We look into the transformation of meanings in psychotherapy and suggest a clinical application for Wittgenstein’s intuitions concerning the role of linguistic practices in generating significance. In post-modern theory, therapy does not necessarily change reality as much as it does our way of experiencing it by intervening in the linguistic-representational rules responsible for constructing the text which expresses the problem. Since “states of mind assume the truths and forms of the language devices that we use to represent them” (Foucault, 1963, p. 57), therapy may be intended as a narrative path toward a new naming of one’s reified experiences. The clinical problem we consider here, the pervasive feeling of inadequacy due to one’s excessive height (dysmorphophobia), is an excellent example of “language game” by which a “perspicuous representation” (the “therapy” proposed by Wittgenstein in the 1953) may bring out alternatives to linguistically-built “traps”, putting the blocked semiotic mechanism back into motion.

Applied psycholinguistics, meant as an action-research on the practices of humanization of personal and collective experience of life on earth, revises the main constructs of psychological exploration, starting from the Self.

Discourse plays a crucial role in determining how both persons and communities shape social reality and attribute meaning to experience (Edwards, 1997). This potential is mostly evident when the contended object of discourse is history itself, which is a peculiar area of the cultural mind. Hence, the discursive management of the collective tends to generate interpretations which in turn might mould personal and social identities. Sharing the spirit of the ‘‘innovations’’ brought about by cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2009), the present paper is intended to highlight how institutional and public discourses communicate different degrees of responsibility for the history of their own national group and, at the same time, how individuals construe historical identities with different degrees of guilt towards past events. Through a qualitative approach—the ‘‘diatextual analysis’’ (Mininni, 1992, 2001, 2005)—this paper proposes to investigate the rhetorical strategies adopted on occasion of some important commemorative events by the institutional spokesmen, as well as by the public opinion, to elaborate both positive and negative histories of their ingroup.

During hypnosis, the authors tested repeated weight-related, literal and metaphorical suggestions about the heaviness of the subjects’ arms. The purpose was to determine if linguistically varied hypnotic suggestions produced significantly different motor reactions—involuntary pressure forces of the forearms —as assessed by a linguistic biomechanical system. Classic, literal (L) suggestions such as “your right arm is heavy” were used, as well as metaphorical (M) suggestions, such as “your right arm is made of lead.” A specific effect on the progressive increase of pressure forces only in the temporal sequence L-M for each forearm (literal suggestions followed by metaphorical suggestions) was found. This effect, termed crescendo image metaphor effect, conceptualized within context-limited simulation theory, explains the findings.

A 5 recent perspective proposed by cognitive linguistics allows overcoming the traditional trend by confronting the special rhetorical strength of metaphor with its evident argumentative nature. In such a direction the psycho-semiotic approach frames each human event of sense making within the notion of diatext, underlining the dialogical tension between “text” and “context” of enunciation. 10 Metaphor is a relevant resource of diatextual analysis since it opens unexpected views on the mysterious procedures that translate claims of meaning into discursive modes suitable to specific situations. A corpus of empirical evidences, collected within the organizational context through narrative interviews, allows better understanding of the creative power of metaphors.

According to the traditional mainstream perspective in organizational research, organizations are conceptualized as environments basically oriented toward the production of goods and services and/or to the implementation of the skills mastered by their operators. However, according to a narrative approach to organizations, workplaces – as well as organizations in general – could be conceived of as discursive constructions, that is, as social spaces where a thick network of narrations and discourses are informally produced and “packaged,” thus shaping and featuring the most authentic dimension of organizational identity. Therefore, in order to capture the actual ethos of an organizational context, researchers should be ready to disentangle the network of collective narrations and discourses which is shaped through and by the shared and/or contested/negotiated practices of accounting. In line with such premises, the paper analyzes a corpus of empirical evidence, collected within the organizational context through focus group discussions, in an attempt to show how discursive and narrative cues actually work as yeast for the self, even within a critical moment of transition, such as organizational change, which challenged cohesion and stability of both organizational and individual identities.

