Editorial
10.4081/rp.2023.784
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Viviana Fini
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Ricerca Psicoanalitica
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2023-05-15
2023-02-21
2023-04-30
2023-05-15
Ricerca Psicoanal
Viviana Fini
2023/05/15
10.4081/rp.2023.784
Psicologa psicoterapeuta nella UOC di Psicologia di continuità ospedale territorio, ASL Toscana nord-ovest e docente del Corso di Specializzazione in Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica. Intervento psicologico clinico e analisi della domanda, Rome
2037-7851
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Salvatore, S. (2013). La funzione del senso comune nell’intervento dello psicologo clinico. Note sul lavoro di Sergio Salvatore: ‘Questioni intorno allo sviluppo della professione psicologica’, Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, 1, pp. 36-50.
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https://www.pagepress.org/socialsciences/rp/article/download/784/753
34
                                  Ricerca Psicoanalitica | pISSN 1827-4625 | Year XXXIV, n. 1, 2023
                                                                            doi:10.4081/rp.2023.784


                                                                                      EDITORIAL



Editorial

Alessia Fedeli*, Viviana Fini**




    This issue of the journal Ricerca Psicoanalitica presents contributions




                                                                  ly
from the experience of the seminar entitled ‘Violence in relationships: the




                                                            on
relationship that ex-plains. The relational contribution to understanding
gender violence as a pathological matrix of relationships’, organised by the

                                                e
Institute in Rome on 8th October 2022.
                                             us
    At the end of the study day and also thanks to the interesting ideas put
forward by those who participated, we felt the need to invest more time and
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space in reflecting on the issue of violence in intimate relationships. That
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was why we proposed to the journal Ricerca Psicoanalitica to host a the-
                                er



matic issue, hoping to broaden, deepen, or even simply keep an open eye on
a topic of great political, social and clinical relevance today.
                            m




    In the editorial, we will present this issue and accompany the reader with
                    om




some thoughts on the various contributions.
    We wish to encourage reflection on the topic: we understand its rele-
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vance from both a professional and a political point of view. It is a much-
          on




debated topic (today, we record from twenty to thirty thousand biblio-
graphical entries relating to research in various disciplines on the topic);
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we hear and read about gender violence on a daily basis, indeed in general,
violence in relationships concerns us, it touches us closely, we are not
exempt from it and, above all, it is a topic for which there is a strong con-
tiguity with common sense. By common sense, we mean an attitude that
leads one to accept prejudiced positions, uncritically taking as true opin-
ions on phenomena just because they are widespread. In other words, com-
mon sense has to do with conformism.



   *Psychologist, SIPRe Psychoanalyst, specialist in Group-Analytic Psychotherapy, Area
Referent of SIPRe Violence Center of Rome. E-mail: alessiafedeli@icloud.com
   **Psychologist psychotherapist in the UOC of Psychology of continuity hospital territory,
ASL Toscana nord-ovest and lecturer in the Specialisation Course in Psychoanalytic
Psychotherapy. Clinical psychological intervention and demand analysis, Rome.
E-mail: vivianafini@gmail.com
2                           Alessia Fedeli, Viviana Fini



    Sergio Salvatore (2013), in outlining the causes of the crisis of the psy-
chological profession, identifies contiguity with common sense as one of
the most cogent reasons. In the case of violence, such contiguity leads one
to see it as inherent in the individual and to assume that intervening means
controlling it. Such contiguity, Salvatore explains, is an indication of the
weakness of the theoretical models with which we read the phenomena in
which we are about to intervene. The limited capacity of psychological
models to express counterintuitive visions of reality contributes to organis-
ing the demand of the social mandate vis-a-vis our profession in terms of a
reconductio ad hortum of discomfort, conflict, and violence. Thus, the
social mandate and patronage often invest us with a mythical role, function-
al to rhetorical dynamics of symbolic regulation of relationships, asking us
to normalise what are considered deviant behaviours. In the absence of the-




                                                           ly
ories capable of giving meaning to social phenomena, which are culturally




                                                           on
determined relational phenomena, we risk assuming this function in conti-
guity with common sense, forgoing reflection on the specific needs and
functional objectives we are working on.
                                                  e
                                               us
    What we are saying is that it is our responsibility to decide whether to
keep the social mandate we have been given in view of this incompetence.
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We are hereby proposing a choice.
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    With the conference first and with the publication now, we have an inter-
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est in building a setting in which we can deconstruct the premises of com-
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mon sense about violence, proposing something counterintuitive in order to
foster the construction of interventions which, starting with the micro- of
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relationships, are also able to affect the macro- dimensions of our culture.
We think this means providing opportunities for the younger generations
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and not just limiting the damage of violence.
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    And it is precisely for this reason that the seminar and publication bring
together in a dialogue different vertex of interpretation of the phenomenon
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in question (psychological, psychoanalytic, cultural and social), theories
and methodologies but also different contexts of intervention, which, in the
seminar - through the presentation of cases - offered the possibility for small
discussion groups to exchange their views. Finally, the final round table
allowed us to make a meta-reflection on the relationship between theories,
methods and cases, which is accounted for in this editorial and in the pro-
posal of the monographic issue. In the seminar, the debates were carried out
in different settings (theoretical papers, reports on interventions, discussion
of clinical cases, final round table) precisely to bring out the complexity of
the topic and allow the different issues to be read, focusing on how the the-
oretical premises, which the initial reports deconstructed and reconstructed,
inform and develop the understanding of the cases. Overcoming an individ-
ualistic reading of violence, which places the causes on individuals,
requires theories and theories of techniques capable of holding together
                                     Editorial                                 3



aspects related to the individual and socio-cultural dimensions. Only rela-
tionship-centered theories can provide criteria for holding this complexity
together, and keep us away from the temptation to take on the words of
common sense as the objective of our intervention.
    Federica Formaggi’s paper warns us against the risk of taking the com-
mon-sense view as a guide to our professional actions. It makes us realize
that in doing so we risk operating ‘a violent separation of violence from
life’. She urges us to question violence as a specific form of relationship, a
culturally determined form, on a par with tenderness, seen as another pole
of a dialectical tension. She suggests going beyond what the patient brings
as a symptom; using the symbol to grasp the part that generally remains hid-
den. We can read about this part, usually concealed by the violent one, in
the clinical case presented by Andrea Bernetti.




