Diego Romaioli

Auditory hallucinations as a personal experience: analysis of non-psychiatric voice hearers’ narrations

This exploratory research investigates the phenomenon of non-psychiatric auditory hallucinations from the perspective of the voice hearer, evaluating the possibility that this experience can contribute the maintenance and adaptation of the hearers personal identity system. A semi-structured interview was administered to 10 Italian voice hearers, six men and four women, aged 18-65 years, who had never been in contact with any mental health services because of the voices, even though some of them had been hearing voices for decades. Participants were not distressed or worried about the voices; on the contrary they developed their own understanding, personal coping resources and beliefs in relation to the positive functions of the voices. These results indicate that voices cannot be considered merely as symptoms, but may be seen also as adaptation systems. Consequently, we should avoid trying to helping voice hearers to eliminate or deny voices, and rather we should help them to feel allowed to preserve them.

Change in Psychotherapy: A Dialogical Analysis Single-Case Study of a Patient with Bulimia Nervosa

Starting from the critical review of various motivational frameworks of change that have been applied to the study of eating disorders, the present paper provides an alternative conceptualization of the change in psychotherapy presenting a single-case study. We analyzed six psychotherapeutic conversations with a bulimic patient and found out narratives “for” and “against” change. We read them in terms of tension between dominance and exchange in I-positions, as described by Hermans. These results indicate that the dialogical analysis of clinical discourse may be a useful method to investigate change from the beginning to the end of therapy.

How Do Therapists Understand Their Client’s Problem and Its Resolution: Objectification in Theories of Change

Images and metaphors help to structure the therapist’s belief system in two ways. First, images represent strategies used by therapists in order to simplify the most abstract theoretical concepts. Second, images provide a system according for organizing the information about a client and anticipate the patterns of client change. Within the theoretical frameworks of social representations and of goal directed action theory, the present study explores the metaphorical aspects linked with therapeutic knowledge. This study aims to reconstruct the social representations that therapists use to objectify their theoretical model. The present research relies on a qualitative methodology. The results show that therapists from different orientations rely on different metaphors although, in certain conditions, they tend to share a more general representational system. Implications for psychotherapy training and clinical practice are considered.

How to Foster Commitment Among Volunteers: A Social Constructionist Study in Italian Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT This study explored the perspectives of Italian volunteers: the meanings they attribute to their role as volunteer and to the various facets of the experience of volunteering. The aim was to identify and foster those outlooks that help maintain commitment in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Two intertwined studies were carried out. In the first, twenty-seven semistructured interviews were conducted with highly committed volunteers belonging to four NPOs in order to explore the prevailing perspectives. A thematic analysis was then conducted. The results show that the participants emphasized the importance of maintaining a personal space being careful to keep their role as a volunteer separate from their day-to-day life. Moreover, they considered their own NPO as “special” and had a “cynical approach” that helped them to offset any negative aspect related to their work. In the second study, four focus group discussions were organized involving three managers from every NPO with the aim of finding practical suggestions regarding how to increase and develop those perspectives that enhance a sense of commitment. Similar methodology may be used in the future to investigate the strategies that improve commitment among volunteers in other types of NPOs or in other social and cultural contexts.

La forma dell’impegno prosociale sta cambiando? L’esperienza del volontariato episodico al Festivaletteratura di Mantova

Il fenomeno del Volontariato Episodico e una forma di volontariato che negli ultimi anni si sta rapidamente diffondendo anche in Italia, specialmente tra i giovani. Poco ancora si conosce dei risvolti che tale fenomeno puo comportare a livello individuale, organizzativo e comunitario. La ricerca, partendo da un’indagine condotta tra 538 volontari del Festivaletteratura di Mantova, si interroga sulle motivazioni all’adesione al volontariato episodico, rispetto a quello tradizionale e sui vantaggi e/o svantaggi che i volontari percepiscono rispetto alle due modalita del mettersi in gioco nel mondo del volontariato. I risultati emersi forniscono lo spunto per riflessioni sul tema anche dalla prospettiva di chi tradizionalmente e istituzionalmente si rapporta con il mondo dell’associazionismo.

Invecchiare bene in tempi di crisi. Punti di vista euritmici attraverso i posizionamenti con l’Alter

The increase of longevity ‒ and of the chance to spend the third, fourth and fifth age in relatively good health ‒ appears today to favour the conditions to age positively, although self-handicapping ideas persist that depict this as a life period of mere decline. While the WHO supports agendas aimed to foster citizens’ active ageing, few studies have been conducted in order to gather how the elderly might gain a eurhythmic perspective on their own ageing in a political and social context characterised by the global crisis. Referring to the theory of Social Representations and adopting a qualitative methodology, this work analyses thirty episodic interviews carried out with Italian elderly people. Its aim is to reconstruct the themes that define ageing well and the positioning from which individuals construct their eurhythmic points of view. The results show that, living and reasoning on ageing well, the participants enhance in various ways: availability of resources; positive mental states; more functional life styles; being involved in activities. The comparison with the Alter evoked in the accounts (such as youth in precariousness or unhealthy people) appears to be the main organizing principle of points of view used to interpret one’s own ageing in favourable terms. Starting from these positioning, three bipolar dimensions emerged: autonomy/dependence; fragility/no fragility; good luck/bad luck. The paper closes reasoning on the potentials, but also on the limits, that the research activity may have to promote constructions of reality more functional and socially relevant.

Redefining agency in late life: the concept of ‘disponibility’

ABSTRACT In light of an increased ageing population, policy makers are faced with the urgent problem of planning programmes that reflect active ageing or, in other words, the promotion of activities that help individuals to remain active in a societal context. The construct of agency, defined as the capacity to make decisions and to address situations depending on the individuals future plans, reflects a specific normative criterion: individuals are expected to live in an active and productive way, while those who are unable to live up to this expectation are considered dependent, passive, unproductive, weak. From a social constructionist perspective, the current study proposes a critical reflection on the qualities usually attributed to the construct of agency that are liable to appear reductive and oppressive when applied to an elderly population. Once the basic premises underlying agency, as it is commonly defined in the Western tradition, have been deconstructed, a different conceptualisation, based on interviews with older individuals, will be presented. The current work aims to produce a different conceptual framework that will permit examination of experiences and organisational modalities of agency typifying later life. The comments made by the interviewees in many cases resonate with ideas contained in Taoist philosophy and, more specifically, with the concept of disponibilité (or disponibility) outlined by the French sinologist François Jullien, which we discuss here.

Auditory hallucinations as a personal experience: analysis of non-psychiatric voice hearers’ narrations: Non-psychiatric voice hearers’ narrations

This exploratory research investigates the phenomenon of non-psychiatric auditory hallucinations from the perspective of the voice hearer, evaluating the possibility that this experience can contribute the maintenance and adaptation of the hearers personal identity system. A semi-structured interview was administered to 10 Italian voice hearers, six men and four women, aged 18-65 years, who had never been in contact with any mental health services because of the voices, even though some of them had been hearing voices for decades. Participants were not distressed or worried about the voices; on the contrary they developed their own understanding, personal coping resources and beliefs in relation to the positive functions of the voices. These results indicate that voices cannot be considered merely as symptoms, but may be seen also as adaptation systems. Consequently, we should avoid trying to helping voice hearers to eliminate or deny voices, and rather we should help them to feel allowed to preserve them.