|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE 'BODY' IN JAIL: EXPERIENCES,
MEANINGS, AND IDENTITY
|
|
|
Massimo Giliberto
|
|
|
Institut of Constructivist Psychology,
Padova, Italy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The modern
idea of imprisonment in the West seems to have
intentionally portrayed corporal punishment as threatening. It was the
foundation and the fulcrum of the principle of ‘humanisation’ of
prisons. At
the basis of this principle there is a common dichotomy: ‘mind’ and
‘body’ as
two distinct things. This occurs so frequently that it might be thought
that
suffering of the mind (or soul) due to the deprivation of liberty is
not
comparable to the suffering of the flesh, to physical harm. Can there
be,
however, an obvious comparison? Behind a seemingly unbloody appearance,
assuming a monist rather than dualist point of view, detentive
punishment can
take on a very different aspect. People who have gone through this
experience
speak of it as one which involves the person in their entirety and
which can be
described in the domains of both language and knowledge, mental and
physical. “Life
changes here” is an expression which could become global: people speak
of this
change and often this loss of self, as also being in the body and in
the
modifications of the senses.
Keywords: monism, prison, body,
constructivism, meaning
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
INTRODUCTION
This paper is the result of seven
years working in two male prisons in Venice,
in
particular the work dedicated to drug addicts, alcoholics and HIV
positive men
on the island of Guidecca. I was the clinical psychologist in these prisons and I
had the opportunity
to meet and speak with many people; prisoners representative of
suffering humanity.
On a daily basis I was involved
with the contradictory implications of an old idea, born of mind-body
dualism:
that mental punishment (deprivation of liberty) was in no way linked to
corporal
punishment. An idea which is inextricably political and ‘scientific’.
My
colleagues mostly treated physical suffering – if not in a purely
physical mode
– as ‘secondary effects’. Effects only explainable in terms of a
psychosomatic
vision, or at times simply unexplainable [1]. Under no
circumstances were these attempts to explain or comprehend
relevant to
the meanings that the prisoners gave to their experience, to their own
world,
to others and to themselves.
In any case, this approach seemed
unsatisfactory to me and was the source of long and interesting
discussions
with my colleagues. To me, imprisonment constituted a global experience, a
unique narrative fabric that I perceived only artificially dichotomized
in mind
and body. I wanted to grasp the unitary sense, without contradictions.
To
attempt this, I needed a rigorous monist conceptual framework.
Therefore,
firstly I needed to clarify the epistemological assumptions with which
I
intended to look at these phenomena. Only then would I be able to
understand
the embodied experiences of the prisoners that I met.
This paper has two inter-related
parts: the first, theoretic and abstract, the second more concrete and
lived.
Only the awareness of these new theoretical ‘glasses’ would have
allowed me to
see what I saw.
CONSTRUCTIVIST MONISM
Which Monism?
Therefore let us try to clarify the
assumptions on which the following considerations will find grounding
and along
which they will develop. We must start from the contraposition between
dualism
and monism.
Dualism, in which we are immersed
daily on a cultural level, is clear to us, but the same cannot be said
for
monism. In my opinion, we can distinguish three epistemologically
different
forms of monism:
- Reductionist monism, which
acknowledges one only substance form, confining the spirit to matter,
or, vice
versa, matter to the spirit. This is the monism, for example, of one
who tries
to reduce emotions, thoughts and ‘mental disturbances’ to the elements
or the
structures of our central nervous system. It is also the spiritualistic
monism
of one who holds that our bodily appearance is nothing but an emanation
of the
spirit.
- Naive monism, of the spinozistic
matrix, according to which mind and matter are two modes of a single
substance
(Spinoza, 1677). This kind of monism is contradictory and hardly
plausible
since it reasserts in its terms what it apparently denies. In other
words, it
is the monism of the so-called ‘psychosomatic theories’, already
originally
prisoner of language, where the sustained unit splits and nullifies in
the
compound label ‘psycho – somatic’. It is these theories in which an
explicit
relationship between mind and body is implicit: for example, psoriasis
is caused by a psychological
problem. It is precisely such
a relationship which reaffirms
a dualism which it only apparently denies.
