Abstract in English

Fabio Bassoli
MEDIATION’S SYSTEMIC PRINCIPLES IN FAMILIES AND INSTITUTIONS.
The article oulines the proposal of AIMS about the Systemic Mediation, coherent to the principles of Systemic and Relational theory.
The Family System and conflict mediation in families still represent the main grounds of a intervention through mediation; hovewer it can take place in other contexts as well.
The author introduces the concept of intermediation which function is to connect the “parts” involved in the network arised around conflicts.


Isabella Buzzi
ADR AND FAMILY MEDIATION IN EUROPE AND ITALY
In a neat way, the author describes European and Italian establishement and growth of mediation, with a spotlight on family mediation.
The first part of the article explores European law and establishement both in family and in non family related issues. The article also briefly describes the basic models of family mediation in Europe. The second part focuses on Italian law concerning ADR and family mediation, Italian training Centers and models for family mediation and its professional practice.


Francesco Canevelli
TWO CRITICAL ASPECTS OF FAMILY MEDIATION
The Author highlights some important and critical features of mediation during separation and divorce. In particular about about the low public visibility of mediation in Italy and its causes. The real role of mediation is still not clear: the focus is not only on the conflict but also on the elaboration of the separation. In conclusion, the author suggests some mediation models thoughts and some guidelines for the mediation as a profession.

giancarlo Francini
Misunderstanding and cultures: which kind of Mediation?

The Systemic approach, placing Cultural conflict inside Community conflict, allows us to understand its nature inside the dynamics of each community and provides theoretical tools to deal with it.
This article goes into the relational dimension of the encounter with other cultures, with diversity, with misunderstanding.
Starting from the concept of misunderstanding, the author observes those dynamics that take place between migrants and the Countries that take them in (Francophone or Anglophobe) and for each of these social dimensions he hypothesizes Cultural Mediator’s role.
The article tries to demonstrate how every levelling of misunderstanding and every avoidance of conflict exasperates conflicts. Moreover, these conflicts are connected with all those conflicts that take place in the host Nation and in its Community, as demonstrated by the Law on laicality that has been passed by the French government.

Gennaro Galdo
NOTES FOR THE THIRD CYBERNETICS. EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
The author offers a bird’s eye view on the third cybernetic starting from some epistemological considerations and illustrating the main and basic thematics regarding the first and the second cybernetic and the practical “tools” elaborated and used, comparing them with those of the third cybernetic mostly for what concerns the use of time.
He concludes with two observations regarding the applications of the third cybernetic in mediation and during counselling.


Mauro Mariotti
SYSTEMIC COUNSELLING – EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The article focuses on a counselling and on the counsellor.
The author presents a deep analysis of the counsellor in different areas: counselling with disabled people, school counselling, counselling with doctors, co-counselling, family counselling and individual counselling.

Paola Stradoni
THEE UNCERTAIN IDENTITY OF INSTITUTIONAL MEDIATION
Which kind of identity must a mediator have when working as part of an institution?
Analysing the ambiguity found in roles and rules that cohesists in these places the author illustrates some strategies to cope with these difficulties and to meet up with this uncertain identity.


Alessandro Barberis
BUSINESS MEDIATION EXPERIENCE
The author illustrates what mediation means inside a business. The mediation practice regards any area in life. It is a way of facing problems and it concerns businesses too.
The business context is a fragile and complex system of relations especially for what concerns the core of a business and all the relations between the business, vendors and customers.
The author explains what “mediate” means for a manager illustrating his personal experience.

Lilia Andreoli
SCHOOL MEDIATIN EXPERIENCES
In the labyrinth of conflicts:
Theory, practice and contexts of mediation and systemic counselling.
The author focuses on some experiences of school mediation. The complexity and the labyrinth structure are the central topic of the article, specifically inside the schools.
The effort of this work is to propose different research types, at different levels, that are able to help people inside the “labyrinth” but mostly to give the opportunity to discover “the thread that links all stages of life”.
The model proposed starts with an exemple of school mediation where are higlighted different levels of intervention:
making the map of the systems involved
narration of critical points that brought the school to request an intervention
planning and agreements with the school
an operative stage of the project based on 3 levels: simple action-interaction- choreography
analysis of the language and of the process that comes along with the construction of meanings given by the participants
a variation from a first stage that involved reparative mediation to a second stage with mediation for cooperation. During this stage the parties start to share portions of the pathway and goals as well.





