The soggettuale groupanalytics research about the ‘mafiosa’ psychology

Abstract

This report proposes a review of the studies about the mafiosa psychology which was produced by the soggettuale groupanalytics research in the last 15 years. These studies have been developing trough three main directions: (a) The study upon dialogical relational processes between interior world - exterior world in the families of the mafia. (What does really characterize the conception in the world of mafia? Which psychic factors do characterize the belonging to the family of the mafia? How does the “self” originate and develop in relation to the family and the polis? How do the familiar transpersonal level and the anthropological one weave in the members of mafia families?). (b) The study of the fundamentalist and psychopathologic dimensions in the world of the mafia also in relation to the way they show themselves inside the psychotherapeutic setting. (How does suffering express itself inside the world of the mafia? And through what kind of psychopathologic configurations? Which co-transference background do the patients, who come from this world, prevantely activate in therapeutics?). (c) The study of the psychic reflex in the citizens and communities characterized by the presence of the mafia, with a particular attention to the victims psychic suffering. (How do social networks take shape in communities deeply influenced by the presence of the mafia? Which psychic prices do the victims of the mafia pay? What does criminal menace impose upon the psychic plane?). This work, without any claims of exhaustiveness, tries to connect some of the main results gained by the research upon the mafiosa psychology with the historic and cultural context in which these researches have been realized. The application of a soggettuale group-analytics perspective in the study of the mafia was meant for the researchers in this field, an important cultural-scientific challenge both as regards the fecund application of a complex reading pattern of the psychic phenomena in a field explored up to that moment with others models without producing great results, and the experimentation of new intervention settings fit for the elaboration of backgrounds connected to the phenomenon of the mafia and the activation of individual, social and community changing processes.