- Constructivist
monism, for which
reality is not independent of the observer and thus is not a ‘whole’ of
objects
or ‘phenomena’ existing outside the self, whether defined in physical
or mental
terms, but a whole of effected discriminations, i.e. constructs.
I think it is worth examining this
last form of monism more closely.
Monism, Constructivism and
Knowledge
The argument that our knowledge of
reality is an interpretation continuously liable to revisions was, and
still
is, one with deep implications for our conception of knowledge. The
consideration that everyone can see only through their own ‘glasses’ is
the
door through which realism is questioned and with it the presumed factual reality of the body as
well as of the mind.
At this point, the next step toward
radical or hermeneutic constructivism is the closing of another door,
that
linking the object and the subject of knowledge through information
flow.
Closing this door, with a seeming paradox, enables us to overcome and
dissolve
the historical dichotomy between object and subject, mind and body,
realism and
idealism; as it opens an even wider door.
Closed Systems and
Environment
To conceive a living system as a closed
system unreachable by any information from the environment means to
consider
this system as the expression of the structure of its connections
(Maturana
& Varela, 1984). It is this structure itself which determines its
functioning, and not the environmental information. Therefore, a
turn-around of
what we are used to thinking takes place: the environment does not
determine
the specificity of the changes or their direction, but it is specified
-
constructed - by the system itself. Only if the environment is
significant to
the system can it start ‘perturbations’. The knowledge process, in
which life
identifies itself, no longer refers to the entry of information. It
becomes
self-referential: from the entry of information, we move on to the
construction
of meaning. However, this construction does not take place inside an
isolated
monad, rather in a linguistic domain generated from and within social
interactions.
Once again, our idea of what both knowledge and life are changes.
Construct the Mind,
Construct the
Body
In what terms can we then deal with
the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’? At this point, for instance, and given some
preliminary remarks, it is clear that it makes no sense to speak of
knowledge
as the representation of reality, or of the body as an object distinct
from the
mind. In short, the stress is on the observer and on his being an
active
constructor of meanings, and who, as such, specifies distinctions. On
the other
hand, to distinguish is to specify the properties of what we have
distinguished.
Therefore, there is a distinction among phenomenal domains because I
can
distinguish a unit from its constituent elements. For example, I can
distinguish a coin from the atoms (elements) it is composed of: the
phenomenal
domain where a coin ‘lives’ is not the one where atoms make sense. They
are
phenomenal domains in a reciprocal relationship of specification that
do not intersect
at all. Will I ever be able to explain how I use my money in terms of
nuclear
physics? Could I ever explain the smiles of my children in terms of
contraction
of facial muscles?
Much in the same way, what we
specify - or construct - as ‘mind’ corresponds to what we do as a
global whole
in a phenomenal domain that is different and doesn’t intersect with
what occurs
in the physical phenomenal domain; i.e. in the domain of the system
components.
In other words, the smile and the physiology at the base of the
contraction of
the facial muscles are not in an explicative relationship among
themselves. The
coin and its atoms, the smile and the muscular physiology, like the
mind and
the body are distinctions the observer generates. These distinctions,
or
better, these discrimination units - to put it as George Kelly (1955)
did -
will be organised in what we can define as a system of personal constructs. We
have moved from a universe of ‘facts’ to one of ‘constructs’.
In this conception, our mind is the
possibility that we - and all living beings - have to become the object
of our
knowledge; a possibility resulting from our interaction with others
and, circularly,
enables us to construct this interaction.
Identity and Co-Generation
of
Change
We are neither physical nor mental
systems; more generally, we are systems in relation to one another.
