Permeabili al contatto nella relazione educativa. La sottile linea di confine tra la mente degli operatori e quella degli utenti in un servizio educativo per persone adulte in situazione di disabilità

Abstract

The contribution analyzes a critical moment experienced by a team working in a Center for adults with mental disabilities. The contact with the suffering of users, who mainly communicate their discomfort through prolonged anguish crises, produces in the operators a strong dispersion of emotional energies. In order to protect themselves from the impact of archaic suffering, the professional groups erect powerful defenses. Planning activities also serves to contain the educators anxiety who often experience a feeling of impotence and mental intoxication due to overexposure to the users' discomfort feelings. The contribution examines a photographic laboratory, presented in a supervision session. The question that is the leitmotif is whether the photographs taken by a user can clarify not so much the individual problems, but offer tracks to understand some symptoms of suffering that are located in the field of the operator-users relationship.