Questo testo prende in analisi il rapporto di reciproca implicazione tra mene e cultura, individuando nelle pratiche del discorso la metaprocedura di produzione di senso che orienta la forma di vita degli esseri umani. La mente come costruzione culturale è in costante rimodulazione attraverso i testi con cui le soggettività --persone, ruppi, istituzioni-- negoziano la vasta gamma delle loro interazioni. La psicologia culturale discorsiva ha una chiara matrice semiotica e una valenza eminentemente sociale, perché il suo nucleo problematico è costituito dal nesso Sé-Altro e dalla relazione di fiducia, che determinano i modelli operativi interni all'intersoggettività. La proposta teorico-metodologica argomentata dal testo è arricchita da indagini specifiche sulle retoriche di costruzione dell'identità storica delle comunità, sui repertori interpretativi dei cambiamenti organizzativi, sulle funzioni svolte dalla religiosità nel ciclo di vita e nell'adozione di un'identità di genere, sul vissuto soggettivo del benessere negli incontri interculturali e sul fragile potere della poesia nell'intrecciare sensibilità etica ed estetica.

Sacred crimes: a psychological approach Grattagliano Ignazio, Cassibba Rosalinda, Mininni Giuseppe & Scardigno Rosa Department of educational sciences, psychology and communication University of Bari Aldo Moro Religions are constructed as systems of meanings (Park, 2005) and act as systems of communication (Pace, 2008): they offer to believers a set of beliefs, goals, a subjective sense of meaning, that are discursively and narratively constructed, socialized and acted. By offering stories and shared meanings, religions contribute to give order to social reality and propose to their interlocutors a kind of communicative contract (Mininni, Ghiglione, 1995): if and how the addressees accept this proposal open a wide range of positioning (Scardigno, 2010). On the extreme positions, the atheists refuse the contract, whereas the magic-idolizing positioning accept as long as they can see/touch the Transcendent. In the middle of this continuum, the interlocutors can become active intralocutors and construct their own religiosity. Most of time, this relation can be mediated by several kinds of vicarious figures: those who consider themselves as receiving viva-voce the divine Word; those who act rituals as empowered by a religious institution; those who can introduce the believer in an “other” dimension. These figures respectively refer to three kinds of charisma: personal, functional and specific charisma (Pace, 2008). Most of time, believers can meet religious figures having one kind of charisma; sometimes two of them can be met; in extraordinary cases, the three charismas join. These figures’ features really offer believers the possibility to construct a relation with a figure they can trust in, sometimes with a reverential attitude. Unfortunately, sometimes these religious men can take advantage of their positions: the words and the rituals that should offer meanings, values, comfort and hope, can become weapons and dangerous communicative tools for believers in good faith. In this background, the present work is focused on a case study: the subject is a 53-year-old man who is legally declared as blind, and who has various previous convictions for fraud and sexual abuse on minors. He would convince people that he was a Catholic clergyman and organized masses and personal appearances in which messages from God would supposedly come through him. In addition to overseeing two religious centers where he would gather groups of the “faithful” who believed in his visions, he would also make visits to people’s homes in order to pray and perform religious rites, as well as to offer his assistance in order to help them with their various problems. The case of this “bogus priest” came to our attention following new allegations of sexually abusing five juvenile males, four of them belonging to one family (ages 10, 13, 14, and 17), and the other, their 14 year old cousin. The minors belonged to families with a multitude of problems resulting from economic hardship and relational difficulties. Judicial investigations carried out revealed that the boys had been the objects of sexual abuse at his hands over a period of time. It came out that these episodes had occurred during prayer, at confession, and when receiving spiritual guidance. Content analysis and discourse analysis on the victims’ answers to the questionings revealed stories of a well-planned strategy by the “bogus priest” abuser: the trust is betrayed and the young boys declare the oppositions between the “paternal” attitude, during the day-light, and the “strange” behaviors, during the night-time. This case study offers the possibility to reflect that the sense of order proposed by a religious system of meanings can be overthrown: psychology of religion, psychopathology and law can find a common field for investigation.