This is a
fully biological as well as a mental concept; where ‘biological’ and
‘mental’
are not terms of the same antinomy but the recognition of the deeply
biological
nature of what we usually construct as ‘mind’ and of the deeply mental
-
systemic, ecological - nature of what we usually construct as
biological. So,
if the dichotomy mind vs. body is a construct and not a fact, why
should I
wonder what the interrelation between physical and psychological events
is? It
would be like wondering what the interrelation between the atomic
structure of
the coin is and the way I spend it, or at the same time, even question
myself
about the relationship that exists between a caress and the lever
system that
governs the movement of the bones of my arm.
I am neither corporeal nor mental,
but I can be constructed in both ways. Likewise, my preservation
processes,
those now more usefully described with a physiological language are not
endowed
with either a mental or a physical nature. Thus, I can describe myself:
the
same system of personal constructs, within different knowledge domains.
We are
the ones changing as systems - structures - and this change can be
described in both mental and
physical terms.
Identity can be endangered if
something changes within the person’s components, as changes in the
domain of
the self in relation correspond to a change in identity and therefore
in the
elements that specify the system. This is clearly evident when someone
is
diagnosed with a serious or dangerous illness. Or – strangely enough -
when we
become deprived of liberty. Our physical self is soon subsumed by our
self in
relation: by the nuclear constructs that rule our anticipation system
and make
up our identity. However, this perspective does not allow us to state
that a
mental change - in our world of social interaction - interacts with the
bodily
universe and provokes, causes a change in the latter. We are outside
this ambit
of a precise explanation, we are instead in the area of comprehension
closer to
the reading or co-writing of a text (Butt, 2004). Consequently - as far
as physical
and mental domains are concerned - it no longer makes sense to refer to
an
interaction between physiological and psychological factors. We will
simply
refer to it as a co-emergence. A co-emergence that is indicated to us.
In fact,
in both phenomenal domains we face certain transitions when our
identity is
endangered. Actually, these changes are transitions or better, the
awareness of
these changes is constituted by what Kelly defined as transitions:
anxiety,
threat, guilt and hostility. Transitions are what in another language
is
defined as emotions: the link between what we usually consider
biological and
what we commonly consider mental.
Monism, Body and
Imprisonment
A constructivist monist concept of
the universe in which we live makes us consider our body in a different
way. It
is not granted objectification, rather it becomes a hermeneutic matrix
itself.
Thus it can be re-interpreted and taken back to the self in relation.
Gastritis, for example wouldn’t be caused
by the stress of a person who works
too much or constantly oppressed by their caretakers, neither would it
be the
product of the interaction of a mental reality with a physical one.
Instead, it
would become a significant part of a wider and more complex narrative.
In much the same way, the idea of
imprisonment also changes and can no longer be founded on the romantic
concept
that confinement is less cruel than physical torture.
What are we going to see with these
new ‘glasses’?
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
SENSES
The Entry
Entering a prison often means
entering another world. Bewilderment and confusion blended with a deep
and
indescribable innermost fear are the first feelings people relate.
Those who
experience it for the first time especially report how difficult it is
to stay
on their shaky feet which seem ready to give in at any moment.
Everything surrounding them is
alien. All reference parameters are irretrievably lost and no object
seems to
have a familiar name. A prisoner told me how he had spent the whole of
the
first night in prison looking at a television: the only familiar thing
he could
recognise and to which he clung desperately.
Helplessness is the other feeling
that seizes the people who cross that threshold. Time and space no
longer
belong to them. Bewilderment and helplessness are kept under control by
concentrating on themselves. To maintain their self-esteem, they appeal
to
their co little common gestures which now have a deeper meaning:
smoking a
cigarette - no wonder almost everybody smokes in jail - or carefully
folding
their clothes at the foot of their cot, etc. But they need somebody to
help
them found this new world, otherwise they will drown in confusion, they
will
let themselves go, get ill, or commit suicide.
I have already mentioned that
prisoners are dispossessed of such fundamental life parameters as space
and
time. Space and time change in meaning and in such conditions it
becomes difficult
to move through them. Therefore many suffer from dizziness. The
transformation
of senses has begun.
