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Through the clinical case of a couple psychoanalysis, the paper shows the complexity of the relationship between jealousy and the primary relationship experienced by each partner. The author shows how jealousy with its enigmatic aspects tends to mask pragmatic infantile dimensions connected to emotion and affect regulation (Atlas, 2023) and embodies a reactualization of the aesthetic conflict theorised by Meltzer (1981). The focus is on the dynamics of recognition in the couple and in the transference with the analyst: jealousy leads the partners not to recognize each other and not to recognize themselves; the analytical work opens for them a freer and deeper path of knowledge capable of tolerating ambivalence and complexity, towards shared thinkability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author addresses the issue of relationship between the organ transplantation and the migratory experience. In the transplant practice the organs “migrate”, prolonging their own existence and at the same time ensuring life to the recipient. The experience of organ transplantation shocks not only the body, but also the sense of Self, and the integration process is very complicated, because the hospitality is inseparable from the intrusion. The alienating experience of transplantation reveals the foreign in our own bodies. The new organ, in fact, is an intensily ambiguous object, that evokes the Freudian concept of Unheimlich. In this contribution the author tries to identify some analytical paths that could favour the psychosomatic integration of transplanted organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors argue that there are good reasons for seriously considering the dynamics of the peer group when discussing psychoanalytical case material. The setting and procedure have to protect and facilitate for the presenter and the group members to work together. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems connected with presenting and discussing clinical psychoanalytical material in a peer group and to describe one such specific method, which the authors call the Weaving Thoughts method. The design is primarily inspired by Bion's formulation thoughts in search of a thinker. The group participants reflect on the presented clinical material in a way that the authors metaphorically describe as creating a weave of thoughts that emerges from the material. The aim of the method is to facilitate a work-group climate that allows thoughts to wander about, and to avert group members from debating and compromising the integrity of its members by letting basic assumptions come into power. The method is described from theoretical and practical points of view, with two illustrations of seminars according to this design and finally a discussion of the advantages and drawbacks of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper highlights the need to reflect on the individual identification models underlying the training of the couple and family psychotherapist. These are complex processes that are difficult to specify but which deserve great attention. The trainee who already has personal psychoanalytic training must undergo a double mourning, that of the theoretical models of unipersonal psychology and that of his or her personal analysis, which he or she can only partially use. In fact, working in a multipersonal context-setting means training oneself to grasp the interactions between the participants and the manifestations of the ectopic unconscious that emerge. Moreover, in the training processes, the group experience of the learners, which dialogues with the groupness of the teachers, takes on great relevance. The group dimension is a fundamental experience that helps the therapist to continually confront the here and now that is generated in the horizontal exchanges of the group and that puts him in contact with the unexpected and the partiality of experience that he encounters in his work with couples and families. Finally, the reports presented by Grassi and Lucarelli preceding the reading of the work are reviewed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I would like to examine - from a psychoanalytical point of view - the pathological functioning characterized by the sensory excess in the mind which seems to constitute a fundamental component in psychosis. Starting from the observation of this specific topic in clinical experience with psychotic patients, I would like to illustrate some psychoanalytic assumputions on the genesis and progression of the psychotic state, evaluating its clinical and psychopathological implications. Bion's theory of thought and conceptualization on the invasion of the healthy part of the patient by the psychotic part - imbued with pathological sensoriality and which transforms the perception of psychic reality - is a main point in this paper (Bion, 1957). Some contemporary authors ideas on psychosis and neuroscientific evidence seems to converge on the significance of this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on an article by the author, published in Italian (Richard e Piggle, 1993), and republished in English (Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 1995): The Sound Object - A hypothesis about prenatal auditory experience and memory. The article suggested that a maternal proto-object with sound and rhythmical qualities develops during prenatal life thanks to the foetus' capacity to hear and listen to the mother's voice, together with its protomental introjective activity which may underlie the development of the prenatal auditory memory. In the Postscript the author gives further thought to issues around the emergence of subjectivity. Her considerations, based on more recent research and psychoanalytic literature, are focused around two crucial areas of enquiry: the origins of mental life and the first flickers of awareness of the self as a subject-object. She explores the primary/prenatal dialectic between relatedness and the emergence of an ego nucleus, as well as the early origins of a "proto-symbolic" function of the human mind and its capacity to intuit that the transformational process of sense perceptions into experiences is implicitly a bearer of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper collects and describes several clinical experiences with extremely pre-term born babies. They were nursed using different kind of settings: institutional, are NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) with the subsequent clinical follow-up and with the help of private therapies. Through these lengthwise efforts, some of the pre-term newborn's features, such as the complexity in psychosomatic integration, were identified and better understood. The cases described show how the sensorial intrusion achieved from the intensive cares, may influence the integration process as the newborn's development further up, entangling the parental interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors highlight how, in the clinical practice of the psychoanalytic multifamily group, the emergence of traumatic memories and related emotional experiences allows us to perceive the existence of pathogenic "presences" in the internal world of suffering people. Such "presences" possess a permanent, secret and occult power of conditioning, very hard to grasp in other contexts. Pathogenic identifications that block the development of their own egoic resources are structured around these "presences" and the subject will live inhabited and possessed by others who prevent him from being himself. This paper describes how the specific functioning of the group makes it possible to start processes for the construction of transformative identifications which are gradually able to reduce the pathogenic power of such presences. Mutual mirroring, the functioning of the group as an "enlarged mind" and the emergence of healthy personal virtuality are the elements that allow the person to start thinking, through the other, what was impossible to think on his or her own. In particular with respect to his or her own pathogenic interdependencies. The presence of the other becomes of support in the disclosure of an authentic Self and in the construction of an integrous subjective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud considered it a matter in need of investigation: until recently, however, Islam has been noticeably absent from the psychoanalytic arena. This paper aims, on one hand, to review current and rare psychoanalytic contemplations regarding Islam as a potential subject; and on the other hand to provide an analysis of Islam as the modern erotic of our times, looking at new forms of jihadists and extreme islamic groups. From this perspective, Islam is interpreted through the lens of a psychoanalytic discourse of the unconscious, one that must remain subversive and, at times, untranslatable and inaccessible, to allow the emergence of the autonomous subject. As the paper will demonstrate, for such a possibility to emerge, it is also necessary to consider the challenges of a Western liberal discourse imposed on Islam from various fronts, and particularly within the spirit of our times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I try to highlight the way the model of the analytic field, as developed by Ferro and the Pavia school, can also find meaningful and fertile application in couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It can promote the development of instruments for thinking together, with the aim of transforming proto-emotional and proto-sensorial states into something more understandable, and can lead to the creation of new narrations, co-constructed between the couple and the analyst. It therefore becomes necessary to work on the "place" for thinking thoughts, to work on the container before working on the content, work which assumes an intrinsically aesthetic value. The analyst, as a place in the analytic field, guarantees and safeguards the setting and takes part in the creative process by re-orientating the sense impression and meaning of the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes the exploration of the theme of change as regards the idea of death, customs and practices relative to the processes of mourning in various cultural contexts, and in the analysis of psychic processes, considering diverse positions in the many psychoanalytical models. Beginning from some historical and philosophical reflections, the paper puts at the centre of the examination, the relationship between the anguish of death and the psychic and cultural strategies with which these problems are faced on a psychoanalytical and anthropological level, to then evaluate how the rituals and the forms of mourning have changed in the world of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The capacity to be alone in the presence of someone else" is a paradox that represent, in Winnicott vew, the most precious possession and it is granted for both mother and child at the same time. In this paper the paradox is applied to clinical situations to show the consequences when people have not gain this capacity, especially on couple and family therapy. Two novels are used for show how links can produce an intrapsychic change, positive or catastrophic. The novel The rest of the warrior, utilized by Bleger in his theory, is a good example of a couple in a destructive symbiotic link; in the other hand the movie Force majeure, were a traumatic event produce a couple crisis, show the possibility to have important insight about "the capacity to be alone in the presence of someone else". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short paper, the author -- starting from the assumption that "no man is an island" (Done, 1624) and that interactions with an "other"/many "others" determine our unconscious mental functioning -- reflects on the link between ethics and the unconscious. The unconscious nature of mental functions -- in a complex, non-linear and adaptable perspective -- and ethical behavior are at the core of psychoanalytic work. The concept of an "external topos" of the unconscious alerts us to the fact that each professional and social surround that endures a failure of basic (e.g., ethical) function requires a multi-factorial, multi-level assessment and educative or interpretive interventions that interrupt co-constructed fantasies of absence of responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes experiences, reflections, and new concepts inspired by the idea of the aesthetic conflict; representing fresh thinking concerning the aesthetic experience and the concept of creativity in a couple relationship. The Authors explore the role of the aesthetic conflict and the impact of the aesthetic object, both on the partners in a couple and between the couple and the psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist. At the same time, turning the attention to the possibility or impossibility of creating new emotions or events, and trying to see how the creative process of the couple relationship can or cannot develop, the Authors have hypothesised the existence of an original internal object of abandonment. This has led to their interest in this force that tends to give rise to the aesthetic part object, the substitute maternal object, and the construction of a couple claustrum. Through the presentation of a case, the Authoes reflect on the formation of these objects and describe the resulting mental prison inside the internal objects, where a relationship suffers and cannot live creatively. These forces influence the analytic field, either paralysing or expanding it, and they determine and condition the emotional intensity of its narrative genre and characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recurrent condition of non-existence as defence to survive traumatic abuse creates the distortion in the meaning of the dependence from the object. To save a part of the Self from the risk of being annihilated the victim dissociates significant parts of the affective experience, taking refuge in a condition of non-psychic life comparable to agony, learning to cohabit with death psychic areas. The experience suffered de-signified and non-representable brings with it an insufficient development of the Self affective nucleus and a distorted sense of morality. In the paper will be demonstrated the propulsive value of the dissociated material. According to Bromberg's model it is the therapist eye that can catch the hidden value. The setting issue is the central question in the treatment of abused patients and the author consider the heterogeneous group as a suitable setting for the treatment of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Death is characterized by the loss of life and the possibility of being described only by those who survive. The analyst is summoned in his work to address the issue of death through patient associations. Mourning and death concern psychic processes but also concrete experiences of life. The paper deals with the relationship between the analyst's experience of his own death and the role this can play in psychoanalytic treatment. According to the author, the quality and stability of the relationship with his internal objects is key to trying to face and help others face the experience of death even in the current reality strongly influenced by technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the Tavistock Clinic's use of psychoanalytic therapy groups for the treatment of traumatised refugees and asylum-seekers. A three-stage treatment is outlined: 2 or 3 preliminary individual interviews are followed -- for those who have little or no English -- by Specialist Refugees'Group, in which the traumas of life can be addressed in simple language, for a limited period of time (not more than one year). Translators are not used, in order to foster language-development. The third stage arrives when the refugee can move to a heterogeneous out-patient group which, in London, often includes a variety of nationalities, religions, cultures and psychological difficulties. Groups foster in their members the crucial element of "emotional capital", implying the capacity for sentient relationships; it thus complements the sociological and anthropological concept of "social capital", which involves belonging to an established and available social and cultural grouping. Clinical material illustrates the shift from a desperate and persecuted state to a more workable stance towards life, work, and the new society that constitutes the refugees' new home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]