It is a capital mistake
to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly
one begins to twist
facts to suit theories,
instead of theories to suit facts.
 (Conan Doyle, 1891a)

There is a tale that is well known to anyone with an interest in semiotics, logic or communication (See among others, Caprettini, 1983), or psychoanalysis (to give but one example, Freud, 1914). It is the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm (1812-1815) The wolf and the seven young kids. In this article, we will attempt to use it as a pretext to illustrate a number of points concerning clinical psychology training, the main theme of this issue.

The fairy story, is a well-known one.

Once upon a time, there was a mother goat with seven kids whom she loved as any mother loves her young. One day, she decided to go into the woods to gather some food. She called them all to her and said “Now my dears, I am going into the woods. Beware of the wolf, as if he comes, he will gobble you all up in a single mouthful. The villain often appears in disguise, but you can recognize him instantly by his rough voice and black paws”. The young kids replied “Mother dear, don’t worry, we will be careful”. The old goat bleated and went on her way with her mind at ease.
A little while later, someone knocked at the door, shouting: “Open up, my dears, it’s mother and I have a present for each of you”. However, from his rough voice, the young kids knew it was the wolf. “We shall not open up,” they said, “you aren’t our mother. Mother’s voice is sweet, not rough like yours. You must be the big bad wolf”. So the wolf went to a nearby shopkeeper and bought a large piece of clay, which he ate to make his voice softer. Then he went back and knocked on the door, shouting “Open up, my dears, it’s mother and I have a present for each of you”. However, he had placed one of his black paws on the window. The kids saw it and shouted “We shall not open up. Mother does not have black paws like you, you must be the big bad wolf”. So the wolf ran to the baker and said: “I have hurt my feet, would you spread a little dough over them?” And once the baker had spread the dough over his paws, he ran to the miller and said “Please dust my paws with a little white flour”. The miller thought for a moment. He knew that the wolf wanted to trick someone and refused, but the wolf said to him “If you don’t, I’ll gobble you up”. The miller was so scared that he agreed to dust the wolf’s paw with flour. That’s the way men are.
So the rogue went back to the door for the third time. He knocked and said “Open up, my little ones, your dear mother is back from the woods with a present for each of you”. The young kids shouted “First you must show us your paws, so that we know you really are our dear mother”. The wolf placed a paw on the window and when they saw it was white, they believed what he had said and opened the door. (pp. 21-23).

Even for those who have never heard the story before, the consequences are easily imagined. The big bad wolf bursts into the house and eats the seven young kids. In fact he was so incredibly greedy, he gobbled them down whole and this, incidentally, is what saves them. Only one of the kids escaped the wolf’s fury, by hiding inside the grandfather clock, as though, nonetheless, he had sensed the trick. That was exactly where mother goat found him on her return. Thanks to the explanations given by the young kid, she planned her revenge and freed the kids who had been eaten by the wolf, straight from the villain’s belly (these things happen in fairy tales and, as you will remember, he had gobbled them up whole).
Let us put aside the impulse that may have grabbed many of us to go back to the anxious adventures of the Wolf Man and try to observe the fairy tale from other perspectives.

For example, the narrative structure it proposes can be used as an effective exemplification of the consistency/inconsistency of an investigation scenario organized for a simulation. Let us take a closer look.

Initially, the wolf is unsuccessful due to the incompleteness or inconsistency of the actual simulation. It is not until he has arranged his performance with greater cunning that he is successful. What indication can the young kids draw from their unfortunate adventure? The answer is both simple and complex: even the completeness and consistency of an investigation scenario do not make it possible to lower the guard and give in, with blind faith, to the facts. Were it so, Dupin and Holmes, through to their later epigones, would not have delighted us with the abductive reconstructions they became famous for to the detriment of their respective antagonists who are rigidly and, often, obtusely anchored to the apparent persuasive consequentiality of events and occurrences. “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” (Conan Doyle, 1891b), Conan Doyle was fond of having his character say; which is like saying, as we learn from Peirce, that induction seeks facts, whereas abduction seeks a theory.

Getting back to our young kids, what was it that fooled them? Perhaps the fact that they hastily considered as signs what should have been interpreted also as a possible symptom of another reality. 

