Contents & abstracts

Somatic Counter-transference in Psychotherapy Undertaken with Children and Adolescents

Focus

Somatic Counter-transference in Psychotherapy Undertaken with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults

Ferrigno MP. Introduction - Echoes from the Body. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 203-210.

Taking some clinical accounts as its vehicle, the Focus section proposes to explore a counter-transferential phenomenon that occurs when a patient brings to the therapeutic relationship very early experiences that have not found any form of representation. In such situations, the therapist’s corporeal rêverie becomes a tool for tracing pre-symbolic sensoriality: a tool that is necessary for understanding the patient and starting off transformations that can foster the development of an authentic Self.

Cimino S. Feeling in the Body: Listening to the Primitive Levels in Clinical Work. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 211-226.

In this article, the author uses some vignettes taken from her work with patients in the developmental phase to reflect on the complex phenomenon of the somatic counter-transference that can embroil a therapist while working with a patient. More specifically, in work with children and adolescents, an analysis of the somatic counter-transference can make it possible to begin to approach primitive levels of experience with the object that still cannot be represented and communicated. The possibility of one’s body having sensations that refer back to primitive experiences and still cannot be deciphered allows the couple at work to hover close to unconscious material that can slowly be approached, felt and worked through in the therapist’s mind so as to then be re-approached by the mind of the patient through specific modes of interpretation. It will finally become possible to re-introject such material and, through the therapeutic relationship, create bridges between areas of the patient’s mind that had seemed unapproachable.

Ferrigno MP, La Torre M. Somatic Rêverie: From Psychosensory Signals to Representations. Some Thoughts on the Therapist’s Bodily Involvement in the Analytic Treatment of Seriously III Patients. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 227-243.

After an introduction on the theory regarding the phenomenon of counter-transference, the authors dwell on a particular form of counter-transferential experience called “somatic rêverie”. This experience of the therapist’s is called into play when a patient brings to the therapeutic relationship primitive, pre-symbolic forms of mental functioning resulting from very early, unrepresented traumatic experiences that are the consequence of a failure in maternal rêverie in the primary relationship. The authors present brief clinical vignettes to describe the manifestation of these occurrences during sessions, demonstrating how a counter-transferential working-through can allow a therapist to understand the patient more intimately in order then to start off a process of transformation. An Infant Observation excerpt is then used to show an experience of “minus-rêverie” and its emotional repercussions on the observer.

Garms V. Feeling Very Early Traces. On Living and Surviving Counter-transferential States of Emptiness, Paralysis and Sleep. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 244-260.

Taking therapy with an adolescent as her starting point, the author explores the possible meanings of an analyst’s repeatedly falling into counter-transferential states of paralysis, emptiness and sleep. She hypothesizes a link between the occurrence of such forms of acting out and de-subjectivizing sensory states and the loss of the sense of what is real: one of the primitive agonies described by Winnicott. She reflects on the conditions needed if the analytic couple is to be able both to survive the power of the patient’s traces of early trauma re-echoing in the analyst and to progress to a basic alternation between presence and absence, to memory and, lastly, to a mental working-through of hatred and separateness.

Clinical Reflections

De Marino F. To Be Born in No-Man’s-Land. Very Early Anorexia and Constructing the Thinkable in the Analytic Field. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 261-280.

This contribution explores the analytic work carried out with Clara, a little girl aged three years and ten months who was suffering from very early anorexia in a family context marked by perinatal mourning and a fragile containment function. The refusal of nourishment is thought to be a form of mental survival: one linked to the difficulty in receiving things from the object without feeling invaded or threatened in one’s continuity of existence. Through an examination of the transference/counter-transference field, the work demonstrates the impact that compromised transformative processes have on symbolization and the very feeling of existing. Details of the therapeutic journey illustrate the passage from the body to representation and from omnipotent control to a non-intrusive bond capable of supporting the birth of thinking and a recommencing of development.

Therapeutic Communities and Day Centres for Minors

Lonardo S, Fortunato A. From Care to Being: Continuity for Minors in Group Homes. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 281-298.

The processes of mental development in minors removed from their family of origin (particularly those who are introduced into community residential contexts) raise specific questions about the conditions that permit a continuity of being. Precisely this perspective of Donald Winnicott’s makes it possible to interpret the effects of a not “good-enough” environment and instances of relational discontinuity as factors that have a profound impact on the organization of the Self. The authors present clinical material relating to a minor received into a group home: material that permits readers to observe these dynamics unfolding both in the girl’s interior world and within the institutional network caring for her. Use of the squiggle game offers access to a symbolic dimension in which the girl’s subjective experience begins to resonate with the difficulties created by the institutional context in terms of constructing a coherent co-ordinated intervention. In this perspective, the lack of integration between the various levels of intervention not only becomes a risk factor but also a possible vehicle for a re-enactment of the original trauma, thereby contributing to a persistence in the Self’s fragmentation and a re-opening of developmental wounds.

The Enchanting Screen

Cusumano G. Princess Mononoke (1997). Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Richard & Piggle, 34, 3, 2026, 299-303.

Reviews

Dettagli

Contents & abstracts