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    The way we act is intrinsically linked to how we perceive ourselves and




                                                  on
the world around us, which is why conceiving violence as an individual,
intrapsychic pathology is a theoretical and methodological error. This is

                                          e
made clear to us by Stefano Ciccone, whose paper highlights the close cor-
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relation between the individual and culture, inviting us to reflect on the loss
of ‘order’ that cultural changes have brought to the horizon of relationships
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and individual identities. Always bearing in mind the correlation between
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the individual and the context/culture, Ciccone claims, helps us overcome
                             er



the risk of diminishing the responsibility on the part of the author. Reading
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the relationship in the context of representations, social roles, and power
dynamics avoids reducing it to just the two subjects but takes into account
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third elements and their location.
    We could say that culture prescribes emotions, offering us words to put an
              -c




order within ourselves, in our relationships, in our view of things in the world.
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    Faced with major changes, unseen subjectivities emerge, disturbing
emotions that do not yet have forms or words to be said. New interpretive
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words for relationships in context are needed in order to reconstruct an
order of meaning that is not only individual but cultural.
    Within this view, then, violence can be considered the expression of an
act of disturbing emotions which the person experiences in the presence of
the other.
    Valentina Feroleto tells us about ‘anguish’ to describe such emotional
disruption. The end of a known cultural order capable of naming the emo-
tions experienced and the onset of strong anguish brings to mind what the
philosopher Byung-chul Han (2019) argues in his Eros in Agony: Western
society has become a palliative society, that is, a society which – in the
name of an alleged well-being – has lost the capacity to suffer, in other
words, to relate to confusing emotions, such as those we feel in the presence
of the other, who by definition is a stranger, within a cultural context that is
also highly confusing.
4                           Alessia Fedeli, Viviana Fini



    Valentina Feroleto writes that the goal of psychoanalytic intervention is
to build a setting to foster the emergence of the ‘subject as a reflective
gaze.’ Federica Formaggi writes about the possibility, through the condi-
tions that psychoanalytic intervention promotes, for the subject to experi-
ence tenderness.
    Finally, Andrea Bernetti allows us to understand how important it is for
us as psychologists to read the social mandate and build competent patron-
age. He tells us about his work with male perpetrators of violence. And he
tells us how the prison system, expecting inmates to be motivated by the
possibility of shorter sentences, acts in that direction by prescribing courses
to educate about appropriate behaviour. It thus mistakes inmates’ participa-
tion in prescribed courses for changes in their behaviour, without grasping
that such a proposal builds inmates intent on cheating the system. Failure to




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read this phenomenon results in a major waste of resources for the system




                                                           on
and a risk of obsolescence for our profession, which thus remains tied to a
poorly strategically oriented mandate, without expecting specific utility.

                                                  e
But professional practices that are not substantiated by the capacity to
                                               us
analyse and govern settings are unlikely to enter into dialectical relation-
ships with issues such as those related to violence. Andrea Bernetti tells us
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that not colluding with the prison institution means exiting the fantasy that
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our intervention is a persuasive intervention, which alternatively promotes
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interventions aimed at fostering an understanding of the experience on the
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part of the abusive man. Developing a competence to read one’s own emo-
tions within a workspace that focuses on the relationship with the abusive
                       om




person can enable the abuser to introduce his or her own demand, giving
substance to his or her own desire for change.
                   -c




    Three different clinical cases were discussed in the seminar: a clinical
              on




case best allows one to see how the individual and his or her context,
including that of the therapeutic relationship, are inextricably linked.
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    The case presented by Andrea Bernetti, a case of a male perpetrator of
violence, was chosen for this issue of the journal, which is interesting
because it is in the establishing phase of the psychotherapy process, when
the therapist’s reading categories are ‘tested’ within the relationship
between two subjects.
    The case is enriched with considerations and reflections by Giovanna
Frezza, Daniele Rovaris and Alessia Fedeli.
                                                  Editorial                                              5



                                             REFERENCES

Han, B. (2019). Eros in agonia, Nottetempo, Milano.
Salvatore, S. (2013). La funzione del senso comune nell’intervento dello psicologo clinico.
    Note sul lavoro di Sergio Salvatore: ‘Questioni intorno allo sviluppo della professione
    psicologica’, Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, 1, pp. 36-50.




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Conflict of interests: the authors declare no potential conflict of interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate: not required.

Received: 21 February 2023.
Accepted: 24 February 2023.

Editor’s note: all claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily
represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, editors and reviewers, or any
third party mentioned. Any materials (and their original source) used to support the authors’ opinions
are not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
©Copyright: the Author(s), 2023
Licensee PAGEPress, Italy
Ricerca Psicoanalitica 2023; XXXIV:784
doi:10.4081/rp.2023.784

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