The conventional distinction between sign and symptom based on the characteristics of artificiality, voluntarity and conventionality of the former, and on the naturality, involuntarity and motivation of the latter, would not appear completely satisfactory [ ... ] particularly in those cases that belong to simulation, that is in the voluntary production of symptoms (Caprettini, 1983, pp. 161-162).

In other words, since no one had told them it was essential, the unfortunate kids ignored the context. The context that they contribute to creating and share with their mother and the wolf – and we could add, from our viewpoint, with the authors of the tale, the reader and the narrative structure of the story. This context puts them in a certain danger zone, delimited by the collusive dimension that connotes them inside the relationship that characterizes them culturally – as the most probable victims of a wolf in turn designed to be, with every means, their natural assassin. In short, they had ignored the salient relational fact: the nature of their relationship with the absent mother/present wolf, which is expressed in the wolf’s particular motivation towards them, driven by the very fact of being vulnerable kids that had been left on their own. And they also ignored the nature of their need to be gratified (“It’s your mother and I have a gift for each of you”, the wolf reassures them).

Were it not too brazen and impudent, we could say that they made a diagnosis rather than an assessment of the current relationship and if you prefer, with a term closer to the editorial line of the magazine, an analysis of the demand. We could say that they had been trained to make a diagnosis, where by diagnosis we mean, in this case, the ability/skill to recognize the wolf, his imminent dangerousness, consubstantial to his being a wolf, regardless, we could say and this is the paradox, from any evaluation of the relationship that the wolf intends to entertain, and in the here and now of the taleentertains with whom he is engaged in this task.

But then would the analysis of the demand, to continue on this slippery slope, have saved the kids? This we will never know. It would undoubtedly have encouraged them to ask themselves questions, to be less certain, to establish a relationship based less on a simple on/off mechanism, in favor of a more questioning attitude, an attitude more attentive to the clues and hence also their deceptiveness. Perhaps, all the same, the kids would not have been spared or maybe we would have no fairy tale. But that, as they say, is another story.

Coming now to our field, let us ask ourselves: is it more useful, for a clinical psychologist or psychotherapist, to be trained to make a diagnosis through the implementation of diagnostic findings built ad hoc, using questionnaires, scales or self-report tools that teach them how to identify mental disorders or to be trained to consider his/her emotions and those of others and to use them to promote change and development within a culturally defined relationship of psychological consultation?
 
We would opt for the latter.
 
Let us sidetrack briefly. Let us think for a moment of a commonly used tool such the TAS-20 (Bagby, Parker & Taylor, 1994a, 1994b), for example, used to diagnose alexithymia, which is identified in the test, as we all know, by three dimensions, one of which is defined as the “difficulty in identifying emotions”, and of one of its items (I am often confused about my feelings ...) for which the respondent must state that he/she in agreement/disagreement. A bit like asking the wolf whether he is really a wolf1. And, let us put ourselves in the wolf’s shoes for once, regardless of the element that is for him the most psychologically important: what does the wolf make of his being such?

It goes without say that a perspective such as that of an analysis of demand in any case makes it necessary to respond to a constant reference to the context within which it is placed. The idealized reification of the abductive or investigative or conjectural procedure, as we prefer, in itself is found to be ineffective. As will be highlighted by some of the contributions on the following pages of this journal, a training approach based on the principles of analysis of demand does not mean being trained to possess a content and, strictly speaking, not even as being trained to use a technique. Rather, it means acquiring methodological skill useful to interpreting the relationships and working with and on them.

The hypostatization of a procedure is always non-contextual and is likely to have tragicomical effects. To remain in the training field, this is illustrated with a less than British sense of humor, in the English folk tale The professor of signs, which tells of a professor involved in an intellectual evaluation of a Cambridge University student, who, for fear of being failed, swaps places with a humble, but cunning and brazen miller. The miller passes with flying colors and even receives a prize, with the following motivation:

Truly extraordinary. Never would I have thought that anyone could follow every nuance of my thought so meticulously. First, I showed him an apple, meaning that it was the fault of an apple that mankind damned itself. But as quick as a flash, he pulled out a piece of bread, symbolizing that thanks to the Bread of Life we were redeemed. Then I raised a finger, to symbolize the one God, and he raised two, to remind me of Christ, and then I showed him three, to indicate the Holy Trinity and he immediately clenched his fist, because the three are nonetheless one. He never hesitated, or made a mistake, and he thoroughly deserves the prize (Briggs, 1970, p. 100).