Alessandra Colombara
SCHOOL MEDIATION
The work focuses on an example of the organizational model inside a school project of mediation – students’ area.
Items that have been considered:
- the context
- the goals
- the timing
- the setting
- the management modalities

The guidelines proposes a mediation pattern that begins establishing a common language that triggers some techniques regarding mediating conflicts.
In the final portion of this work the author focuses on some experience of mediation carried out within the students, one for each kind of mediation (extended – reparative – cooperative).



Mili Ghiotto
COMMUNICATE-COOPERATE AND LIVE TOGETHER. A PROPOSAL – INTERVENTION FOR A DENTAL TECHNICIAN CLASS
The report underlines the amount of stress, the doubts and the attempts of a team before a presentation of a project that involved both adults and students of a high school.
Each meeting is a testing session for adults and youngsters. Using techniques previously known, it helps them to deal with conflicts and also gives them the chance to learn how a group works, in order to promote different relational styles and to enable a cutback of the distance between perception and expectations that each member has in regard of his own school class.



Conny Leporatti
THINGS I DIDN’T TELL YOU.
This project focuses on specific guidelines for a school mediation project used to prevent psychosocial distress:
- definition of a cooperation agreement with the school
- definition of a stage of awareness
- definition of mediation pathways (dyadic mediation between peers-group mediation between peers – intergenerational mediation check of the results and analyse of those critical elements that have emerged.


L. Orazzo, I. Sarnacchiaro
PEER MEDIATION AND “PROSOCIAL” BEHAVIOUR: HYPOTHESIS FOR A COGNITIVE REORGANIZATION
The research points out how a good management of the conflicts inside the school between peers and between the students and their teachers can enhance the ability of putting oneself in somebody’s place and produce a “prosocial” behaviour.


Paola Terenzi – Elena Rubbi
SCHOOL MEDIATION: AN INSTRUMENT FOR RECONCILIATION OR FOR SEPARATION?
This is a presentation of a School mediation intervention in a case of conflict between adults (teachers and parents).
The article shows the consequences of a relational approach has on the institutions involved and on the users (children of the nursery school).
The article represents a working hypothesis for mediators, mostly for the complexity and the relational dynamics that take place between all the parts involved.
Maria Grazia Papi
SCHOOL MEDIATION OR MEDIATION INSIDE THE SCHOOL?
Mediation inside the school system has become a need nowadays mostly because the conflicts in the classroom between peers and between students and their teachers has grown rapidly. Therefore there must by a specific kind of mediation for the school system. It will deal with specific conflicts that take place in the school.
Each teacher can become able to be a mediator and landmark for the students. The peer mediation is an ambitious project and requires full cooperation of all of the forces that are part of the school system.
A first step could be to awaken everybody who work inside the school and those who join the school (teachers, students, parents, etc.) and to create some workshops concerning conflict, communication and mediation.


Robert Emery
EMOTIONALLY INFORMED MEDIATION
About twenty years ago the author developed a methodology called “Emotionally informed mediation”. This kind of mediation recognizes the power of the emotions during the divorce and it also represents an approach to the problem solving on the short term.
The Emotionally Informed Mediation focuses on solving legal problems and not on becoming a family therapy.
Anyway the mediator uses the power contained within the emotions to educate the parents about legal issues, the children’s needs and their own unpredictible emotional outbursts.
Facing the emotions and setting new boundries is the right way to make the divore work for the children.







Marcellino Vetere
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT TO THE FAMILY MEDIATION SESSIONS 1
The mediation is a cooperative method for a succesful conflict resolution. Families are often the scenario where conflicts take place.
As years go by the family system has changed into a nuclear system. The nuclear family depends on institutions for a range of its own needs. The article gives us a brief excursus concerning mediation and the AIMS model and deals with topics such as the transition in couples that split up and mourning following to divorce.
In some cases the mediation seems to be beyond the boundries.




Serena Biagini
FAMILY MEDIATION AND THE EMOTIONAL EXPERTISE OF THE MEDIATOR
EVOLUTIONARY ASPECTS OF THE DIVORCE PROCESS.
This work deals with the divorce process and related strong emotions, as grief and rage.
Nevertheless, those emotion can trigger change and growth.
Special importance is given to those emotions that the family mediator will have to handle while dealing with different stages of the divorcing couple. For this reason the mediators must be well trained in order to be able to face sessions full of hate and conflicts that take place in separation and divorce.
A specific work on emotional competence must be done so to enable the mediator to create the right atmosphere for cooperation, empathy and ability to listen, separating his own emotions from those of his clients.