The
Meaning of the Self
What we were able to rule,
discriminate and anticipate in our lives does not work anymore. In
Kellian
terms, the system of personal constructs has been upturned. The
perception of
the self in relation to others and to the situation is strongly
threatened. As
a matter of fact, many prisoners do not know where or who they are any
longer.
The sense of identity itself is endangered. The loss of any reference
or the
sensation of being different from what we have always thought to be
involves
what Kelly has defined as nuclear structures. Insomnia, dizziness and
loss of
appetite bear witness to this deep upset: certain and regular rhythms
of life
have become confused. The perception of this state of things is
dramatic for
these people who, in turn, desperately try to preserve their identity
(Giliberto, 1998).
Smell
The smell, together with the noise
and the screams is what immediately strikes whoever enters a prison. It
is a
typical, sharp smell made up of many emanations: the cafeteria, the
bodies, the
washing liquids.
Smell concerns two different
matters:
1. It is an
orientating track, it
places the others and ourselves, it discriminates ‘things’ and
directions.
2.
It gives a feeling of intimacy. It
helps us recognise something that belongs to our intimate and private
universe,
separating it from the outside - mother’s smell.
The strong and aggressive smell
permeates everything - on my return home I had the feeling it had glued
itself
on me - and levels differences, celebrating anonymity. Many prisoners
defend
themselves from it by losing or deadening their sense of smell. It is
generally
maintained that they get used it and cannot smell it anymore. I wonder
if there
is something more to this. In the end what does ‘to get used to it’
mean? It is
an idea that probably explains nothing. I need to make it clear in
terms of
choice: to cancel this disorientating lack of differentiation enables
people to
keep a little but untouched private space. In other words, these are
the
effects of some kind of sensory deprivation. The sensitivity to
particularly
strong or very different smells remains, although it is quite deadened.
Sight
In jail, you can watch or be
watched, but often you cannot see or be seen at all. By watching, the other
person is an object, preemptively nothing
else but a certain thing - a
prisoner, an operator, a prison warder; by seeing the other and
propositionally
a person. You can be curious but never interested in what you see.
The look also decrees the exercise
of power. All doors are provided with peep-holes and any kind of
privacy is
denied for alleged safety reasons. Darkness is not only a punishment
but also a
refuge: the only possibility to avoid being seen. There is an asymmetry
between
the prisoner’s and the prison warder’s looks: looking at each other
does not
prompt any conversation. There is no reciprocity.
That seems to upset the sense of
sight. Deprived of its communicative function, sight undergoes that
process
that Kelly (idem) has defined as constraint. A great number of
prisoners keep
their eyes down and seldom raise them to define a plane, a perspective,
a
communicativeness that no longer exists. Many prisoners report a
lowering in
their eyesight and when they get out they find it difficult to look at
overwhelming
skylines and distances. At that point the eye is used to focus on short
distances, even planes, without ever opening on colours and wide
depths. An
elderly prisoner said, “If I had to lose something I’d rather lose my
eyesight.... What is there to see here, anyway?”
It is very unlikely for prisoners
to look at something for a long time and more difficult still to hold
someone’s
gaze. On the one hand, to escape someone’s gaze is a way to deny one’s
precious
privacy to the others, and on the other it avoids problems and
conflicts: every
prolonged gaze at somebody or something is suspicious or worse still, a
provocation. The other people seem to have become vague objects that
populate
an inner world.