This, on the other hand, is the version the miller gave his friend, the student whose place he had taken:

What a shrewd old fellow. But I held my own. First, he rummaged in his pockets, pulled out a green apple and waved it under my nose, as if he intended to hit me over the head with it, if I wasn’t careful. So I rummaged in my pockets, and I found an old crust of bread. I waved it under his nose to show him that if he hit me with the apple, I would throw the crust at him. At which he put away the apple and pointed a finger at me, as if to say: I’ll stick this in your eye! But I wasn’t scared and I pointed two at him, meaning that I’d gouge both of his eyes out! So he made, as if to scratch me with three fingers and I certainly wasn’t having that, so I brandished a clenched fist at him, to show that I was ready to flatten him. At which point he gave me a pat on the back. And told me that I had won (ibidem).

As a semiologist would say:

It is therefore the hypotheses that determine the semiological statute of observational data: the symptomatic value, the reference value of a certain element of reality, derives from the decision, in the form of conjecture, to believe it to be pertinent (Caprettini, 1983, p. 161).

How else could we untangle the following riddle, where obviously the observational data is not constituted so much by the facts narrated, as by the narration itself.

You go into an apartment. Harry and Joan are lying dead on the floor. Next to them is a broken glass bowl. On the sofa, a cat arches its back while staring at them. The doors and windows are locked. There is no one else in the apartment. Question: how did the murderer get away? Answer: the murderer has not yet run away. Harry and Joan are goldfish (Harrowitz, 1983, p. 231).

Getting back to clinical psychology and psychotherapy training, what does it have to do with the wolf and seven young kids? Quite a lot, it would seem.
As we have already observed, mother goat instructs her little ones (and therefore gives them training). Later, they have to measure the notions learned with the contingencies of daily life (the recognition/non-recognition of the wolf, which is essential for their survival). Lastly, a kind of assessment of the effectiveness of the training provided/received is also possible (the moral of the story).
In other words, we therefore have a clear concept of the three fundamental elements forming the basis for any training process, and therefore also training in the clinical psychology and psychotherapy fields.

1. the actual training process, with its characteristics and peculiarities, methodology and philosophy of action;
2. the use of the training obtained in the specific domain of application;
3. the assessment of the training.

To use the Brothers Grimm fairy tale again, it is clear, for instance, that training that is not applicable to the concrete occurrences of life, is ineffective or, in the kids’ case, even damaging. The warnings and advice imparted by mother goat are not put into practice. They do not allow the kids to understand the characteristics and quality of their positioning in the world, in that specific culture that they share and, at the same time, contribute to creating. They do not even provide a valid technical baggage, as the technique taught (consisting in the ability to recognize the wolf), is not situated, i.e. located in the space of the current relationship with the wolf, rather it is suspended in a decontextualized a-priori. Thus rapidly, on the apparent exhaustion of the pre-encoded possibilities (soft voice and white paws), its heuristic value is consumed2, in other words, it makes them lose sight of the fundamental issue, i.e. as mother goat would say, that “That villain often appears in disguise.”

Beyond this we have the historical-narrative dimension that is so central to our understanding something about relationships, as to be ignored: in other words, according to the contents transmitted to the kids, soft voice and white paws are always indicators of an absence of danger. They thus merely apply this simple rule, even when the same indicators are expressed by he who just a moment earlier, had a rough voice and black paws. And in doing so, they do not question and take into account, we would say with positivist obstinacy, the emotion that maybe could have saved them: fear.

As far as professional matters are concerned, in the tale we can also see that explicit reference is made to two professions: that of baker and that of miller. Once again we could be impudently led to think, when observing the behavior they express, that the former refers to what we know as the medical model of intervention, the second a more strictly psychological model.
 
