Group analysis sets itself in Freudian psychoanalytic tradition and takes start from the clinical work and the theoretic ideas of its initiator S. H. Foulkes on groups and on the essential 'groupness' implied in the concept of mental matrix.
His starting points have been developed and enriched with contributions from philosophical anthropology, psychodynamic epistemology, hermeneutics, and from theorizations on object relations and on the self.
Group analysis first developed in England, but has gradually spread world-wide. In Italy it was first developed by L. Ancona, F. Fasolo, F. Di Maria, G. Lo Verso and others, who have enriched it with contributions attaining to the family role, to the theory of complexity, to the concept of personality in terms of group identification, to the study of institutional groups, to the definition of the theory of set/setting, to the applications of the group-analytic approach to the understanding of cultural-political phenomena and to the elaboration of multimodal working models.
Il Laboratorio di Gruppoanalisi (LdG) was officially founded in April 1996, after many years of activity as a work, training and research group. It brings together the thinking of colleagues working both in the public and private spheres, researchers and university professors.
The fields of intervention are many and of various kinds: from individual and group analytic psychotherapy, to training and institutional intervention, rehabilitation, therapeutic communities etc., besides that of maintaining a keen and constant interest in elaborating qualified answers to the psychological needs of present-day society.
The common interests aggregating its members consist in clinical and theoretical research and in the confrontation with other experiences and elaborations.
Members can be of two kinds: Associate and Ordinary members. One becomes an associate member after the acknowledgement of a deep interest in group-analytic elaborations and advancements; ordinary members are qualified group-analysts registered as chartered psychotherapists.
Executive Committee: consists of: Corrado Pontalti (President)
Costanza gaia Dolce (General Secretary and Treasurer)
