Draft:Maurizio Andolfi

Maurizio Andolfi (Rome, November 28, 1942) is an Italian child psychiatrist, a pioneer of family therapy in Europe. He trained in the 1970s in the United States, in close contact with leading international exponents of family therapy, he developed his own model of multigenerational therapy, which attributes centrality to the role of children, defined as true counselors in the psychotherapy process. Also fundamental are his contributions on relevant issues such as the use of the therapist's self, professional handicaps and authenticity in therapy. He is the founder and director of the Family Therapy Academy and its international network. In addition, Andolfi is a founding member of the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA), the Italian Society of Psychology and Relational Psychotherapy (SIPPR) and the Italian Network of Family Therapists (RIPFA); he is a clinical member of the Australian Association of Family Therapy; and an honorary member of the Asian Academy of Family therapy and the World Social Psychiatry Association.

Maurizio Andolfi

Formatosi negli anni ’70 negli Stati Uniti, a stretto contatto con i maggiori esponenti internazionali della terapia familiare, ha sviluppato un proprio modello di terapia multigenerazionale, che attribuisce centralità al ruolo dei bambini, definiti veri e propri consulenti nel percorso di psicoterapia. Fondamentali anche i suoi contributi su tematiche rilevanti quali l’uso del sé del terapeuta, gli handicap professionali e l’autenticità in terapia. È fondatore e direttore della Accademia di psicoterapia della famiglia e del suo network internazionale, la Family Therapy Academy. Inoltre, Andolfi è membro fondatore della European Family Therapy Association (EFTA), della Società Italiana di Psicologia e Psicoterapia Relazionale (SIPPR) e della Rete Italiana Terapeuti Familiare (RIPFA); è membro clinico dell'Australian Association of Family Therapy; è membro onorario dell'Asian Academy of Family therapy e della World Social Psychiatry Association.

Life

The second of three children, he was born at the height of World War II and did not meet his father until the age of three, when he returned from Corsica, a front on which he was engaged as a soldier. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Rome, in a family and social context characterized by great poverty but also by strong solidarity.

After finishing high school, he enrolled at La Sapienza University in Rome, at the faculty of Medicine and Surgery. He graduated in 1967 and later enrolled and completed his specialization in Child Neuropsychiatry at the same university. During his specialization he began his first experiences in family therapy, meeting, in New York in 1970, Nathan Ackerman, founding father of this approach. A decisive meeting, which made him choose to leave Italy and move to the United States.

In 1972, he moved to New York and began an important series of study and training experiences that put him in contact with some of the most important international psychiatrists and psychotherapists, such as Salvador Minuchin, Jay Haley, Helen De Rosis, Carl Whitaker and Murray Bowen.

Winner of a Fellowship in Social and Community Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, he conducts research from a two-year systemic perspective on the violent behavior of black and Puerto Rican middle school students in the South Bronx. He also holds the position of affiliated family therapist at the same college, as well as at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. Finally, he attended the School in Psychoanalysis at the Karen Horney Institute in New York, where he conducted his own psychoanalysis (with Dr. Helen DeRosis), Madison University in Wisconsin and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

In 1975, he returned to Italy, bringing with him the seminal ideas he had learned in the U.S. and becoming one of the first, in Europe, together with Mara Selvini Palazzoli, to initiate the development of family therapy. Also in 1975, he founded the Family Therapy Institute in Via Reno, with colleagues Carmine Saccu, Paolo Menghi and Anna Maria Nicolò. These were the years in which his main elaborations were structured and spread and in which work on professional handicaps was experimented with. In 1977 he founded the journal Terapia Familiare, on whose Editorial Board sit the directors of the main Italian family therapy schools.

For the next 40 years, Maurizio Andolfi flanked his work of study and research and his work as a therapist with his commitment as a professor and trainer, holding the position of Full Professor at the Dept. of Clinical and Dynamic Psychology of La Sapienza University in Rome, returning to the United States as Visiting Professor at the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia (under the direction of Israel Zwerling), and giving courses and seminars all over the world.