The baker is uninterested and does not wonder about the relationship the wolf is entertaining with him: he simply applies his technique. It is perhaps no coincidence that in the tale this behavior is connected with a physical injury: the baker, like a physician, applies his dough where the wolf says that he has hurt himself. Before this, there is another similar case: again for a physical “problem”, his rough voice, the wolf had previously gone to an unspecified shopkeeper, to buy some clay with which to make his voice softer. And again in this case, his request was immediately satisfied.
The miller, on the other hand, immediately appears more intent on trying to understand the nature of the wolf’s requirements than meeting them and he also has ideas about the motivations behind what he is asked to do (“The miller thought: the wolf wants to trick someone”): in actual fact, he only makes an effort in this direction, since, we might say, the power of the consumer (“If you don’t, I’ll gobble you up”) soon persuades him to do as he has been told.

Looking at it from this perspective, the tale of The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids appears to offer us various stimuli for reflection on the subject that occupies us here. We can thus highlight, as indeed we have tried to, some of the fundamental presuppositions for training in the psychology field: or that are at least believed to be such by many of the authors who have responded to the journal’s invitation to discuss the salient issues of training and that the contributions that follow will illustrate more completely and from different perspectives.

As regards these contributions, it should be pointed out that some refer primarily to basic clinical psychology training: particularly those by Freda; Langher; Venuleo, Manzo & Salvatore. Others refer to specialistic psychotherapy training: Carli & Paniccia; Montesarchio & Venuleo; Cigoli, Margola, Gennari & Accordini and Di Ciaccia. And two deal with transverse topics: Di Maria & Formica and Stampa. Hopefully, our colleagues will not begrudge us this necessarily reductive summary of the issues they will be tackling.

Let us try to highlight a few points on which many of the analyses proposed seem to converge:

1. the need for an anchorage of the training to the profession (in other words, the use the recipient can make of the training); an aspect that is focused on, for instance, in the contribution by Venuleo, Manzo and Salvatore and that by Langher. It goes without say that this dimension also involves, particularly for those working in training within a university organization, the related field of research. In other words, it appears appropriate to ask: to what extent does the scientific research conducted in university departments have a repercussion on the psychology profession? To what extent do the psychologist’s knowledge and skills and effectiveness meet the social demand for psychology? How close is the research world to that of the profession? To what extent are the research, its objectives and the questions it expects to answer influenced by the configuration of the role of the psychologist that the researchers have in mind? Do they always have one?
These would appear to be questions that cannot be avoided in giving a meaning to the work of psychologists, to increase the value and meaning of the experiences already gained, to avoid wasting a load of future experiences with great power in the trickles of simplification or, even worse, senselessness.
A danger that is always lurking just around the corner. Simplification and patterns would appear, now more than ever before, to fuel easy enthusiasms in various scientific contexts and to a considerable extent in the psychology field, by favoring attitudes that drive a kind of repulsion towards the components and products of thought that are not immediately quantifiable, in favor of an objectivating reductionism that supports the tendency to reduce each continuum and each complexity into simple, discreet elements that can be measured in a linear way. Above we have an example of this, concerning the conceptualization and application of the TAS-20. However, we could also give other examples (see Grasso & Stampa, 2007, 2008).
Within the context of the training, research and professional practice of clinical psychology and psychotherapy, this tendency would seem to produce a certain number of conceptual consequences that constitute as many epistemological bad habits, which, in turn, have the consequences of a systematic distortion of reality in the representation of the interpersonal relationships within established and non-established contexts, and of the mental life of the individual subjects involved in the relationships themselves;

2. the current switch from a training logic founded on the straightforward passage of given knowledge established once and for all and regardless of the same training event, to a situated and contextualized training logic, co-constructed between trainers and trainees, that sanctions the indissolubility of the emotional and cognitive components present in the process. A logic that makes it possible to orientate oneself better within the rapid realization and demolition of knowledge that contemporary life imposes, through the implementation of skills able to permit the interpretation of the contexts and the assessment of change, as is highlighted, among others, in the contribution by Freda. This perspective has two pertinent aspects: the characterization of the training product more in a methodological sense than in one of content and, above all, the peculiarity of the training setting. Whereas traditional training is based on the transmission of knowledge to be learned in an essentially replication form, the training setting is primarily characterized as a delimitation of an environment and/or container having the function of a device that facilitates the training. In co-constructed training, it is exactly the definition of the setting that constructs, at the same time, the work and the product of the training initiative. This is connected with the fact that the training demand itself becomes the object of training. In conventional training, none of this is necessary, since training demand is considered tout court an a-priori that justifies the exercise of the same training;