Hearing
In many cases hearing seems to take
a completely different path with respect to eyesight: where the latter
is
limited, lax and blurred, the former seems to dilate and sharpen. A
prison is
noisy and it becomes important to decipher every little noise. I think
it is
this sense’s duty to orient and anticipate what will happen in a short
time. In
an environment which is often experienced as hostile and persecuting
this
hyper-sharpness seems to have the role of tackling anxiety, threat and
fear. I
asked a prisoner, who always wanted to speak to me, a few minutes after
my arrival,
how he could so infallibly tell that I had set foot in the prison. His
answer
was amazing: he heard me arriving because the noises changed in some
way. In
short, prisoners frequently turn into bats.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
BODY
The Food, the Taste, the
Stomach
Except for the first few days,
people seldom lack their appetite in jail. Almost all of them start
putting on
weight, they swell. The food - the ‘board’ as the bureaucratic
administration
language puts it - always prompts demands, recriminations, rebellions
and
conflicts. It is never enough.
Sometimes you have the suspicion
that the prison diet is part of the conviction: no pleasure can be
allowed. As
a definition the food in prison is tasteless. It is needed to fill
oneself up,
to introduce the necessary calories and to be kept alive and not let
oneself be
overcome. The body is a container, the body is the stomach. Pleasure
and taste
live in the palace of desire. Many prisoners spend a lot on so-called
extra-board food-stuffs. Yet, nothing has the same taste it would
outside. The
same ice-creams of the same brand, sold in the same way both in and out
of
prison are considered as a poor quality product and therefore meant for
them.
I have always wondered what would
happen if these people, on few possible occasions, allowed themselves
to taste
some food with pleasure. Would it be, perhaps, an intolerable dilation
of a
universe dominated by constraint? Would it be like flying and then
falling
badly?
The Swallowers
“I am a syphon that goes from my
mouth to my asshole”: said the first swallower I met. During the night
the
prison warders had beaten him up and isolated him for reasons I cannot
remember
and he had unscrewed the bolts that fastened his cot with hands that
now were
blood-stained and bandaged. He had swallowed the bolts. He had done it
in a fit
of rage. Anger often leads to and precedes hostility. But what was the
anticipation this man wanted to keep at all costs? “It was the proof
that I
could do something even if they did not want me to.” A little ‘agency’
in a sea
of helplessness. Eating a handful of bolts as an extreme bulwark of the
connective
tissue of our identity: the possibility of identifying oneself with the
way
taken. The alternative? A much worse mutilation: the loss of the self.
The Mouth
We eat and communicate through our
mouth. In the prison context this seems to make the mouth a key part.
Those who
are familiar with prisons are no longer surprised at prisoners who sew
their
lips. It does not happen that often, but it does. It is a gesture of
nominal
but precise value: I do not speak, I do not inform or have informed
against
anybody. This is an act that can be directed both to those who want the
information
and to the prisoners’ community. Whoever is suspected of collaborating
with the
authorities, maybe getting his fellow-prisoners into trouble risks
being banished
into a world of exiles. In this case, the act of sewing one’s lips is a
tragic
attempt to be re-accepted by the ‘tribe’. In this ocean of exclusion, a
further
loneliness would be unbearable. A further loss of the self. Even if
that act
did not bring the prisoner back to his usual social relationships, it
would
save his sense of identity and membership anyway.
The Teeth
In prison, many seem to be obsessed
by their teeth. I do not know to what extent dental pathology is higher
in
those who are imprisoned compared to those who are not. As I work
mainly with
drug addicted prisoners, I have seldom met people with what can be
defined as a
sufficiently healthy set of teeth: toothless mouths, rotten and
blackened
teeth, swollen cheeks were quite normal. Anyway, in prison everybody
seemed to
look after their teeth in what I have always thought was an exaggerated
way.
The dentist was always longed for but also hated. The most requested
treatment
was tooth extraction. The idea was to uproot the pain. Immediately. In
short,
another example of the continuous constraint that rules the prison
world.
The Skin
I have sometimes had the impression
that in prison the skin says more than the mouth. The skin is like a
sheet on
which to write our name for the others to know it and for us to
remember it.
Whatever happens. The skin is also a border: our elastic walls. The
skin
contains and protects.
