Articoli Scientifici

This article aims to offer an overview of our knowledge about separation/disloyalty guilt, a maladaptive kind of interpersonal guilt that derives from pathogenic beliefs that associate the healthy and adaptive goals of being separate, different, and independent from important others with the danger of deeply hurting them. These pathogenic beliefs stem from early relational traumas and adverse experiences, such as having had relatives who showed their children that they were visibly hurt by the attempts at exploration and differentiation from their children. Separation/disloyalty guilt has been shown to correlate with eating disorders, panic disorders, obsessive and phobic disorders, illness anxiety disorder, and with transdiagnostic features such as difficulties in mentalization, emotion regulation, and intolerance to frustration. We describe how patients with separation/disloyalty guilt can look for disconfirmations of these pathogenic beliefs during their psychotherapies and how clinicians can help them have the corrective emotional experiences they need.

The sense of emptiness is still a poorly defined construct in the literature, yet it is frequently reported in individuals with borderline personality disorder, depressive symptoms, and narcissistic personality disorder. This paper aims to replicate those research studies showing that there are significant correlations between emptiness, insecure attachment styles, maladaptive childhood experiences, shame, impulsivity, depression, and borderline and narcissistic personality features. Additionally, it was hypothesized that a significant correlation would exist between the sense of emptiness and burdening guilt and self-hate, and that self-hate would mediate the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and preoccupied attachment and sense of emptiness. The sample consisted of 128 Italian participants recruited online, who completed a battery of self-report questionnaires designed to measure the psychopathological features described above. The sense of emptiness was strongly correlated with depression (rho 0.81, p

According to Control-Mastery Theory, patients attend therapy with an unconscious plan to achieve adaptive goals and disprove their pathogenic beliefs. One important way patients work to disconfirm these beliefs is by testing them. Moreover, patients coach their therapists on what they need at different times during their treatment. The aim of this study is to expand the results of previous studies suggesting that therapists’ responses that support patients’plan predict progress. We investigated whether therapists’ ability to pass patients’ tests correlated with patients’ improvement in the following session and whether their ability to follow patients’ coaches correlated with immediate improvement. Transcriptions of 98 sessions from six brief psychodynamic psychotherapies wer assessed by 12 independent raters. The patients’ plans were formulated, and tests and coaching communications were identified. The accuracy of the therapist’s responses to these tests and coaches was rated, and the impact of the therapist’s interventions on the patient’s following communication was measured. The results showed that when a therapist’s intervention passes a patient’s tests, patients show signs of improvement both immediately and in the following session, and when therapists follow patients’ coaches, patients show signs of immediate improvement. The clinical implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.

Impostor phenomenon refers to the psychological feeling of intellectual phoniness. It can favor failures and support a scarce perception of one’s own competence in order to protect social relations. The aim of this study was to investigate, with a longitudinal design, the contribution of fear of success and guilt over success in the experience of impostor phenomenon and its connections to maladaptive behaviors, such as submission and self-handicapping tendency. We assumed that impostor phenomenon would mediate the relationship between fear of success, guilt over success, and distress related to it, on one hand, and self-handicapping and submissive behavior on the other. Moreover, several personality variables were tested as potential predictors and protection factors against impostor phenomenon. As expected, we found a positive relationship between fear of success, guilt over success, and impostor phenomenon, and a positive relationship between impostor phenomenon and a tendency toward submitting and self-handicapping. Our findings suggest that the tendency to experience guilt and distress about success and the preoccupation with the impact of one’s own success on our important relationship predicted, both directly and with the mediation of impostor phenomenon, the tendency to submit and self-handicap.

This article aims to highlight how chronic couple conflictuality can be read from the control-mastery theory perspective. Some empirically grounded couple conflictuality models are reviewed and discussed, particularly regarding researchers’ tendency to focus on specific ways of dealing with conflicts, and the presence of a specific relational pattern, the demand/withdraw style, which seems to be particularly present among high-conflict couples. The article further presents an overview of the psychodynamic and systemic literature on couple conflictuality, in which three basic ways of reading conflict emerge: as an outcome of projective identification mechanisms; as a consequence of deficits in mentalization and affective regulation; and as a breakdown of dysfunctional communication strategies. The main control-mastery theory concepts also are presented, with a particular focus on its application to couple conflicts. According to this perspective, chronic couple conflictuality results from the repetition of vicious relational circles—that is, mutually failed tests by partners that give rise to negative escalations and couple dissatisfaction. A sample of clinical material from couple therapy is presented to exemplify this idea.

According to Control-Mastery Theory (CMT)—a cognitive-dynamic relational theory of mental functioning, psychopathology, and psychotherapy—patients come to therapy with an unconscious plan to disprove their pathogenic beliefs and achieve adaptive goals. One of the primary ways patients work to disconfirm their pathogenic beliefs is by testing them within the therapeutic relationship. The present study aimed to replicate and expand the results of previous studies suggesting that therapists’ responses that disconfirmed patient’s pathogenic beliefs were predictive of patients’ within-session progress. Moreover, we wanted to investigate whether these interventions correlated with the therapeutic alliance. Transcriptions of 81 sessions from five brief psychodynamic psychotherapies were assessed by 11 independent raters. For each case, the patient’s plan was formulated and tests identified, the accuracy of the therapist’s responses to these tests was rated, and the impact of the therapist’s interventions on the patient’s subsequent communications and their relationship with the therapeutic alliance was measured. The results supported the central hypothesis of the CMT that when the therapist’s interventions passed the patient’s tests, the patient showed signs of improvement. Moreover, the ability of the therapist to pass the patient’s tests correlated with the therapeutic alliance. The clinical implications and the limitations of these findings are discussed, together with the relevance of a good case formulation for clinicians’ optimal responsiveness.

Il concetto di test è forse uno dei più innovativi della Control-Mastery Theory, nonché uno di quelli dalle maggiori implicazioni cliniche e pratiche, e in questo breve lavoro cercherò di spiegare il perché di questa mia affermazione. La Control-Mastery Theory (CMT; Gazzillo, 2016; Silberschatz, 2005; Weiss, 1993; Weiss, Sampson & The Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group, 1986) può essere definita come un modello di matrice relazionale, cognitivo-dinamico, del funzionamento mentale e della psicopatologia.