An experience between passion and reason

The author retraces the beginnings of group psychotherapy in Italy, which developed thanks to the pioneering work of Ferdinando Vanni - whom she met as a student and then as a colleague - and other psychoanalysts. Through her direct experience, the author leads the reader from the first training in psychodrama to the discovery of group analysis and of the psychoanalytic approach to group psychotherapy. In particular, she traces the birth of the Centre of Group Research "Il Pollaiolo" (Rome), characterized by a Bionian orientation, and the supervision group, called the modellizzazione (modeling) group, led by Francesco Corrao, as places where knowledge and thought generated in a continuous fluctuation between passion and reason. The author describes her role in the cultural and scientific development of the CRG and conveys to us a vivid description of another great master of psychoanalysis and group psychoanalysis: Francesco Corrao, the masterly leader of the Pollaiolo Centre, which later became the Italian Institute of Group Psychoanalysis (IIPG). The author’s personal and direct memories thus go from the foundation of the CRG in Rome to the CRG in Milan (1994), and, finally, to the birth of COIRAG.

Keywords: Centre of Group Psychotherapy Research (CRPG), psychoanalytic group, passions, modellizzazione group, confederation, last farewell.

Donata Miglietta, Un’esperienza tra passione e ragione in "GRUPPI" 1/2012, pp 29-41, DOI: 10.3280/GRU2012-001003