Maria Francesca Freda

Understanding Continuity to Recognize Discontinuity

In this paper the author comments on the contribution by António P. Ribeiro and Miguel M. Gonçalves (in this journal) that offer a creative and unique perspective on maintenance and transformation of problematic self-narrative. From here the author contributes to the topic through the exploration of some issues: a) the relation, in the dialogical process of self-narrative construction, between semiotic processes that give voice to the semantic opposition and semiotic processes that give voice to the contradictory; b) the relation between sameness and ipseity in the self-narrative process; c) the role of a pathemic axis of meaning in the generation process of self-narratives. A final reflection is done on narrative as a device of clinical intervention in which the author makes a distinction between methods based on the recognition and extension of variability and methods based on the recognition of permanency so to get to variability.

Effects of Guided Written Disclosure Protocol on mood states and psychological symptoms among parents of off-therapy acute lymphoblastic leukemia children:

This study assesses the effects of Guided Written Disclosure Protocol on psychological distress in mothers and fathers of off-therapy acute lymphoblastic leukemia children. An experimental group participated in the writing intervention with a control group subject only to test-taking standards. The Symptom Questionnaire and Profile of Mood States were administered at baseline, post-intervention, and follow-up. Guided Written Disclosure Protocol had significant effects on the progressive reduction of anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, hostility, tension–anxiety, and fatigue–inertia within the experimental group. However, the control group distress levels tended to worsen over time. The mediating role of emotional processing was highlighted.

Catalysis and Morphogenesis: The Contextual Semiotic Configuration of Form, Function, and Fields of Experience

In this work, the catalytic process is discussed as a semiotic process of transformation of the field. This is the precondition that allows the realization of semiotic processes of signification and action (semiotic function of pertinentization). Catalysis is seen as process of field which acts in temporal terms (mediating between continuity and discontinuity) and spatial terms (the relationship between the parts and the whole, and between the inside and the outside). Catalysis in psychological terms is understood as a process of contextual pertinentization triggered and organized by emotional/perceptual relationship of a subject with his relational environment. In this work, we define emotion as a psychophysical process of semiotic activation (symbolopoiesis) and organization of relations according to specific operating modalities (symmetry and generalization), believing that it always works in interaction with the perceptual processes (aimed at identification of differences and asymmetries). Catalysis, in our point of view, creates a contextual activation of a morphogenetic field of semiosis, which regulates the relationship between the parts and the whole (between the signs and their organization) and the development over time of the process of meaning making (in terms of continuity and discontinuity/rupture).

Borders and Modal Articulations. Semiotic Constructs of Sensemaking Processes Enabling a Fecund Dialogue Between Cultural Psychology and Clinical Psychology.

The notion of the border is an interesting advancement in research on the processes of meaning making within the cultural psychology. The development of this notion in semiotic key allows to handle with adequate complexity construction, transformation, stability and the breakup of the relationship between person/world/otherness. These semiotic implications have already been widely discussed and exposed by authors such Valsiner (2007, 2014), Neuman (2003, 2008), Simão (Culture & Psychology, 9, 449–459, 2003, Theory & Psychology, 15, 549–574, 2005, 2015), with respect to issues of identity/relatedness, inside/outside, stability/change in the irreversible flow of the time. In this work, after showing some of the basics of such semiotic notion of border, we discuss the processes of construction and transformation of borders through the modal articulation, defined as the contextual positioning that the person assumes with respect to the establishment of a boundary in terms of necessity, obligation, willingness, possibility, permission, ability. This modal subjective positioning acquires considerable interest from the clinical point of view since its degree of plasticity vs that of rigidity is the basis of processes of development or stiffening of relations between person/world/otherness.

Promoting Mentalization in Clinical Psychology at Universities: A Linguistic Analysis of Student Accounts

This study investigated the structure of mentalization (Bateman & Fonagy, 2012) in a training context. The dual purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of practicum student training and whether the Linguistic Inquiry method (Pennebaker, 2000) could be used to evaluate the three dimensions of mentalization — relational, cognitive, and emotional. The training utilized the groups and their accounts as devices and mediators to conceptualize the relationship between self-mentalizing training, the academic context and the practicum experience. Accounts from 38 Italian students pursuing master degree in Clinical, Dynamic, and Community Psychology were analyzed by LIWC software. The Wilcoxon test showed a significant increase in mentalizing words during the middle and end of the term, as compared with the beginning. The results displayed a need to promote mentalization within academic settings and indicated the value of this competence for clinical psychology.