3. the importance of training assessment, to be conducted not so much and not solely as part of the training initiative, but above all outside the training agencies through a comparison between the product provided by the training and the requests and expectations of social demand. Which in other terms suggests a close relationship and we could say, one of which much remains to be built, with all those dimensions in which the psychology profession finds a possibility of exercise: this taking into account not merely the dimensions traditionally characterized by the presence of psychological practice, but also assessing the possibility of intercepting new spaces for application and intervention, i.e. new areas of potential social demand for psychological skills;

4. the risks of a reductionalist perspective that, by reifying psychological constructs, as claimed by Venuleo, Manzo & Salvatore, proposes a breed of training in which the cunning of concrete thought, as argued by Stampa, ultimately deactivate the very aptitude to thinking. In some ways, we already mentioned this in point 1. If the model of the psychological intervention proposed, for instance, does not look at the object to which it applies – “object” meaning a whole [context, usership (individual, couple, family, group or organization), materials (behaviors, thoughts, emotions, fantasies, etc.)] the psychologist deals with in developing his intervention – within the network of relationships in which it is located and that, in various ways, he also helps to qualify, the risk of simplification, Stampa once again warns, is very strong. Any operation concerning the segmentation of the phenomenon on which and with which one is working, expresses a reductivism that has the inevitable effect of a loss of intelligibility of the phenomenon itself. This is the reason for which many of our contributing authors believe it more productive to proceed according to a logic that privileges the bringing together of the elements, their connection and the identification of the potential nexuses, rather that their separation and isolation;

5. the recognition of the paramount importance, for training initiatives in psychology, of some of the activities introduced, or better still, made possible, by the legislative provisions that have changed the structure of psychology degree courses (Ministerial Decree 509 and subsequent Ministerial Decree 270). Explicit reference is made to workshop and practical training experiences, with their related activities of reporting and discussion of the reports. These activities can represent, and indeed appear to represent in the opinion of our authors, in particular Freda and Langher, an ideal point of joining and integration between theory and practice, moments of negotiation that are thus open to transformation and change. In other words, we find ourselves emphasizing the training force exerted by experience;

6. reflection on the quality and characteristics of this experience and on the thought that must inform it so that it too does not become an absolutized and hypostatized reification, as they suggest in their articles, albeit with significant differences, Carli & Paniccia; Montesarchio & Venuleo; Cigoli, Margola, Gennari & Accordini and Di Ciaccia. Authors who, as I have already said, discuss specific specialistic training experiences in the psychotherapy field, underlining the rationale characterizing them;

7. the need to control what we could call the flattery of self-referentiality, which with its ability to confer certainties, pretexts and belonging, risks vanquishing the experiences’ structure-building power. To the extent of partially re-exploring with Di Maria and Formica Bion’s well known postulate: nothing is learnt, in their perspective and it is difficult to argue with them, directly from experience, but only from thought about the experience;

8. the awareness of the “weakness” of the psychological technique compared with the “strength”, or better still, with the “pregnancy” of the context. This allows us to establish a relationship between two contrasting concepts. On the one hand, we have an idea of training that tends towards the creation of a professional profile that bases its identity on the rigid use of theoretical models and on related techniques, suggesting a representation of skill as being centered on a “strong theoretical – technical dimension”, compared to a context whose importance is underestimated, identifying it as a weak category that hence, has no influence on interventional practice. On the other, we have a training logic that considers, on the contrary, a representation of the context as an essential part of professional identity and a consequent flexible use of the theories and techniques that is anchored to that context. The dimension of self-reflexivity is hence considered as being useful for critically connecting theoretical and technical models with specific environmental demands, in relation to which the professional identity is expressed. This latter profile presupposes a reference to a “weak theoretical-technical dimension” compared to the strong qualification of the context. The use of the deriving technique presents innovative aspects if considered in relation to the environment is applies to, being able to affect it in transformational terms;

9. the conviction that clinical training itself is a clinical fact. Meaning that, according to this perspective, training in the psychological and clinical context is not intended simply as preparation for clinical work, rather it becomes itself a clinical procedure with which and within which the players involved measure themselves. This entails special commitment by both trainers and trainees, especially in the processing of what happens in the here and now of the training, as well as ongoing questioning, acceptance of the problematic points of the events dealt with and the lack of unambiguous, reassuring and, above all, predefined answers to these problematic points. In other words, a commitment to the co-construction of training contents.

