Contents & abstracts

Focus

Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Who is defying whom?

Algini ML. Introduction. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 341-344.

Cerracchio S, Pizzo L. Oppositional Defiant Disorder: public and private assessment processes. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 345-351.

The authors provide concise specifications regarding the diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder during the age of development, outlining the diagnostic criteria and the possible assessment processes in both the public and the private sectors. They then mention how useful the data obtained from the neuropsychological assessment – in addition to what emerges from the psychodynamic consultation – can be for psychoanalytic psychotherapy undertaken with children.

Garau R. The environment generating oppositional attitudes. Features of the family ties. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 352-358.

The article sets out to describe the environment (understood in a Winnicottian sense) that generates oppositional children and adolescents. Three examples of clinical work with parents are used to highlight how such an environment is characterized by separation difficulties and a failure to overcome the Oedipal complex. Consequently, there is a strong resistance to including a third element and symbiotic, tyrannical ties tend to form between parents and their children, who oppose them. The author then goes into the intrapsychic dynamics that determine the adults’ responses to their children’s requests for help.

Pizzo L. Early opposition as a defence against breakdown. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 359-365.

Through the presentation of clinical material regarding a consultation with a twenty-month-old baby boy manifesting a serious food rejection, the author ponders the complex interaction between dysfunctional primary attachment and early oppositional behaviour. During the very earliest stage of infancy, oppositional traits could find their expression in an attack on the body and, more specifically, in an assault on the basic physiological functions. This in order to cope with the risk of a catastrophe for the psyche.

Cerracchio S. Oppositional ties running down the generations. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 366-374.

The article attempts to reveal the profound tie between the inner world of the parents and that of a child who seemed to enjoy his own ‘wickedness’. It does so by emphasizing the importance of the thread that connects this child to a past that preceded his birth, whilst fully recognizing the fact that every story is unique and unrepeatable.

The author also highlights the psychoanalytic intervention’s specific contribution, both as regards an understanding of the factors that led to the symptom’s development and as regards the most useful tools for its treatment.

Tambone S. Mors tua vita mea. Detention of the other in a case of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024,375-381.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy undertaken with a five-year-old girl made it possible to see clearly that oppositional defiance disorder falls within the matrix of the primary relationship. Extending one’s gaze both to the quality of the ties and to transgenerational transmission, one can observe how the intra-psychic and inter-subjective dimensions are interwoven, giving rise to a dysfunctional mother-child dependence of a sado-masochistic kind that ends up endlessly imprisoning the actors. Within this framework, the oppositional behaviour is a symptom i.e. action and a fragmented communication of states of profound malaise. At the same time, however, it is an attempt to save the Self from further ‘environmental’ intrusions.

Clinical reflections

Molinari G, Salvatori P. Fragility and rupture of the psycho-corporeal container during the
passage from puberty to adolescence. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 382-401.

Encounters with insufficiently solid objects and the impossibility of enjoying a good, satisfying container-contained relationship can cause the interiorization of inadequate resources that are poorly structured to tackle the sweeping changes and pressures characterizing the beginning of adolescence.

The article presents two clinical situations: therapy with a preadolescent boy called Vittorio, which was begun in a situation where he was at risk of a breakdown, and therapy with an adolescent girl called Vega, which was begun after she had had a breakdown.

The article highlights the factors that determined the nature of the treatment: preventive work to reinforce the container, in Vittorio’s case, and work to re-construct the container, in Vega’s case.

Clinical work in institutions

Cherici S, Molli A. An example of psychoanalytic observation applied to training. early
childhood educators and kindergarten teachers at work. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 402-416.

The article examines the training undertaken by a group of educators and kindergarten teachers whereby the introduction of the Tavistock method of observation made it possible for the participants to achieve a deeper understanding of communications in a school context. The group was guided by a seminar leader and, during seminars inspired by the work-discussion technique, gained experience of psychoanalytic observation as a tool for knowing. Benefitting from a containing function through which the leader was able to gather up the sensory and emotional impressions coming from the group and return them, endowed with meaning, to the group itself, allowed the participants to discover that they, in their turn, were capable of attributing meaning to the events they observed.

Therapeutic communities and day centres for minors

Quintiliani R. Some reflections on the care process in a therapeutic Community: aesthetic
conflict and the role of intimacy in the relationship with oneself and others. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 417-423.

This article investigates Donald Meltzer’s concept of aesthetic conflict, applying it to the therapy offered in therapeutic Communities. It advances the hypothesis that the situation of intimacy that is gradually created during the stay in a Community (characterized by the sharing of daily life between patients and professionals) may be able to re-evoke the aesthetic conflict that, according to Meltzer’s theory, characterizes the very early primary relationships. The possibility of a potentially enriching experience at the emotional level would therefore be created. This would foster the possibility of working on the primitive states; alternatively, the patient could come to experience a sense of being trapped, something that characterizes what Meltzer called Claustrum.

The enchanting screen

Gentile A. The boy and the heron (2023). Directed by Hayao Myazaki. Richard & Piggle, 32,
4, 2024, 424-427.

Rossi M. Anatomy of a fall (2023). Directed by Justine Triet. The role of the child in the truth of the couple. Richard & Piggle, 32, 4, 2024, 428-431.

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Contents & abstracts