RISULTATI RICERCA

Volunteering represents a crucial form of social participation. In addition to traditional modalities, more flexible forms - such as episodic and digital volunteering - are increasingly emerging, expanding opportunities for engagement and reshaping both the perceived meaning and social impact of volunteer activities. This qualitative research, grounded in nine focus groups comprising a total of 67 volunteers, undertakes an analysis of the experiences of individuals engaged in the three forms of volunteering. While common elements emerge, significant differences are also apparent. Traditional volunteers tend to perceive themselves as akin to activists, yet they often experience dissatisfaction with institutional structures. Episodic volunteers are primarily motivated by the variety of tasks and the flexibility with which they can manage their engagement, valuing a sense of autonomy. Digital volunteers, who are also self-managed, express a strong awareness of their global impact, yet frequently report a lack of recognition. The landscape of volunteering is undergoing a period of transformation, and while there remains a degree of commonality among the various forms of volunteering, it is imperative for volunteer services to also reflect on these distinctions. This reflection is necessary to establish suitable recruitment and retention strategies for the domain of social participation.

The research aims to investigate the co-constructed social representations of political participation that circulate among different groups of young Italian and Colombian university students and to verify whether there are correlations between social representations, political participatory behaviour, perceived anomie and self-efficacy. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, it was possible to reach a total sample of 327 students from Naples and 370 students from Bogotá, divided into three subgroups based on “political orientation”: young people on the right, young people on the left, and young people who are not affiliated with any political party. The internal structure of social representations was reconstructed using the hierarchical evocation technique. The content of the representations studied was operationalised using specific psychometric scales. Right-wing young people exhibit a very traditional view of political participation. Italian young people tend to emphasise the positive aspects of participation, whereas Colombian young people associate it with a negative connotation. Left-wing young people, both Neapolitan and Bogotano, are very active in demonstrations and actions aimed at change: the latter also emphasise their ability to influence the socio-political fabric. Young people who claim not to identify with any political party or faction have a strong distrust of their respective state institutions, as well as traditional representative bodies. The students involved in the study, regardless of their nationality and political orientation, showed great interest in participating. The results obtained so far provide important insights into how young people participate in politics and the meanings they attribute to it.

Starting from a project aimed at developing a network among various social actors in order to build an “Educating Community”, this paper focuses on the evaluation process, with particular attention to one of the many target groups involved: adolescents. Participants completed a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the project, aimed to assess residential attachment, sense of community, and psychosocial and emotional well-being (n = 326, 50.6% of whom belonged to the experimental group). The data collected at the end of the project did not show any increase in the dimensions investigated. Based on this unexpected result, the paper offers a reflection on the methodological and psychosocial factors that may explain this outcome.

Contemporary digital feminist activism is often embodied and represented through individual influencer accounts, which enable a form of parasocial feminism, likely being effective due to parasocial mechanisms and their significance for the social self. This study explores the influence and meaning of parasocial feminism for followers. To this end, 46 narratives by social media followers of an influencer who is a German artist and practices a distinct form of parasocial feminism known as #volanismus (“#volanism”), addressing misogyny, inequality and suppression through drawings and performance art in the form of online responses to hateful social media comments. Applying a psychoanalytic paradigm, we investigate how content and parasocial community dynamics are subjectively experienced through explicit and latent layers of meaning. The findings reveal how parasocial feminism bears significant meaning on the subjective level for the self, but also in the form of practical relevance, shaping everyday life and social and relational dynamics (e.g., divorce, having another child, transforming sexual scripts). We discuss these findings in terms of resistance and group dynamics, with a particular focus on how social mechanisms are transformed under spreading parasociality, with social media communities becoming a key part of the social self and contemporary social organizing. We also highlight limitations, noting that online activism perpetuates an individualizing logic within contemporary liberal feminism and platform capitalism.

Modern volunteerism has undergone a broad transformation, which has made episodic and online forms stem. This study investigates (a) how traditional, episodic, and online volunteering affect volunteers’ local community experiences – meant as Sense of Community (SoC), Sense of Re-sponsible Togetherness (SoRT), and social generativity – and (b) the moderating role of volunteering-related ambivalence in this. The results show that only traditional volunteering has a positive impact on SoC, while online volunteering harms social generativity. Ambivalence plays a complex role: it weakens the positive impact of traditional volunteerism on SoC, yet it reverses and strengthens the effect on social generativity when it comes to online one-making it positive. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

In questo articolo gli autori si propongono di condividere l'esperienza che hanno vissuto con Adriana (“Nana”) Schnake, una persona che ha segnato e continua a influenzare le loro vite, sia come terapeuta che come formatrice, generando in loro l'atteggiamento fenomenologico, considerato il cuore di questa tradizione terapeutica. È proprio basandosi su questa esperienza che gli autori articolano una narrazione su questa donna straordinaria, che dal sud del mondo ha saputo agire raggiungendo la profondità dell'esperienza umana. Si propone uno sguardo partendo dal suo essere-nel-mondo, la sua radicalità come terapeuta, la fiducia nel campo e lo sviluppo del suo approccio gestaltico-esistenziale. Infine, si mette in evidenza il suo particolare approccio olistico alla salute e alla malattia. Gli autori non hanno la pretesa di offrire uno sguardo obiettivo sulla sua eredità, né di coprire tutte le sue sfaccettature e l'ampiezza dei suoi contributi; il tentativo è piuttosto quello di condividere un racconto che contribuisca e possa essere di stimolo affinché si continui ad esplorare l’originalità di questa psicoterapia della Gestalt situata al sud del mondo. L'articolo è stato scritto a pochi chilometri da dove Nana ha vissuto e fondato il suo centro Anchimalén, sull'Isola di Chiloé.

