Mara Palazzoli Selvini: A Typical Case of Resilience

Selvini, Matteo

doi:10.1080/01926180490425612

Cited by 4 publications

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“…I think both these drastically different relational experiences led to her interest in the field of family therapy. Deisy Amorin-Woods: I see … so part of her own family of origin story and her experience of trauma, isolation, and loss, the "forgotten self" which you earlier alluded to, was the impetus for the creation of "A typical case of resilience" which you wrote (Selvini, 2004), which is both heartbreaking and heart-warming. Her own personal story led her towards her professional life, but what I'm also hearing is that your father also led her towards that path because he was able to provide a secure attachment within which she could be herself, safely reflect, open up, and communicate.…”

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“…Matteo Selvini: We continue to publish within our team, myself, Stefano Cirillo, and Anna Maria Sorrentino (Cirillo et al, 2016). Deisy Amorin-Woods: You have collaborative works with your team, and you have also written a couple of articles collating works of your mother, one of them is the publication about your mother's origins and her personal story (Selvini, 1988(Selvini, , 2004. That was a heartfelt piece, I was almost drawn to tears as I read her personal life which in the end led her to her path as a therapist, a systemic therapist.…”

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“…It will be based on the feelings, allusion between the therapeutic choices of my mother and her personal life. It's the basis of the content of a paper I presented at a conference called "Maria Selvini-Palazzoli: 'A typical case of resilience'" (Selvini, 2004). I wrote this paper in the year of my mother's death in 1999.…”

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“…I wrote this paper in the year of my mother's death in 1999. Maurizio Andolfi had asked me to present at a big conference in Rome concerning family therapy pioneers (Selvini, 2002). This considers the concept of resilience, which highlighted that my mother became an important and famous psychotherapist in the context of her own history of being abandoned and that she was a very solitary child from around the time of the war.…”

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“…Matteo has led seminars and presented at numerous conferences in Italy and abroad. In 1988, along with Cirillo and Sorrentino, he started a postgraduate school for psychiatrists and psychologists who were already trained in psychotherapy (Selvini, 2014).…”

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The influence of the Milan approach: Five decades of intergenerational change. A conversation with Matteo Selvini

Amorin‐Woods

Selvini²

2023

ANZ J of Family Therapy

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The ‘Milan Approach’ made an enormous contribution to psychotherapy and psychiatry and has been viewed as a bedrock in the family therapy field. Mara Selvini‐Palazzoli made a revolutionary shift in the early 1970’s to abandon individual therapy and adopt family therapy to treat anorexia in young women. The goal of the three systemic principles; hypothesising, circularity and neutrality, proposed by the Milan Team is to elicit a useful method to interview families which encourages the production of meaningful information. The Milan group took special care of language. Rather than overly focusing on the label and referring to schizophrenia as a diagnosis, for instance, they used the term ‘families in schizophrenic transaction’. This perspective more realistically explored the origin of problems while looking at ways how to effectively generate change. In the early stages of its development, heavily influenced by the work of the MRI, the team adopted a pragmatic and strategic approach, however the focus gradually shifted towards semantics and the story of the system. While the ‘systemic identity’ was the principal guiding principle, the model was also influenced by social constructionism. This paper is a distillation of a conversation held with Matteo Selvini, son of Mara Selvini Palazzoli. We discussed the four key influential figures who developed the ‘Milan approach’, Selvini Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin and Prata. The focus of the conversation is on Mara and on her influence shaping the approach, its evolution through the years leading to the creation of the Scuola di Psicoterapia Mara Selvini Palazzoli. Matteo also shares his own influence in the evolution of the school through the intervening years. He explains the adapted version of the Milan approach and the amalgam of the original and emerging therapeutic concepts. His key messages to therapists are the importance of working in teams and client follow‐ups.

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