Health and Writing Meaning-Making Processes in the Narratives of Parents of Children With Leukemia

There is literary evidence stating that expressive writing affects health outcomes. Nevertheless, the processes underlying its benefits remain unclear. In our previous article, we described the benefits of writing; in this article, we investigate the meaning-making processes underlying the traumatic experiences of parents of children with leukemia in off-therapy. We collected the writings of 23 parents and grouped them according to the parents’ psychological outcome (low/good/high) with respect to anxiety, as assessed during a follow-up. We qualitatively analyzed the texts written by parents with good psychological outcomes to highlight their main meaning-making processes, that is, how they put into words the shattering experience, reordered the events, connected their emotions and the events, reevaluated the event, and reconstructed the time process. We found that parents with low/high outcomes articulated these processes differently. Furthermore, we discussed the uses and functions of written narration for each group.

Promoting reflection and reflexivity through narrative devices: Narrative mediation path qualitative multimodal method

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss a reflexive process that makes a distinction between reflection and reflexivity, two processes the authors define according to the mentalization construct. Next, it explores how the narrative mediation path (NMP), a novel multimodal counselling method addressed to underachieving college students, promotes reflection and reflexivity by enhancing student ability to mentalize their university experiences. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an idiographic case study on one of the ten groups of underachieving students who participated in the counselling sessions. Findings NMP narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily) promoted reflection, and group-level inter-subjective steps were essential for the development of reflexivity. Furthermore, it was found that in each narrative mode, the students developed reflective and reflexive processes through the attainment of mentalization dimensions. Practical implications The adoption of the NMP has some implications for universities. Many underachieving students in higher education often have reflexive difficulties when examining their university experiences, so could be considered average mentalizers who tend to show bias in their university experience signification when under stress. Promoting mentalization development can enable students to use their resources strategically at university and improve their academic performance. Originality/value The NMP is innovative because of its multimodality: it employs different modes and media, makes use of both individual and group narrative levels, and is integrated in a single method, which enhances the development of reflexive meaning construction.

Reflective and Agentive Functions of Narrative Writing: a Qualitative Study on the Narratives of University Students.

There is a lively debate in the literature on reflective processes and on the necessity to view them as consisting with differing levels of complexity. Within a semiotic and psychodynamic perspective, we present a conceptualization on reflective processes which distinguishes between reflection and reflectivity and articulates their relationship with narrative devices.The study analyzes 224 narratives of critical events written by 77 underachieving university students that took part in group training courses during the INSTALL European project.The corpus was subjected to a qualitative analysis of narrative function, with the aim of detecting narrative functions of reflection, reflectivity and agency, the latter being considered as an interconnected construct to the reflective process.The functions were discussed both on the basis of how the narrators reacted to the discontinuity in their self-image caused by the critical event, and based upon different types of narrative coherence (chronological, causal, thematic, autobiographical).The results highlighted that narratives with a reflection function, attribute the discontinuity generated by the event to the self, and show a causal coherence; those whose function is reflectivity interpret the discontinuity attributing it to the self in relation to others and present a thematic coherence; those of agency ascribe the discontinuity to a potential selves in action, and are characterized by an autobiographical coherence.The implications of the study will be discussed with reference to the value of narrative writing in promoting reflective-agentive processes.

Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Manifold forms of sensemaking processes and their simultaneity pose many questions about their integration and also on their development. Human beings mean their own experience and activity in the world by forms of symbolic meaning but also by several forms of embodied meaning, in an endo-semiotic and exo-semiotic key, such as the construction of artifacts, instruments, monuments, stories, myths. The culture in this perspective is not considered a repository of information and become an intersubjective process that develops over time and is rooted deeply in various embodied forms. Authors discuss the notion of threshold through two possible paths. The first one allows us to demarcate the boundaries of the domain of semiotic research and at the same time to reflect on the specificity of the different processes of sensemaking, from biological processes (vegetative and animal) to typically psychological processes, characteristic of human beings and of cultural dynamics. The second one deals with dynamics of transformation of the processes of sensemaking, claiming that the relationship between an organism and its environment has a gestaltic quality, whose form is constantly changing. The notion of threshold is developed in reference to the changes and transformations that mark discontinuous passages and developments within phases of stability.

The processes of meaning making, starting from the morphogenetic theories of René Thom

Each process of meaning making can be seen as a field of semiotic organization that shows a variety of continuities and discontinuities, rather than as a linear trajectory of accumulated signs, progressively articulated through syntagmatic chains. In this work, we address the idea that the sign is a discontinuous form within a field; it emerges where there are different trajectories of meaning, different epistemic positions, and different subjective or affective ways of experiencing a phenomenon. The central aspect of the paper is based on the idea that the sign is a form within a semiotic relational system that allows its emergence towards a “morphogenetic field of semiosis”. The starting point for this discussion is the philosophical, mathematical and semiotic work of Rène Thom, which addressed the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in natural human, social, and linguistic phenomena.Each process of meaning making can be seen as a field of semiotic organization that shows a variety of continuities and discontinuities, rather than as a linear trajectory of accumulated signs, pro...