Lucia Caputo, Simona Dino Guida, Patrizia Mazzei, Roberta Cirignano
AN EXAMPLE OF COUNSELLING AND FAMILY MEDIATION IN THE “SORRISO” COOPERATIVE.
Through statistical data, analyzing file records about the interventions on the single cases, the article shows the strength and weakness of a public service .
Using the systemic point of view the authors identified the leaders of the service where the centre works.
During the second stage they identified what kind of request has been made, verifying the similarity between what the first report stated and what arised from the user’s request.
The last step was to analyze the results offered by the service.





Ester Livia di Caprio, Paolo Gritti
THE PARENTAL FUNCTION INSIDE NEW FAMILY PATTERS: BENEFITS OF A MEDIATION SETTING
The two authors deal with the parental function in new family patters like for example in step- families or in single-parent families.
This new outline shows how systemic mediation finds place proposing a setting able to promote a relaxing and communicative atmosphere. Furthermore the authors emphasizes the family systemic counselling intervention that appears equally successful, aiming to stimulate abilities in founding alternative solutions both from the single members and from the entire family.




Giuliana Ferreri
AN EXPERIENCE OF WORKSHOP FOR SEPARATED COUPLES IN THE CITY OF TORINO
When there a separation or a divorce occurs, the community and its “rituals” often fades away.
The only thing that remains is the bureaucratic record at the courthouse.
The goal of a group workshop of divorced people is to overcome separation and divorce as a moment of mere separation. The session offers a mental operation that includes the ability to elaborate the end of the marriage bind and at the same time the possibility to grow faith in new romantic relationships including intergenerational exchanges.




Roberta Marchiori
“I WON’T SLEEP WITH THE ENEMY”.
The separated or about to separate family structure is facing a complex and traumatic transformation with respect to its usual features and context. This report shows the importance of the mediation process seen as a privileged area in which all members of the family are stimulated in re-defining and recognizing their roles and their relationships within their structure.
The questioning of the basis of the family structure and of the vision of one member of the family in relationship to the other becomes even more necessary when the children are strictly involved in the parents’ rigid conflict as it occurs in the case described in this article. The bigger the conflict between the parents, the more the children tend to get “used”, more or less explicitly, as witnesses of the failure of the other parent or as allies, in which case they are forced to show loyalty towards one or the other parent, compromising their own psychological development. In these cases the mediation process seems to be particularly tough and complicated.
In order to start and carry on an analytical process with these kind of families, the contribution of other people involved in the conflict, such as other members of the family, lawyers or social bodies, is often required. During the process, the children are often invited to attend most of the sessions in order to be able to loose the uncomfortable roles that they have been forced to respect and to encourage their parents into their roles of father and mother.
The structure of the conversation within the mediation process should enable the family members to follow fundamental sequential pathways within their past, present and future in order to elaborate new ways to see the conflict. It is important, in the process of the mediation, to “shake” all stiffen positions and stimulate each single member of the family to re-organise the relationships within the family, re-defining their base and understanding the meaning of their actions. The purpose of this all is to achieve a constructive, cooperative and relational approach also based on mutual recognition.

Paola Mari, Luigi Onnis
MEDIATION OF THE EXTENDED FAMILIES: WHEN THE PARENTS AREN’T MEDIATION
This article deals with mediation with extended families. When both parents or one of them are missing, a conflict may arise concerning what is good for the children. The grandparents of both families can have different views on what is good and what isn’t good for their grandchildren and this can cause a major fight between grandparents of the two families or between grandparents of the missing parent and the other parental figure still in the family.
These stories are mostly full of grief and agony and the members of the families find themselves trapped inside a pattern of conflicts generated by strong emotional impact that loss involves.
The article shows the methodological and theoretical aspects of this specific form of of family mediation conflicts.



