WORKING ON FICTIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: THE MEANING OF SETTING

Abstract

Detecting patient’s apperception scheme is a specific aspect of empathic comprehension, while the therapist is involved to receive patient’s communication and to differentiate the significance of his emotions, thoughts and symbols. According to IP, the concept of apperception schemes relates to the concept of fiction. Adler states that fictions are cognitive figures as well as symbolic memory images, for the most part unconscious. During the sessions, a particular attention is paid to the patient’s apperception schemes with respect to transference, that is all the patient lives and associates in a fictional way to the therapist, though deriving from a former object relation. Furthermore, also symptoms and some pathogenic factors of psychiatric disorders could be considered as fictional. More in detail, the whole adaptation and defence mechanisms of the individual are mainly symbolic, while proceeding from the past and becoming oriented towards the future. According to Adlerian Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (APP), psychotherapeutic setting is described as a settled framework devoted to detect and change some dysfunctional fictions of the patient during the psychotherapy