Giulia Savarese

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Psychodynamic Group Intervention (CR-PGI): An Explorative Study

Objective: An explorative study focusing on the process of a Cardiac Rehabilitation Psychodynamic Group Intervention (CR-PGI) addressed to myocardial infarction (MI) patients is discussed. The study aimed at analyzing whether the treatment based on CR-PGI serves as a communicational context within which MI patients are enabled to explore new interpretations of their post-infarction condition. Methods: The intervention, divided into 12 weekly one-hour group sessions, was addressed to MI patients recruited within a Public Hospital of southern Italy. Each session was audio-recorded and lexical correspondence analysis (LCA) was applied to the verbatim transcripts, in order to provide a map of the evolution of the communication exchange occurring over the 12 sessions. Results: The findings showed that the discourses associated to the first eight sessions differed from the discourses of the last four sessions. Two main transitions occurred. The first concerns the response to the infarction, first interpreted as a process of affective elaboration and afterwards as practical management of the functional aspects associated with the condition of MI patients. The second concerns the nature of the change and contrasts a lifestyle-oriented model with a social role approach, which refers to social, legal, and medical practices related to the acknowledgment of being an MI patient. Conclusion: The findings offer preliminary support to the capacity of CR-PGI to work as a context where new meanings for the biographical rupture of the MI can be explored. Consistently with the rationale of the model, the intervention seems to have promoted the emergence of new ways of feeling and understanding one’s condition.

Object Use in Children with Autism: Building with Blocks from a Piagetian Perspective

Aim: This study focused on the manipulation of objects by children with suspected autism spectrum disorder. The aim was to demonstrate how objects can be seen as active agents of interpersonal exchange in face-to-face interactions. Participants: Three children with suspected autism spectrum disorder (aged 18, 20, and 24 months) were selected as representative of the sensorimotor stage of development. Methods: Starting from Piaget’s classical approach to the sensorimotor and symbolic developmental stages, the study moved towarda socio-material interpretation in which some patterns of interaction involving object manipulation seem to create a space that supports adult-child communication. In videotaped observations of verbal and non-verbal signs during an (organized) free play session, each child manipulated seven small blocks of colored plastic in the presence of an adult. The observations were informed by a checklist of 14 items, including eye contact and building a tower of toy blocks (from section B of the CHAT (CHecklist for Autism in Toddlers) instrument. Results: Based on a broad Piagetian perspective and recent work in the field of socio-materiality, key observations included the following: 1) sensorimotor and realistic play was observed in all three children; 2) there were some intriguing indications that objects serve as concrete mediators in the intersubjective space between adult and child; 3) some of the children’s attention patterns were visibly mediated by the object. Discussion and conclusions: All three children exhibited a particular sequence of actions. First, they manipulated the blocks through active experimentation; second, there was an apparent pause, during which the children were in fact examining the blocks to determine how best to continue the interaction; and finally, the children monitored adult attention by means of eye contact or by restarting manipulation of the blocks. As this last step in the sequence indicated that the object became a mediator of reciprocal attention, this interpersonal process was labeled “attention mediated by object.”

Educazione sessuale e prevenzione degli abusi sessuali sui minori: esiti ed intervento di una ricerca-azione

Nella prospettiva di prevenzione del rischio psico-sociale, e stato effettuato un progetto sull’educazione sessuale e gli abusi sessuali sui minori. Finanziato dall’USR Campania, esso e stato condotto in istituti d’istruzione secondaria di secondo grado del territorio campano. Con metodologie diverse, si sono condotti incontri di informazione nelle classi scolastiche e si e attivato uno sportello di counseling psicologico. In seguito alla rilevazione e alla presa in carico di tre casi di violenza, e stato fondamentale elaborare strategie di intervento sia con la famiglia sia con la scuola, per far emergere la violenza taciuta. Il contesto scolastico e stato importante per il perseguimento di interventi volti al rilevamento precoce della violenza e alla decodifica delle richieste di aiuto delle vittime.