Paper
The Project “Space for the Counselling of Teenagers and their Families”
- issue: Issue 3 / 2008
- authors: Patrizia Zanibon, Denise Rigoni
- keywords: Italy, crisis, family
- views: 4082
- downloaded: 0
- download pdf (72 Kb)
abstract
Background. The latest research work in the field of evolutionary age psychology has showed that school is one of the most important areas of intervention for the prevention of psychological distress. This is because adolescence is people's last developmental stage in which it is possible to intervene to modify the structure of their personality and allow a healthy psychic development to take place.
Significantly, within in pathological families, from the point of view of psychic operation, it is during children's adolescence phase that the signals of distress become manifest. Parents, however, are incapable of facing this issue - which eventually has turned into a disruptive crisis - at personal and family level. If those signals were silent or ignored during infancy, adolescence will bring them to the fore, occasionally in a dramatic way. Very often it is schools that alert parents to situations of serious concern. Along with a poor school performance, children in question may present the following types of behaviour: refusal and abandonment of the course of studies, aggressive or violent behaviour, eating problems, addiction problems, depression, etc.
Purpose. This brief introduction shows how important it is for the school system to create these structures as necessary to enable parents, students and teachers to face the issue of juvenile distress together. This objective has led to the project named "Space for the Counselling of Teenagers and their Families", which has been set up by the Associazione Aletheia, jointly with Irep (European Research Institute in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) and with the Bureau of Projects and Prevention, Department of Social Services, of the Municipality of Padua. The Project was launched in two of the city's intermediate schools during the school year 2007-2008. Specifically, the Project aims at:
- assisting students and families manifesting psychic difficulties by setting up counselling facilities within intermediate city schools,
- providing psychological support activities to help teachers tackle complicated situations present in their classes,
- organizing, with the assistance of services available in the area, a support network which makes it possible to identify and face effectively pre-adolescent and adolescent distress.
Method. The method followed in the implementation of counselling activities draws its inspiration from the theories developed by Prof. Edmond Gillièron[1] on the subject of brief psychoanalytic psychotherapies.
Such theories propose the evaluation of psychological difficulties through the use of four interviews, at the end of which, when necessary, a therapeutic project can be elaborated - the project can be continued by the family or one of its components within the territorial area services (with which a net has been created). Among the most important elements to the goals of such diagnostic evaluation there is the involvement of the boy's family that moves from the position of designate patient to that of element on which the psychological problem list is evacuated. This methodology of brief investigation is composed of three fundamental "actions":
- to reflect on the quality of the objectual support, since the way patients enters in contact with therapists is in relationship with the structure of their personality,
- to bring in surface the "crisis" that pushed the patient to ask a consultation and that always reflects the central point of the personality,
- to involve the whole family system to observe how it is inserted in this crisis and to reflect together on the diagnostic hypothesis previously developed and on the possible taking in care from territorial services.
The brief psychodynamics investigation, as it was thought by Gillieron, is a method of investigation on the evaluation of patients' motivations and a first therapeutic footstep which allows to better structure the taking in care of patients from the institution.
What appears to be amazing is that the decrease of scholastic outputs is often the symptom of a deeper uneasiness which comes to involve the whole family.
On the 48 families took in care we observed that a collusion was present among a dysfunctional family system in which one or both the partners were lacking some parental functions and the symptoms that their children - pupils bring us.
In most of cases, if this collusion parental dysfunction vs symptomatic child can be expressed in a session, a decrease of the tension could be observed in every component of that family and a greater possibility of reflection.
Findings. During the project implementation we assessed the presence of familiar functioning in the psychotic, limit status and neurotic areas.
Within family functioning within psychotic area the "psychism" of central components is characterized by a dynamism we could define "primitive". The needs from which tensions arise are not elaborated but immediately downloaded because the thinking way which Is typical of this type of psychism hasn't reached an adequate level of mentalisation. In such contexts there is the lack of representations, since a symbolic setting was not created to face conflicts and work on them thus diminishing tensions related to them.
Within the nuclei where psychotic confusion erupts, the relationship between components is often inverted, in the sense that generational barriers are not well delimited and components tend to deny their origins. In these families relationships are either forced to be very closed which becomes oppressing or to be very far from each other, thus leading to great estraneità and of detachment. Parental relationships tend to be devaluing. One's own individuality is cancelled, thus stopping his/her individuation process. Parents drive their children - with their own words - to autonomy but then, in contradiction to this, they prevent them from leaving them.
In the family functioning, within the limit status area, family psychic functioning changes according to parents' personality, which provided their children with an open psychic place but no so adequate to allow them leave their parents and reach autonomy. In the family functioning within the limit status area we can see that parents are unable to limit their children and provide them with clear rules as well as an inconstant presence of the object. Mothers often consider their children as the extension of themselves, of their needs and wishes; fathers, however, are authoritarian and are not able to express their emotions, thus leading them to become unable to live their emotions, individuality as well as to be "emotive containers". In these family units the objectual relation is characterized by a significant lack of continuity in the link/boundary which should lead children to develop more the processing/elaboration of their experiences and advantage symbolic abilities as well as their self confidence. As a consequence this relation quality makes children unable to find supports, and therefore to face their dependence and identify their necessity to develop stable reference points. All this influences the creation/development of a psychic place/space. The ability to create relationships is influenced - in these cases - by the constant need of realizing picking up and possessive relations, where the object is controlled. Personality pathologies deriving from this objectual relation regards different types of severity; generally, all of them lead to a narcissistic fragile organization as well as to a constant struggle against depression.
As regards family functioning within the neurotic area, relations between family members provide individuals the possibility to be recognized as separate people. Parents are able to make children experiment an adequate triangulation and both mother and father play a supporting role in providing their children with the possibility to access original ghosts. Parents have a psychic space with clear limits.
This intervention project derives from the need expressed by school managers as well as by teachers in regard to the increasing frequency of situations related to juvenile discomfort. This must be considered innovative within school settings, since it allows, in a relatively short period, to reflect make preliminary hypotheses on families, which are analyzed both as a whole and as consisting of different members. One of the aims of this project is to create a network with territorial services and formative-educational activities proposed by municipalities and local territorial service centres. For these reasons it is really important that politicians can continuously check both outcome efficacy of this project, which is always supervised by Irep, and the needs emerging from the young and schools as educational centres, thus becoming able to plan a strategy of network intervention. If these emerging needs could be satisfied only by these projects, then it would be very useful to grant that education is provided with some continuity in regard to proposed activities, so that to make it possible to speak of primary prevention.
This preventing project can be innovative within school settings because it allow, in a comparatively short time, to reflect and make a hypothetical diagnosis about family mental operations as well as help them overcome their crisis.
Key references
Gilliéron, E. (1995). Il Primo colloquio. Roma: Borla.
Baldassare, M., & Petrini P. (2006). Diagnosi e psicoterapia breve. Roma: Società Editrice Universo.
Contacts: Patrizia Zanibon, Association Alétheia, Via G. Menabuoi,42 Padova, E-mail: associazionealetheia@alice.it, Phone Zanibon +39 3477136104 - Rigoni +39 3403787769.
[1]. Honorary Professor of Psychiatry, University of Lausanne, Psychoanalyst of the International Association of Psychoanalysis