In 1993, he founded the Academy of Family Psychotherapy, recognized as a Graduate School for Psychotherapists by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. In the span of 30 years, the Academy became a worldwide reference point in the study of the family on the systemic relational level and today counts numerous branches throughout Italy and has to its credit the organization of more than 60 study conferences. The Academy is also flanked by a Clinical Pole that offers psychotherapy services at moderate cost for the most important family and couple problems.

In 2012, Maurizio Andolfi moved with his entire family to Australia, a country he got to know back in 2007, during a sabbatical year in which he was a Visiting Fellow at Edith Cowan University in Perth, WA and at Cook University Cairns, Queensland. The move came soon after he was awarded the title of Distinguished Talent by the Australian government, allowing him to take up residence in the country immediately.

While living in Perth, he introduced his model of therapy and training to Australia, founding the Perth Circle for the advancement to family therapy in Western Australia and conducting training programs throughout the continent. During this period, Andolfi is often invited to conduct seminars in Southeast Asia (Tapei, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Shanghai), organizing a Diploma in Family Therapy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where, in 2021, the Andolfi Family Therapy Center was also opened. But it is all the international activity that is very intense. In fact, Andolfi gives many in-person or online training sessions in the Dominican Republic, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Mexico.

Contribution to psychotherapy

Andolfi developed an original model of Multigenerational Family Therapy, revealing the limitations of the medical model in treating mental and relational problems. In particular, he emphasized the importance of including the humanities (psychology, philosophy, culture, art, tradition, spirituality, etc.) in the training of therapists as in the understanding of trauma, family bereavement and disorders of various kinds present in children as well as adolescents, and finally in conflicting couple relationships.

In his observation of the multigenerational family, Andolfi attributed an important role to the subsystem of children, who are engaged in therapy as significant relational bridges in the dialogue/clash between generations. This active role of children and adolescents in therapy, especially when they carry symptomatic behaviors, is the most innovative aspect of Andolfi's clinical experience and the model he proposed. Treatment, then, consists of going over the family's developmental history together, stitching up still open wounds and healing broken emotional ties. The problem presented by a child becomes a gateway to the world of the family and the patient a privileged guide in exploring family ties.

Using the same multigenerational lens, and following the seminal ideas of Murray Bowen and James Framo, Andolfi describes intergenerational couples therapy as an open and inclusive family space where each partner's family of origin and their children are symbolically present and can be invited into ad hoc sessions as special consultants to the therapist. These family resources can help couples in crisis rediscover mutual trust, respect and intimacy.

Other areas of inquiry on which Andolfi has made original contributions are those of the therapist's use of self and professional handicaps and the search for authenticity in therapy, developed within the Andolfi International Network over 40 years.

Works

• Andolfi M., Family therapy, an interactional approach, Plenum Press, New York, 1979.
• Andolfi M., Zwerling I., Dimensions of family therapy, Guilford Press, New York, 1980.
• Andolfi M., Angelo C., Menghi P., Nicolò-Corigliano A.M., Behind the family mask: therapeutic change in rigid family systems, Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1983.
• Andolfi M., Angelo C., de Nichilo M., The myth of Atlas: families and therapeutic story, Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1989.
• Andolfi M., Haber R., Please help me with this family, Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1994.
• Andolfi M., Calderon de la Barca L., The Oaxaca Book, A.P.F., Roma, 2008.
• Andolfi M., Multigenerational family therapy, Routledge, UK, 2017.
• Andolfi M., Mascellani A., Intergenerational couple therapy, Accademia Press, Roma, 2021.
• Andolfi M., The Gift of Truth, Accademia Press, Roma, 2022.
• Andolfi M., Mascellani, A. Teen voices, Accademia Press 2023.

Notes

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Categories:

• Living people
• 1942 births
• 20th-century Italian people
• Italian psychiatrists