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Quaderni di Psicoterapia Cognitiva - Open Access

Studies and researches

No. 53 (2023)

Word instead of symptom: The reworking of personal narratives of the adolescent in a therapeutic community

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/qpc53-2023oa16929
Submitted
dicembre 6, 2023
Published
2023-12-28

Abstract

The narrative is a crucial element in the life of the human being and represents a fundamental tool to give a sense of continuity and to form and maintain a unitary sense of the Self. In adolescents with complex clinical states and dysfunctional family experiences, which require a separation from the family context, it is important to construct a meaning from one’s current and past experiences, and to integrate information about oneself and the world into a complex narrative but coherent plot. The methodology of the personal narratives reworking in cognitivism makes possible to recognize and retrieve the functions of the symptom and the requests the symptom acts for It allows to validly document the events and subjective experiences, making them available for self-observation and leading to a narrative reconstruction that includes new elements of subjectivity out of the ordinary self-knowledge. This shared reconstruction opens up the possibility of a richer and more articulated understanding of oneself and of others, which can be integrated in the subject’s account. A clinical case will be illustrated.

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