Giovanni TAGLIAVINI: Il lavoro body-centered nel trauma complesso: di quale corpo stiamo parlando?

Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 13, 2023 ONLINE WORKSHOP with Giovanni Tagliavini Body-Centered Work in Complex Trauma: What Body Are We Talking About? Since Janet and Freud's early observations in the late 19th century, the body has been widely considered and understood as a fundamental element in the mechanisms of traumatization and pathological dissociation. The more recent work of Van der Hart and Nijenhuis, and the neuroimaging studies of Lanius, have allowed us to refocus theoretical and clinical attention on somatoform dissociation, partly in response to a sort of "psychoform drift" in dissociation studies in North America during the 1990s. The aim of this presentation is to confirm the importance of focusing on the body in the clinical treatment of dissociative-traumatic disorders and to deepen our understanding of it, distinguishing six different "body types" present in psychotraumatology: the injured body, the illiterate body, the disturbing body, the kidnapped/contested body, the safe body, and the gaudens/ludens body. Clinical vignettes and elements of body-centered therapeutic technique will be presented. Contributions and active participation are welcome. Giovanni Tagliavini is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who lives and works between Milan and Lake Maggiore, specializing in integrative mind-body approaches to complex dissociative and post-traumatic disorders. He began working in psychotraumatology in the 1990s, as part of the first Italian projects for psychosocial intervention in disaster relief. During twenty years of work in public mental health services, she shifted her focus from collective trauma to the themes of traumatic-dissociative developments in adults linked to childhood and adolescent situations of severe neglect, maltreatment, and physical and sexual abuse. She helped introduce the theory of structural dissociation to Italy by translating Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele's book "Ghosts in the Self." Since then, she has continued an intense editorial activity, resulting in the Italian translation of many important texts in the fields of psychotherapy and psychotraumatology. Through AreaTrauma, the training company she founded with her colleague Maria Paola Boldrini, she organizes the annual international course "New Frontiers in Trauma Treatment" in Venice (now in its eleventh edition in 2023) and many other training initiatives for psychotherapists. He was a member of the Steering Committee of ESTD (European Society for Trauma and Dissociation) from 2013 to 2015. In November 2016, together with other colleagues, he founded AISTED (Italian Association for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation), of which he was elected president for the three-year terms of 2017-2019 and 2020-2022.