Lact is pleased to offer you the full webconference of Dr. Claudette Portelli taken from the 4th International Webinar , entitled: “Strategic approach to addictions”.

“The slightest movement matters to all nature; the sea changes for a stone. Thus, in grace, the least action is important by its consequences to everything. So everything is important. In each action, it is necessary to look, in addition to the action, our present, past, future state and the others to whom it matters, and to see the connections of all these things”. (Pascal, 1869-1872, p. 378)

Is addiction a uniquely individual problem at the psychological or biological level, that is to say intrinsic to the individual himself? Do we not take the risk in this case of isolating the individual in a labeling pathologizing and disempowering for his environment? Is addiction a reflection of the functioning of a society that produces pathogenic situations? But in this case are we not taking the risk of disempowering the individual for his behavior?  

In this congress we will reflect together on how to take into account the complexity of the world of addictions and avoid isolating the individual from his environment and from society.

Addiction is first used as a tool, an illusion of control that lingers for a while but the longer the addiction sets in, the more control the addict loses and the addiction becomes a problem that adds to the problem initial. The first thing we must do is to discriminate in order to understand the function of addiction: is it a means of creating a sensation or of anesthetizing a difficulty or a pain? The answer to these questions determines how we will approach therapeutic work.

Claudette Portelli

Psychologist, psychotherapist and trainer. She practices in Malta and Italy. She is a lecturer at the University of Malta and Dublin City University, where she teaches challenging behaviors in the school context. She is a lecturer at the School of Specialization in Brief Strategic Therapy (Arezzo, Italy) directed by Pr. Giorgio Nadone. Co-author of the textbooks Knowing Through Changing: The Evolution of Brief Strategic Therapy (2010) with Giorgio Nardone and New Addictions (2017) with Matteo Papantuono.  

Transcription

Hello everyone.
So, as part of this webinar on the theme "rethinking relationships". I suggest that we reflect on the lessons of confinement.
There are obviously a lot of them, economic lessons, in particular lessons in the choice of city policy, national policy, but I will focus on a very specific problem, which is what we have learned during this confinement of the possibility to use  digital tools, so tools that we sometimes call distance communication to remain, despite everything, connected to each other, to remain in a form of presence despite physical distance.

So you have to understand that this period has been very difficult for many of us.
Not for everyone, there are some who found refuge in their country house, almost quieter sometimes, than in the big city, but for many it was difficult

There were significant fears of death, since we knew that we could be contagious without symptoms, therefore risking transmitting the disease or that our loved ones transmit the disease to us [....]