Contents & abstracts


Theory and Technique
T. I. Carratelli. The Relationship between Psyche and Soma. The Self’s Bodily Bases. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 325-337.

This article proposes an introductory reflection on the concepts relating to the relationship between psyche and soma and the Self’s bodily bases as set out in various writings that D.W. Winnicott dedicated to this subject. The author refers, in particular, to the key text, Mind and its Relation to the Psyche-Soma, and proposes a reflection on how these themes have evolved.


V. Massaro. The Psyche’s Difficult Indwelling in the Soma. On A Clinical Note. Richard e Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 338-344.

Taking a fragment of a session with a ten-year-old boy called Gabriele as her starting point, the author is led to think about what happens when there is “an extreme degree of trauma during birth”. The videogame that Gabriele brings to a session allows her to dwell for a while within the child’s imagination and, from there, to be in-formed by a state of irritation, the sign and memory of a precarious psychophysical homeostasis that is difficult to re-establish. After these instances of identification, she returns to her observation of a very difficult birth, a child with certain fragilities and an ill-equipped environment still in a state of shock after deciding, in the past, to therapeutically abort a deformed male child. The author therefore raises the question as to how this child can be left “that time and space” that will allow him to live with pleasure in a body, even if it is inadequate.

Focus
Difficult Births: a Group at Work

G. Bruno. Introduction Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 345-351.

A. Sparano. Interrupted Bonding. A Journey in Accompanying Parents in Cases of Preterm Birth. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 352-363.

The article refers to the author’s decade-long experience as a psychologist and psychotherapist working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a leading hospital. The article offers some reflections on the traumatic nature of preterm birth, on the risk factors and on the protection that can be offered to the child and the parental couple. Clinical examples are used to show the different types of intervention with families: before the birth as well as during and after it.


M. O. Catapano. “I Won’t Leave You All Alone”. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 364-368.

The author reflects on the interweaving of the functional dimensions with the emotional and relational ones both in a child’s development and in the systems into which he/she is introduced. She emphasises how extreme, primitive disruptive emotions are activated during the meeting between a rehabilitation specialist and a child with his/her family and how these involve all the actors: child, parents and carers. Facing this complex aspect, indeed recognizing it, is the first, necessary step. Connecting the body with the mind, the parent with the child and the family with the carers makes it possible to weave a storyline that does not restrain or deny emotions but can filter and contain them, remaining in touch with them without feeling overwhelmed by them. The author considers it fundamental to take care over the processes as well as the deficits, so as to foster and promote developmental change.


E. Manfredi and A. Stefani. A Group at Work: Space and Time as Specific Analytical Themes in a Case of Short-term Psychotherapy for Mother, Father and Child. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 369-380.

The experience of a working group on forms of parent-child psychotherapy at a very early age offered the authors the possibility of reflecting on the said group’s multiple functions. Of the various assumptions that emerged, preference was given to the working-through of the space and time dimensions, which were assumed to constitute the best perspective for reading the clinical material.
The authors illustrate these themes through a case of short-term, parent-daughter psychotherapy. They highlight the progression of the therapeutic process and its transformative aspects: from a situation marked by a narrow and chaotic emotional space to the first beginnings of a mutual affective tuning and the birth of a harmonious rhythm in the relationship.


M. Ricci. Birth of a Relationship. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 381-385.

The article offers some reflections on specific aspects of the work of supporting the mother-child relationship. This it does through an analysis of a clinical fragment from a session with a mother and her four-month-old daughter.


G. Bruno. Working with Mother and Child. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 386-391.

Starting with an experience of psychotherapy using a joint mother-child setting for a gravely premature two-and-a-half-year-old boy, the author offers some reflections on the therapist’s counter-transference and the function of the intervision group. In particular, the therapist’s experience and the specific quality of her dreaming in the case presented are taken into consideration and a dream that is closely connected to the experience of the premature birth is proposed.


S. Latmiral. Silvestro. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 392-395.

The article presents clinical material taken from the psychotherapy undergone by a seven-year-old boy whose birth was gravely premature. It highlights the initial psychosensory elements present during sessions and brought into contact with the transformative function offered by the psychotherapist, concentrating as she was on the work of working through the counter-transference: work that was supported by the intervision group.


A. Giancotti. Primary Relationships. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 396-397.

Starting with a beautiful image of a twelfth-century wooden statue kept in the Church of St Lawrence in Nuremberg, the author goes over some Winnicottian concepts regarding the vital and joyful aspects of the mother-child relationship.

Clinical Reflections
P. Morra. The Disembodied Thinking in Anorexic Girls. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 398-414.

Peculiar thought processes can be observed in anorexia and these constitute a subject for study in various disciplines. Cognitive functions are neither harmonized nor integrated, with dramatic but circumscribed reductions where reality-testing is concerned. There is a hyper-investment in mental activity, which is used to silence the body’s threatening signals. This article looks more closely at mind-body splitting in anorexia, doing so through a psychoanalytical study of two cases involving adolescents manifesting evidently disjointed and hyper-invested cognitive activity. The organisation of sketchy maternal and paternal functions in the inner world and the consequential distortion of the Super-Ego (aspects that are central to anorexia’s psychogenesis) seem, in the cases described, to have a specific nexus with thinking disorders.

The Enchanting Screen
S. Oliva. The Wind Rises. Richard & Piggle, 26, 4, 2018, 415-418

Recommended Reading

Bookmark