Issue 15 – November 2019 – ISSN 2529-1807
Editor: Katia Charalabaki
Publisher: Nikos Marketos
Editing Committee: Kia Thanopoulou, Katerina Theodoraki, Athanasia Kati, Dimitris Kokkalis, Nikos Marketos, Valeria Pomini, Theodora Skali, Evi Tangouli, Katia Charalabaki
We could say that this issue extends its content to link psychotherapy to politics, that is to say, the art of living as a citizen, as a member of society and a member of the wider systems.
If we take these three elements into account [for Marx need, work and enjoyment] we note first that the three together establish a rigorous connection between a real man2 and a real society and the surrounding material society that is not himself. (...) The reality of human beings is theorized and linked to transcendence, to a beyond, to what is outside and before them (Jean-Paul Sartre,1961: 3).
Our decision to become therapists is a commitment to our own psychic development and maturation, which has much in common with the psychic development of our clients. What aspects of our psychic growth are essential to the process of becoming a therapist?
This article focuses on the one hand on the labeling of systemic epistemological concepts that differentiate the understanding of the mental disorder from the classical medical model and on the other hand on presenting some considerations on the management of change within consolidated and rigid organisms. Taking these into consideration, we will discuss some systemic concepts and concepts from complexity theory.
The Family Therapy Unit of the Attica Psychiatric Hospital was set up in 1994 by two psychiatrists of Attica Psychiatric Hospital, Fotis Kotsidas and Katia Charalabaki. What made them go on to set up a family psychotherapy centre?
In a time of crisis and collapse of all institutions, the latest book edited by Katia Charalabaki ("Psychotherapy and Politics Reviews" ed. Korontzis, 2019) introduces us to an oasis where the culture of caring for the helpless, the perpetual changing institutions of healing and the organization of resistance (collective and individual) to the destabilizing processes of the economic and social crisis that we live in today.
At the recent book fair in Athens, I learned that only 8,000 book titles were sold last year, ranking Greeks the last among EU readers. An example, perhaps, of a transition from the essence of reading and critical thinking to the fast-track lonely mass manipulation by a new capitalism of our time, cloaked in ignorance which sees the draining of social relations, in the perception that solidarity is replaced by charity.
Firstly, I would like to thank Katia Charalabaki, the copy editor of “Analects”, for her honorable invitation and the chance she gives me to share with you some thoughts about this book that brought us here today.
To begin with, this book, which draws on the relationship between politics and psychotherapy, is worthy of praise particularly for the timeliness of the issue due to the social collapse in our country in recent years - something that "systemic politics" almost despises as an emergency. This poses the question - why does it offer a substantive dialogue on the overall treatment of psychotherapy's relationship to social considerations?
In 1968, Antonis Samarakis was about to give a lecture at the French Institute. A deep and tough junta, we concentrated on filling the amphitheater with the feeling that we were to be given the opportunity to communicate and consider this to be an act of resistance. The author came into the room, sat down at the table opposite us and remained silent. He remained silent for a long time. Silence fell in the room; no sound, only breathing.