Il testo a cura di Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Pietro Andrea Cavaleri, Mattia Romano e Giacomo Bisonti, propone una riflessione sulla psicoterapia in tempi di guerra, partendo dalle esperienze dirette di professionisti e pazienti coinvolti nei conflitti recenti, in particolare in Ucraina. La cornice teorica e clinica della psicoterapia della Gestalt si confronta con l’urgenza della storia, interrogandosi sul ruolo sociale e politico della cura in condizioni estreme. Il libro offre una lettura etica e necessaria, che invita a non voltarsi altrove.

L’articolo presenta una rielaborazione dell’intervista al dott. Riccardo Zerbetto, condotta nel gennaio 2025 nell’ambito del ciclo “La SIPG racconta: la storia della psicoterapia della Gestalt italiana”. La testimonianza offre un contributo significativo alla ricostruzione delle origini e degli sviluppi della psicoterapia della Gestalt nel contesto italiano, delineando il ruolo pionieristico di Zerbetto nella diffusione dell’approccio “della West Coast” e nella sua applicazione ai contesti delle dipendenze e della salute pubblica.

Attraverso un percorso che intreccia esperienza clinica, impegno sociale e riflessione epistemologica, emergono i fondamenti di una prospettiva gestaltica intesa come pratica umanistica, fenomenologica ed esistenziale, in dialogo con le trasformazioni culturali e scientifiche contemporanee.

L’intervista approfondisce inoltre le più recenti direzioni di ricerca dell’autore, che includono il confronto tra psicoterapia e fisica quantistica, l’esplorazione del nesso tra mito e psiche e la valorizzazione della dimensione poetica come via di conoscenza e di cura.

Nel suo insieme, il testo propone una visione della Gestalt therapy come approccio aperto e integrativo, capace di coniugare profondità simbolica e vitalità esperienziale, in una prospettiva che Zerbetto stesso definisce di “Gestalt archetipica”.

Quando ci apriamo all’esperienza degli altri, portiamo con noi il nostro corpo e, così facendo, siamo in grado di entrare in risonanza non solo a livello intellettuale, ma anche empatico con le esperienze e le espressioni dell’altro (che ci vengono comunicate sia verbalmente che non verbalmente). Rimanendo fedeli ai nostri fondamenti fenomenologici (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty e Levinas), parleremo di come prestare attenzione agli altri all’interno dello “scambio” relazionale e rifletteremo su quali siano, esattamente, le questioni date dall’esperienza a cui Husserl ci ha invitato a tornare. Il nostro interesse parte dall’esperienza “in prima persona” dell’altro, ma poiché non possiamo accedervi direttamente, dobbiamo affidarci alla risonanza che sentiamo dentro, nei nostri corpi vissuti, quando una persona si rivolge a noi, sia con le parole che con i gesti.

In a world marked by acceleration and dispersion, the aesthetic experience of wonder risks being lost. This article explores how gestalt therapy – particularly as developed within the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT) – offers a clinical and philosophical response to this fragmentation. Drawing on field theory, the temporal sequence of contacting, and the aesthetic of perception, I propose that wonder arises when we linger with experience, allowing novelty to emerge from the ordinary. Through metaphor, clinical reflection, and phenomenological inquiry, I argue that contacting is not merely a therapeutic technique but a rhythmic, aesthetic process that reenchants our engagement with the world. Wonder, like a rainbow, beckons us forward – not as a goal to be grasped, but as a promise sensed in the momenta of contacting.

La psicoterapia della Gestalt e la psicologia della Gestalt sono accomunate dal metodo fenomenologico e dall’epistemologia estetica ed esperienziale; soprattutto, dal principio per cui la conoscenza avviene attraverso il canale sensoriale. La percezione della realtà rispecchia l’intenzionalità di contatto, attraverso la ricerca di un focus di interesse (Polster, 1988). Guardare l’immagine con intenzionalità è un atto creativo. Questo principio è stato sottolineato da Roland Barthes (1980) in La camera chiara – il suo saggio sull’analisi fotografica – quando espone il concetto di punctum (il dettaglio che colpisce chi guarda l’immagine, tanto da suscitare in lui una emozione che connota l’intera figura).

Questa dinamica avviene anche durante l’esperienza clinica, quando il terapeuta si sofferma su ciò che suscita il suo interesse mentre osserva il paziente. L’uso del punctum, quindi, si configura come un efficace strumento di lavoro clinico, in linea con gli sviluppi teorici del modello che valorizzano il sentire reciproco della situazione terapeutica.

The article contributes to the ongoing debate on the evolving spatiotemporal dynamics of organizational structures, work practices and relationships, and workplace interactions. It explores to what extent technology – and the associated spatiotemporal restructuring of organized work – is re-shaping the forms of managerial control within employment. These forms are stylized into three ideal types, which have been previously conceptualized drawing on an extensive body of qualitative and quantitative organizational research. Using data from the 2015 and 2021 European Working Conditions Surveys, the analysis reveals that digital remote work has significantly accelerated the emergence of “controlled autonomy” as a form of managerial control. However, this impact is less pronounced compared to that of digitalization and a broader trend that has been redefining employment for several decades. Moreover, the study finds that digital remote work increases the tension between work and other life domains, highlighting the ambivalent nature of controlled autonomy. The article concludes by suggesting that controlled autonomy may become the dominant form of managerial control in the long term, though it questions whether this trend will truly enhance employment.