One prisoner’s frequent dream was
to find himself in the courtyard completely naked and skinless among
the
others. He could see his muscle bundles, his exposed red flesh. Nobody
spoke to
him but every now and then somebody spat on him and the saliva burnt
and was
infected. The meaning he gave this frequent night visitor was related
to his
vulnerability, the sensation of being ‘invadable’. These were the
meanings the
prisoners’ accounts revealed.
Skin
Diseases
The French prison doctor Daniel
Gonin (1991) points out how significant the jail population’s
dermatological
pathology is. Actually, as Gonin himself underlines, eczema, lipoma,
itches, redness,
little ulcers and pustules are a usual sight among prisoners. Most
frequently
they are due to lack of hygiene, forced promiscuity, bad food. However
all
these problems are spontaneously sorted out as detention months go by.
The
border seems to have been irrevocably raised and fortified. These
people are
inclined to define themselves as ‘hardened’. “From now on the personal
imprisonment wall is definitely set up. The hardened skin appears to be
tanned
both inside and outside,” says Gonin. In PCP terms, constraint holds
and the
new role of ‘prisoner’ seems to be sufficiently waterproofed.
Tattoos
I have already anticipated that
skin can be considered as a sheet to write one’s name on. Therefore
tattooing
seems a way to mark oneself out, to be firmly singled out in a world
that is
perceived as unstable, insecure, out of one’s reach, unpredictable.
Thus
tattoos, rather than being merely decorative must have significance and
tell us
something of the person bearing them. They tell of an identity. An
elderly
prisoner with alcoholism problems had had an elaborate drawing of a
fish
tattooed on his left arm. His hand was its tail and the drawing went up
outlining a complicated interlacing of scales to his shoulder where, in
the
mouth of the fish, were three names. When I asked him an explanation he
answered smiling, “I took notes.” He further explained that he wanted
to remind
himself who he was - the fish - and who he loved - the names in the
mouth of
the fish. The tattoo was unusually beautiful and precise for one made
in prison
- usually they are drawn with clumsy and faded lines - and I admired it
just as
he was pleased by it.
A tattoo can also represent the
membership to a community, and as such become necessary for survival.
After a
first imprisonment, few people leave without a bluish mark of five dots
arranged to form the little petals of a flower in the socket between
their
thumb and forefinger.
Cuts
The prisoner’s skin is often the
map of his present and possibly previous imprisonment. Tattoos do not
only
describe a sometimes imaginative or dramatic topography, but also the
scars
cross the skin with their own route, at times interrupting a
pre-existing
drawing, or overlapping it. Scars tell us a story too.
In prison, maiming and cutting are
quite frequent. Usually cuts are made on the arms: there are many and
they are
regular, deep but never enough to cut ligaments or, more seriously,
arteries.
The prison staff often considers them ‘demonstration acts’ made to
‘blackmail’
the staff itself, and to get better consideration in their demands.
Sometimes
it seems to be so, at least this is the explanation the author of the
deed
gives. He thinks this the only way to draw attention, to point out his
abandoned existence. Other times the gesture seems to have no reasons
and
baffles the operators. “Why did you do it?” is a question followed, if
ever, by
vague and unsatisfactory answers. However, a prisoner’s inability to
articulate
meaning does not indicate the meaningless nature of the act. As for the
swallowers, I think it is plausible to assume that these people
desperately try
to keep some core role dimensions, i.e. their identity, the fundamental
aspects
of their ability to anticipate and allege events. Now this is
impossible if our
life no longer belongs to us, if we cannot identify ourselves with the
path we
have taken. In a place where everything seems coercive and impossible
for us to
intervene in to be an active part, where others speak on our behalf and
we have
no voice, cutting ourselves is an act that belongs to us, it is a
scream, it is
the self-demonstration we exist. Once more both the skin and the flesh
appear
to be a surface to carve, write or throw on the meaning of our identity.
CONCLUSION
This study could be expanded to a
consideration of sexuality, drug addiction, death and suicide in
prison. Lack
of space keeps me from such a thorough treatment of the subject. But I
hope I
have conveyed, though not as completely as I would have liked, the idea
of how
prison constitutes a corporeal punishment.