Aldo Mattucci
FAMILY MEDIATION: LIMITS AND RESOURCES
The article points out some aspects of the separation process and what kind of intervention the parents need.
It deals with the workers that operate in the (psyco)judical field and with their specific training.
Mariarosaria Menafro
HOW TO MEDIATE STORIES: TECHNIQUES UTILIZED IN DEALING WITH PARENTS AND THEIR ADOPTIVE CHILDREN
IIn the last ten years mediation has found much room in family conflicts due to separations and divorces, although there has been a significant increase of requests concerning mediation for situations other that family divorce, as, for example, those cases of high conflict that spring from tough adoptions. This has given those who work in the field the possibility to experiment new techniques and cope with new themes.
Andrea Mosconi
HYPOTHESIS AND THE MEDIATION PROCESS.
The aim of this article is to suggest some considerations about the systemic hypothesis about management of the mediation process. The couple is invilved in the conflict to such point that it lose the sense of time and context where the facts take place.
Everything, in fact, is spent as a reciprocal, objective, immutable judjment, bound to the game of the wrongs. This situation of "Reification"of the thoughts often involves also the intermediary with the risk of the colapse of all the system" mediating". In such a situation the idea that the conversational process of building of the systemic hypothesis is able to act in the sense to reintroduce TIME and CONTEXT in the spent and in the thought of the contesting is proposed. Moreover it acts in view to overcome both the pathological point of view and the circle of the blaming. In this sense both the content of the themes treated to build the hypothesis and the implicit preambles that drive a systemic description of the facts give a contribute


Mariarita Teofili
PEACE JUDGE
With this contribute Mariarita Teofili has offered a brief work regarding the use of family mediation in the court of the city of Rome.
Mediation can be considered a valid alternative in the justice field because it can intervene positively during the conflicts and in their overcoming, handing back to parents their own parental capabilities.
Yet, the court has had hard time because most of the times the couples approaches mediation after they have already arrived at the court and not before. This is the reason why the author proposes a regulation that can help the court and the couple to work with mediation in a first moment during the divorce process.


Luca Pappalardo
JURIDICAL MEDIATION: A PROBLEM OF DEFINITION CONCERNING THIS FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE.
This paper proposes a reflection on those contradictions that lay under what we consider Judical Mediation.
After giving a definition of both terms, the author goes further analyzing contradictions such as, for example, the judical mediation is not explicitly required by law.
Proceeding with these thoughts, the suthor quotes theoretical contributes of Cigoli, Canevelli and Cirillo with regard to motivation and role of the mediation.



Luciano Tonellato
CTU IN SEPARATION AND DIVORCE CASE: MEANING, EXTENT AND EFFECTIVNESS OF A CLINICAL INTERVENTION
The aim of the author is to investigate some of the misunderstandings which may arise in the psychological and legal context during the evaluation of the court process, and, in particular, on its use from a clinical point of view.
Moreover, in carrying out the Evaluation according to the principles of the relational-systemic theory, the author tries to create guidelines, as well as to define intervention tools and their proper use. That is to say, he wishes to overcome an Evaluation that shows only what exist by crystallising the limits of the family system, in favour of a research and a strategies evaluation able to stimulate the resources within the system itself, following the model adopted by the Co.Me.Te. centres.


Alberto Vito
MEDIATION STRATEGIES IN THE RESOLUTION OF FAMILY CONFLICTS CONSEQUENT TO MOURNING.
The author focuses on conflicts in the family and in the couple.
He then shows a specific circumstance that can take place: what can happen when a parent dies. The relationships changes in regard to the living parent and the his/her father and mother in law and what kind of relationship will they establish with their grandchildren. The article ends with some possible interventions.

Francesco di Ciò
REPARATIVE JUSTICE AND JUVENILE PENAL MEDIATION IN ITALY
Mediation is considered as a possible alternative to the penal intervention.
Juvenile penal mediation and procedures adopted during this delicate pathways are underlined. Furthermore the article analyzes the organizational and professional aspects concerning Mediation Bureaux and draws possible scenarios for the future.

Laura Mattucci
PENAL MEDIATION AND JUVENILE JUSTICE
Mediation can be thought as an alternative form of intervention in some cases of juvenile penal justice, and a model of “problem solving”, because it shows the conflict from both parts. If we are able to bring mediation in the justice field we will give those who are guilty and their victims the possibility to open the communication previously interrupted by the crime or to create a new form of communication. Once again juvenile justice, seems to be a suitable place where mediation can sprout and grow so to become an important tool.


Giuseppe Ruggiero
FROM MEDIATION TO COUNSELING: A NEW TRAINING PROPOSAL.
AIMS as Association, counts the higher number of members also because of a very strong idea: to train a complete systemic mediator able to mediate any conflict. Another step AIMS has made is to open the doors to the counseling, making possible the action of different kind of professionals that operate in any kind of setting that leads the human systems to an evolution.
The author presents a first outcome of his work about Systemic Counseling, while he was a member and coordinator of the Training Commettee. He illustrates the general characteristics of the training course in Systemic-Relational counseling.
The author concludes with some personal thoughts about professionals involved in support related jobs.