Key words: drug addiction, emotional dysregulation, relationship, group, penitentiary
This article is about the aetiology of drug addiction according to an evolutionary-relational psychoanalytic model, and it is reported how a group analityc psychotherapy of drug-addicted subjects in a penitentiary has been managed. First, it is emphasized the role that relationships have in the development of the human mind and the way these transmission processes can create transpersonal pathogens. Then, it is underlined the way the group therapy fosters the treatment of the subjects by re-creating a framework of multiple mutual and complex relationships, and reviving an emotional-relational context for the personal elements to be brought into play and shared. In fact, it is explained how a pathological addiction is related to an emotional dysregulation, caused by a childhood trauma which has disturbed and upset the intersubjective sharing of the emotional states in the relationship with the primary caregivers. Such process is, thus, related to the appearance of dissociative cases, the presence of alexithimic traits, and the tendency to a non-control of the impulses.
It is also specified how the bionian group analytic psychotherapy, carried out in a penitentiary context, demands on the one hand, the care of the relationship with the penitentiary institution; on the other, the interpretation of relational and personal aspects and that of the role of the psychotherapist.
Moreover, through the description of the experience, the article wants to submit the functioning of a mono-symptomatic and open group therapy on a weekly rate. By describing a session, it is underlined how the perception and the communication of the therapist’s torpor, sleepiness and heaviness is to be related to a symbolic function of the thought and a new meaning given to dissociated emotional elements, which have not been elaborated and mentalized so far.
Parole chiave: tossicodipendenza, disregolazione emozionale, relazione, gruppo, penitenziario
