Caterina Bianchi

Country: Italy

Organization: Centro di Psicoterapia, Rome, Italy

Short CV

Caterina Bianchi, Author, Presenter

PsyD, Postgraduate internship at the psychiatric hospital “Villa Von Siebenthal” attending group therapy with people suffering from schizophrenic and obsessive compulsive disorder, Psychotherapy Trainee. bcaterina85@yahoo.it

Short presentation

(together with: Michele Battuello & Ilaria Ungheri)

Title: The polyphony of co-leadership inside the Strategic-Experiential Group Training in Psychotherapy

The Strategic-Experiential Group Training in Psychotherapy is a model centred on the person/student before the professional (Battuello et al., 2022). The paper is presented by three voices of the group.

The duration of training is 4 years and the group attends 5 meetings/per year of 4 hours each. The first year the trainer leads the group alone; during the 2nd year a co-leadership trainer-trainee begins and the last two years present combined co-leaderships of trainees, trainer-trainee or trainee alone.

The co-leadership is used at different stages of the training process with various meanings. The group is a true polyphonic experience because all the voices of participants are heard from different perspectives allowing a wider listening as follows: 1. At the beginning of the co-leadership, students manage the responsibility of expressing themselves into the group and start to tolerate the frustration of others’ feedback (expressiveness’ process). 2. Students, leading the group, enhance an active listening of the self, of the members and of the co-leader. 3. With the co-leading of all the students the group opens up to an extensive range of expressed emotion. 4. Close to the end of the process students are more involved as professionals (individuation’s process). 5. The group embraces the leadership style of every colleague, improving the expertise in psychotherapy.

It is necessary for trainees in psychotherapy to experience the more expressive languages as possible. Co-leadership is used in an innovative space with the meaning of being a skill for introspection, intuition of the other, genuine response and only later it is finalized to techniques. The polyphony has the social meaning of decreasing the power of one only voice (the leader) and to enhance role’s changes to reflect on equality, democracy and tolerance of our critical times.

Reference available upon request:

Battuello et al., 2022 Formazione di Gruppo in Psicoterapia: un modello Strategico. Psichiatria e Psicoterapia, 41(2), 65-82. doi.org/10.36131/psichpsicoterapia2221