Il testo illustra la rilevanza psicolinguistica dell'operatore metaforico in vari generi di discorso.

Positive Psychology has recently attempted at “enlarging the paradigm”, explaining the understanding of the human experience of the world. By contrast, for Critical Psychology, “enlarging the paradigm”, means moving away from an individualist conceptualisation of the psychological. The present paper aims at “redistributing the Psychological” toward directions already marked by cultural and discursive conceptions of human experience. Within a trans-disciplinary frame, labelled as Psycho-semiotics, Diatextual Analysis has been adopted to investigate the rhetorical modes used by socially excluded enunciators (drug users, immigrants, atypical workers, elderly people and some categories of churchgoer) to elaborate their own experience of well-being through affective labour and self care.

The contexts of legal communication are characterized by the maximum strain between the spread of doubtfulness and the aspiration to certainty. The distance between the versions of events proposed by prosecution and defense is clear evidence of the sense-making dynamic that marks the human condition as “insecuritas”. The analysis of legal contexts allows us to capture the complex process of the discursive construction of (un)certainty, that interweaves references on both the epistemic and value axes typical of a specific sense-enunciative community. In the discursive sphere of the “court” institution, all the enunciative positionings enacted by those who incriminate, defend, testify, guarantee and judge, disclose the several ways to relate to (un)certainty of their textual worlds. As a consequence, the meaning of “evidentials” is overdetermined by specific rhetorical structures that set up a wide range of personal styles in the management of (un)certainty . The analysis of texts produced in a judicial debate aims to display the dialogical principle pertaining to a specific modulation of evidentiality expressed by deontic forms, performing a “dehumanizing” rhetoric. They can be interpreted as a trace of the opportunity to emphasize the ethical roots of each claim for certainty

The great tradition of Occidental philosophy is enlivened by the obsession with (un)certainty (Wittgenstein 1969). It inspired several theories concerning ways and limits of knowledge as a form of control over the world by human beings (McBurney e Parsons 2001) as well as refined models about the degrees of plausibility of trust as basic justification for human relations. In a such cultural horizon, the psycholinguistic perspective aims to get in the common speech dynamics (Mininni, 2000). One of them is evidentiality, that is a wide range of stances the enunciator can take on the nature of information proposed by his textual world – assertion, belief, opinion, inferences, etc. – and on its quality – reliability, pertinence and so on (Wesson & Pulford 2009). The contexts of legal communication are characterized by the maximum strain between the spread of doubtfulness and the aspiration to certainty. The distance between the versions of events proposed by prosecution and defense is a clear evidence of the sense-making dynamic that marks human condition as “insecuritas” (Semerari 1980). The analysis of legal contexts allows to catch the complex process of discursive construction of (un)certainty, that interweaves references on both epistemic and value axis typical of a specific sense-enunciative community. In the discursive sphere of the “court” institution, all the enunciative positioning acted by those who incriminate, defend, testify, guarantee and judge, disclose the several ways to relate to (un)certainty of their textual worlds. As a consequence, the meaning of “evidentials” (Jakobson 1956; Haviland 1989) is overdetermined by specific rhetoric structures that set up a wide range of personal styles in the (un)certainty management. The analysis of texts produced in different phases of various judicial debates aims to display the dialogical principle (Bakhtin 1981) pertaining to a specific modulation of evidentiality expressed by deontic forms (e.g. “it must be”). They can be interpreted as a trace of the opportunity to emphasize the ethical roots of each claim for certainty (Hermeren 2011)

Through a multilevel approach, the text describes and analyzes a case of sexual abuse perpetrated and continued to the detriment of five children, came to our observation in the field expert, committed by a person who "impersonating" for a Catholic priest. The various aspects considered (psychiatric, psychological, forensic, ethno-anthropological and communicative) reveal dynamic situations and specific meanings, so that only the interaction between different but complementary perspectives can lead to a deeper understanding of the uniqueness of the case examined, illustrating in an exemplary way the dense web of disturbances caused by a double mockery of the trust which the primary relationship of human sociality.