These, as we have already said, are just a few of the points raised in the contributions that follow.

The basic impression one gets from a comparative interpretation of the material submitted for publication, is that the psychology training field is currently suspended between two different concepts connected with two different epistemologies.
On the one hand, an epistemology resting on the paradigm of simplification, which, particularly in the psychology field, seems to have given new life to a sort of “gullible” empiricism in the training, clinical and research fields.

In this perspective, the world is represented as being in itself complete, governed by linear mechanisms in which a precise distinction is made between the categories of cause and effect. A paradigm, in other words, in which we assume that reality is characterized by order, stability and regularity of the phenomena. The consequent processes of isolation, disjunction and quantification are logically only admissible in a paradigm in which reality is described as an organic and regular whole, in which the objects have their own characteristics that are independent of both the observer and the context in which they are located: and thus scientific knowledge but also in the psychology field, interventional training and the intervention itself, are based on direct observations of reality – i.e. on an empirical and “bias-free” basis – as the starting point for training on general principles able to explain the facts observed (Grasso, 2010).

On the other hand, we have an epistemology connected with a paradigm of complexity (Benkirane, 2002), in which the object of scientific interest is recognized in the totality of the elements composing it and in the interactions they entertain with the environment in which they are situated. A system of elements that can be defined on the basis of the functions they perform is thus considered “complex”. However, these elements are not simply “parts” of the system, if they were, the system would be fragmentable and therefore by definition, would not be “complex”, rather they have their own ontology that depends on the contexts in which they are located. Outside the system, these elements have no meaning and the system itself, without these parts, loses its identity. In this perspective, the interaction between the phenomenon, the observer and the instruments used in the knowledge process is not merely inevitable, but must also be considered the object of knowledge; the concept of cause is thus put alongside that of condition and, in addition to linear causality, different processes are promoted, such as interdependence and probability: the latter is no longer considered as the expression of an inability to define the certainty of the nexuses existing between the phenomena observed, but rather as a constructive characteristic of reality.

To conclude: although we are not hiding from the fact that the area of simplification will always tend to make its superficial, but tenacious attraction felt (particularly in Italy, as we have observed in recent years, and not merely in the psychological field), attempting to oust more serious proposals, which we believe to be more difficult and less appealing, we are convinced that, precisely for this reason, the area of complexity, to which we can globally ascribe the contributions to this issue of the journal, is increasingly and increasing vehemently called on to explain the situations of complexity with which many are engaged and measure themselves on a daily basis, in the field of clinical practice, research and training.

Let us return for a moment to our kids.

Recognizing the wolf, the nature of the relationship entertained with him, the emotion of fear that accompanies it and, at the same time, precedes it, identifying what he wants with his behavior, what he expects of us and what we expect of him, is undeniably a “complex” issue. Complex, not complicated.
Someone ought to have explained to the kids that “complex” (from the Latin cum plexum, held together), is not the same as “complicated” (from the Latin cum plicum, folded together).

And furthermore, that a “complicated” issue is governed by trying to deal with the problem in all its “folds”, by explaining them analytically, as if dismantling and reassembling the components of a mechanism, whereas a “complex” issue must be tackled taking a systemic approach that does not break down a whole, like the weave of a fabric, rather considers it holistically and not merely as a sum of its parts.

And, lastly, that a “complicated” question can also be disclosed or transmitted, as content, through any encoding system, perhaps to be learnt by heart3, whereas a “complex” question (the relationship between the wolf, mother goat and the kids) in order to be disclosed or transmitted needs a relationship and perhaps must be, rather than anything else, told. 

Could this be why, Jacob Grimm and his brother Wilhelm decided to tell that relationship?

