of the mental/psychological implications of the Gestational Surrogacy contract they examined and some of the experiences of “gestational surrogacy” encountered by the various types of couples. Finally, they ask some open questions about the issues that these new forms of filiation raise in relation to the psychoanalytic models applied in our everyday practice: (the) proto-mental experience and the sensory bond established with the carrier/surrogate mother during the course of the pregnancy, the type of mother constellation that unfolds for children born from gestational surrogacy, the profile regarding the oedipal complex, the body of emotions described by Winnicott as “primary maternal preoccupation” and certain considerations relating to motivational aspects of the carrier mothers.


B. Amabili, L. Ballaré, M.C. Brutti, L. Cavaliere, L. De Rosa, G. Imparato, B. Marchi, S. Olivieri and F. Tonucci. In the Name of the Father. Representations of Fatherliness in the Therapeutic Relationship//during Psychotherapy with Adolescents. Richard & Piggle, 24, 3, 2016, 274-292.

Is there a connection between contemporary society’s so-called father(hood) crisis (or crisis of the paternal function) and the transformations that the clinical treatment of adolescent malaise is currently undergoing? The purpose of this work is certainly not to offer exhaustive answers to such a question but, rather, to propose some reflections and foster direct engagement with/dialogue on the topic of the paternal function during adolescence, taking what emerges during psychotherapy/the therapeutic relationship as its starting point. By g/Giving the concept of the paternal function pride of place in clinical work with adolescents, the authors find themselves observing how therapists have to manoeuvre between the risk of acting out/embodying a concrete paternal function (to which the adolescents themselves can call them) and the developmental possibility of fostering work on symbolic fatherliness, which is a fundamental aspect of the subjectivization process. (The o/) Oscillation between the concrete and the representational additionally makes it possible to highlight various conjugations and representations of fatherliness as they emerge through/during the act of narrating in the analysis room and not only that. Conceived and/or expanded during the encounter with the adolescent, such representations of fatherliness can constitute a vector in the sense that they transform the therapeutic relationship/psychotherapy and support adolescent development.

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