In dealing with this topic from a
constructivist point of view, I have considered prisoners as basically
committed to endowing their own world, others and themselves with
meaning.
Therefore, I have imagined them in a process implying, in anticipation
terms,
the maintenance of their identity and of their very lives. In other
words, from
within a single conceptual system, I have focussed on their nuclear
structures,
and have considered the body ‘construct’ as subsumed by the self in
relation.
What has emerged?
The result was that the changes
people in prison have to tackle co-emerge in the mental and bodily
phenomenal
dominions even if they are not necessarily in explicative relation.
What has
also emerged is that prison is usually constructed by the prisoner as a
preemptive and coercive environment. That often undermines the meanings
that
constitute one’s identity starting a change that involves the core
structures
and is dramatically perceived. People draw away from their role nuclear
structure and find out they are different from what they have always
thought,
or simply move towards an unbearable nothing. What was meaningful in
the
previous life is excluded and survives in a shaky and restricted
intimacy. People
who are in such a situation react, often desperately, to preserve their
identity. The uncertain identity survives because a further
constriction,
besides the prison context one, allows it to do so. Otherwise, and to
the point
of denying evidence, people withstand their helplessness and the
expropriation
of all fundamental parameters of existence, such as time and space, by
marking,
maiming or killing themselves. Yes, because even suicide can be a way
of
surviving, ignoring the loss of one’s role and avoiding guilt. Other
prisoners
are completely changed by this experience: they are the ones who have
been able
to broaden their role. Despite the calm appearance of imprisonment
every
prisoner has a story to tell us, a story that is often carved on his
body.
_____________________________
[1] At best, ‘mind’ and ‘body’ experiences
were first separated and only
then, temporarily recomposed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
REFERENCES
Butt, T.
(2004). Understanding, explanation and personal constructs. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice,
1, 21-27.
Giliberto,
M. (1998). Carcere e tossicodipendenza: un'esperienza di lavoro nella
prospettiva costruttivista. In G. Chiari e M. L. Nuzzo (Eds.), Con gli occhi dell'altro (153-165).
Padova: Unipress (Engl. transl. Prison and Drug Addiction: a
Constructivist
Analysis. In Fisher J.M. and Cornelius N. [Eds.], Challenging
the Boundaries: PCP Perspectives for the New Millennium [274-284].
Farnborough: EPCA Publications. 2000)
Gonin, D.
(1991). La santé incarcérée.
Médécine et
conditions de vie en détention. L’Archipel
Kelly,
G.A. (1955), The psychology of personal
constructs. New York: Norton
Maturana,
H., Varela, F. (1984). El Arbol del Conocimiento. Santiago del
Chile: Editorial Universitaria (it. transl. L'albero
della conoscenza. Milano: Garzanti. 1987)
Spinoza,
B. (1677). Ethica (it. transl. Etica.
Roma: Editori Riuniti. 2002)
|
|
|
|
|
|
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Massimo
Giliberto graduated in Psychology
with an epistemological thesis – Psychology between Science and Common
Sense –
and specialized in Psychotherapy. He has been prison psychologist in Venice
and lecturer
of a specialization course in Emergency Psychology at the University of Padua.
He is
presently co-director (with Vincent Kenny) of the School of Constructivist Psychotherapy of the Institute of Constructivist Psychology (ICP) in Padua,
currently
being formed. He is also psychological consultant with the Military
Centre of
Legal Medicine in Padua. He privately practices psychotherapy and acts as
consultant for
organizations of the ICP in Padova. E-mail: m.giliberto@iol.it
|
|
|
|
|
|
REFERENCE
Giliberto, M. (2004).
The ‘body’ in jail: Experiences,
meanings and identity. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 1,
45-52.
Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp04/giliberto.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
Received:
5 Feb 2004 - Accepted: 2 April 2004 -
Published: 31 May 2004 |
|
|
|
|
|