References

Bagby, R.M., Parker, J.D.A., & Taylor, G.J. (1994a). “The Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale – I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure”, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 23-32.

Bagby, R.M., Parker, J.D.A., & Taylor, G.J. (1994b). “The Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale – II. Convergent discriminant, and concurrent validity”, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 33-40.

Benkirane, R. (2002). La Complexité, vertiges et promesses. 18 histoires de sciences. Paris: Le Pommier. Italian translation, (2007) La teoria della complessità. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

Briggs, K. (1970). British folk-tales. Italian translation, (1984) Fiabe popolari inglesi. Torino: Einaudi.

Caprettini, G.P. (1983). Le orme del pensiero, in U. Eco, & T.A. Sebeok (Eds). The Sign of Three. Bloomington: Indiana U.P. Italian translation, (2004) Il segno dei tre. Holmes, Dupin, Peirce. (pp. 157-181) Milano: Bompiani.

Conan Doyle, A. (1891a). A Scandal in Bohemia, in A. Conan Doyle (1998). The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. (pp. 5-29) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Conan Doyle, A. (1891b). The Boscombe Valley Mystery, in A. Conan Doyle (1998). The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. (pp. 75-101) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Freud, S. (1914). Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose. Italian translation, (1975). Dalla storia di una nevrosi infantile (Caso clinico dell’uomo dei lupi). (pp. 481-593) OSF, vol. 7, Torino: Boringhieri.

Grasso, M. (2010). La relazione terapeutica. Percorsi di intervento in psicologia clinica, Bologna: Il Mulino (in press).

Grasso, M., & Stampa, P. (2007). Diagnosi psichiatrica e modelli di salute mentale: osservazioni su alcune criticità metodologiche per la ricerca in psicoterapia, in G. Nicolò & S. Salvatore (Eds), La ricerca sui risultati e sul processo in psicoterapia (pp. 109-128). Roma: Carlo Amore.

Grasso, M., & Stampa, P. (2008). ...Siamo proprio sicuri di “non essere più in Kansas”? Metodi quantitativi ed epistemologia della ricerca in psicoterapia: una prospettiva critica, Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. Teoria e metodi dell’intervento, 1, 127-150.

Grimm, J., & Grimm, W. (1812-1815). Kinder-und Hausmarchen. Italian translation, (1951). Le fiabe del focolare. Torino: Einaudi.

Harrowitz, N. (1983). Il modello del detective: Charles S. Peirce e Edgar A. Poe, in U. Eco, & T.A. Sebeok (Eds). The Sign of Three. Bloomington: Indiana U.P. Italian translation, (2004) Il segno dei tre. Holmes, Dupin, Peirce (pp. 215-234). Milano: Bompiani.

Notes

* Professor of Clinical Psychology, 1st Faculty of Psychology, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”. Top

1. It is impossible for the mind not to stray to the questionnaire one has to fill in to travel to the United States, that once had to be filled in during the flight and is now handled by the ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization), which includes questions like: “Have you ever committed drug abuse or been a drug addict?” or “Are you attempting to enter the United States to take part in immoral or criminal activities? or “Have you been or are you currently involved in spying activities, sabotage or terrorist activities? Or genocide?”. Effectively both this questionnaire and many of the scales used nowadays in clinical psychology would appear to have been generated by an identical outlook. With the aggravating circumstance that whereas a drug addict, criminal or wolf can deliberately and consciously decide to trick their interviewer, things are far more complicated when the object of these questions is a dimension, such as alexithymia, that is, by theoretical definition, unconscious. Top

2. Is there anyone who did not think for a moment of the structure of the DSM-IV? Top

3. For example:
If, rv= rough voice; bp = black paws; sv = sweet voice; wp = white paws; aw = always wolf; mmg = maybe mother goat; amg = always mother goat ...
Then rv + bp = ls; vr = aw; sv = mmg; sv + bp = al; sv + wp = amg; and, of course, we could “complicate” the sequence a great deal ...
Someone with ill-placed imagination, or a malicious joker (often one and the same thing), could go as far as devising a kind of observational assessment scale (that could be called the WIS – Wolf Identification Scale) to be kept at hand, by kid-psychologists, for identifying wolves. Top