"Sono innamor(a)to della terra"». Notes on play, drawings, dream and diversional therapies in the treatment of children with severe medical conditions

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Alessio Gamba, Alberto Stefana
Publishing Year 2016 Issue 2016/2
Language Italian Pages 22 P. 207-228 File size 189 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2016-002003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Severely ill children live difficult emotions they should be able to tell and been listened, with the freedom of being able to stay in touch with an unavoidable pain without being "forced to feel good" or "to have fun" as an escape from the experience. Quality of care is also measured on how much the child’s suffering may have room to express itself in the relationships with adults, and how the latter address the psychological quality of life. The best way a child can "talk" about himself is through spontaneous creativity. The adult’s task is to create a potential space and to recognize the child’s mode of communication, tolerating the most intense affects. The loss of these affects would be an additional burden to the child. The most valid indicator of this attitude is the ability not to take counterphobic attitudes, but to share moments of sadness as an expression of contact with the child’s true self, as real signs of good health and emotional maturity.

Keywords: Creativity, suffering in children, children hospital, psychosocial support, diversional approaches

  • Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Psychological Effects of Stillbirth on Parents: A Protocol for Systematic Review and Qualitative Synthesis Loredana Cena, Alberto Stefana, in Frontiers in Psychology 1216/2020
    DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01216
  • Making the Best in a Bad Job: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Communication with Children and Adolescents with Severe Physical Conditions Alberto Stefana, Alessio Gamba, in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly /2023 pp.463
    DOI: 10.1080/00332828.2023.2269940

Alessio Gamba, Alberto Stefana, "Sono innamor(a)to della terra". Note su gioco, disegno, sogno e terapie diversionali nella cura di bambini con gravi patologie fisiche in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 2/2016, pp 207-228, DOI: 10.3280/PU2016-002003