Antonella Santoro1*, Marzio Stefano Fragale2, Francesca Valente2 and Achiropita Curti2,3
We present a case of a patient with Celiac Disease (CD) associated with Type 1 Diabetes and strongly complicated by Binge Eating Disorder (BED), accompanied by anxiety and depression. We successfully treated this patient with appropriate and concerted nutritional intervention and psycho-educational therapy.
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Michael Bachg
Family therapy and family therapy methods have been developed and spread successfully in Germany since the 1970s. They have their roots in different scientific disciplines, including psychoanalysis, communication psychology, systems theory and constructivism, to name just a few. The present talk will focus on whether a family therapy approach can be useful in child and adolescent psychotherapy and psychiatry and if so, how it can be professionally developed and expanded for use as an effective and successful treatment.
To explore this, it makes sense to begin with the question of etiology of these disorders and discuss models that focus on the dynamic and functional aspects of symptom development, instead of those of a purely nosological perspective.
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Sara Gabri, Luca Mazzucchelli, Davide Algeri
Distance psychological counseling is becoming a phenomenon of increasing relevance. The following study aims to understand the characterization of the users of such online services. In particular, data taken from the online help desks on Facebook and Skype provided by the Italian Service for Online Psychology (Servizio Italiano di Psicologia Online [SIPO]). Data regarding 2013 logins through two channels were analyzed, keeping the results which emerged differentiated. The questionnaires administered online to users whom had requested a consultation indicate how different and peculiar the two instruments are and how each reaches different targets. Behind a substantial difference in its users and in the content treated by the two channels, there is however a common element: the awareness and trust with which the subjects turn to the online psychologist, witnessed also by the motivation to begin psychotherapy following the encounter with the professional psychologist online.
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Pasqua Teora, Maria E.Castiglioni, Donatella Carnaccini, Pamela Meda
The article describes and conceptualizes an experience of peer supervision that has been carried out since 2002 by four senior colleagues specializing in systemic-relational therapy, all of whom come from a supervision group which was directed until his death in 2002 by Gianfranco Cecchin, co-founder of the Centro Milanese di Terapia della Famiglia.
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Silvia Cimino & Luca Cerniglia
Recent literature has highlighted the lack of studies concerning possible clinical interventions in cases of early eating disorders. We will report the case of a three-year-old girl who refuses and avoids food as a result of a medical problem affecting the mouth. Through the presentation of the various stages of assessment and intervention, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of verifiable and empirically based treatment, introducing innovative clinical work, which includes psychodynamic home intervention for the child. By means of empirical tools given to the parents (more…)
Giampaolo Lai
The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the application of extensionism to the professional field of verbal therapy. Extensionism is the passing through the borders of close reductionism, in order to explore and occupy the pertinent adjacent worlds. The material is a conversation about a dream in which the patient, Milly, sees her mother, who has been dead for more than ten years, with two stains, on her belly and on her breast, that will certainly lead to her death. From the standpoint of extensionism, Milly is confronted with the possibility of her mother in the dream being not so much a naturalistic mental projection, as a real ghost existing independently in the spiritual world of dead souls. The result of extensionistic procedures is the priority given to the fatal stain on her mother’s body over her own sense of anger against her mother, also fully expressed in a manuscript of hers about to be published. A practical consequence is that the manuscript is dedicated to her mother, “To my mother”, in a dramatic shift of a narrative line, which transforms a prosecution closing speech into a funeral ceremony, a gift, a prayer, all ritual activities suited to reconciling dead ancestors with descendants who are still living.
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Annalisa Versari
This article describes an innovative treatment for interpersonal violence victims and perpetrators. The treatment consisted of 15 sessions, lasting 90 minutes each, with participants between the ages of 22 and 63. A follow-up was carried out six months after the end of the treatment. Throughout this article we describe theoretical foundations, clinical outcomes, and innovative aspects of the treatment technique in such an important field as domestic violence.
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Piera Serra
The idea to start E-Journal of Psychotherapy Research came into being a few months ago, after a working dinner in a beautiful little town on Lake Garda, close to a recently held convention. Discussion at that dinner focused around how to best help adult clients who complained about conflicts with a parent. It was at this point that a colleague started outlining his methodology, which could perhaps be described as “identifying with a mother or father cleansed of their own pathology”. As an example of this, he talked about depressed female clients who complained about their relationship with a mother who belittled them. His therapeutic intervention involves explaining to the client that their depression is the result of “identifying” with their mother’s own “pathology” (be it anxiety, pessimism, lack of self-worth etc.). This “pathology”, however, is not their mother’s true nature, but rather a sort of parasite housed within her that concealed the person she really is: a true mother would be serene and value her offspring. “Because children identify, consciously and subconsciously, with the parent of their same gender since childhood, you also identify with this pathology and tend to reenact it in your relationships with others”. He further advises his clients to stop and imagine their “true” mother, that is a mother cleansed of the pathology that, unfortunately, have possessed her and tends to transfer itself to her own daughter. “This pathology wears your mother’s face as a mask: you believe it truly is her, you come to identify as your mother this sickness that shadows her real nature, which is, in fact, positive. This same pathology also takes hold of you.” He goes on to explain to his clients that by identifying with that true mother, instead of the mother’s pathology, they can, little by little, uproot and remove the depression they had absorbed over the course of the time spent identifying with this female mother figure, who had been twisted by depression herself.
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