Abstract | Violence resulting from family patterns are a set of behaviours that tend to establish and maintain control over women and, at times, over their children. These include strategies directed at exercising power over the other person by means of threats, devaluation and denigration, exclusion, prohibition of financial resources and unwanted sexual intercourse (Ponzio, 2004). All these actions result in the establishment of a situation marred by threats and arrogance on one side, and of constant fear, tension and submission on the other side, in a relational dimension where feelings of anger with the persecutor cannot be recognized and expressed, and often fall upon the weaker links: the children (D’Ambrosio, 2004). Children who have witnessed violence inhabit a family situation where the experience of seeing women as victims, and men as having legitimate reason to use power, is natural; so in turn they themselves are often victims of a violent upbringing and violent educational styles and are not however adequately protected (Hirigoyen, 2006).
There are no clear boundaries between extreme violence and normality; we could perhaps speak of a continuum in maltreatment and lack of respect often found in the story of every woman, every man, and in the “educational style” of adults towards children (Ponzio, 2004). Our proposal consists of conducting experiential workshop on violence in relationships between men and women, in order to move towards the acknowledgement of one’s wounds. The women’s group and the men’s group, are offered a creative space for sharing and expressing joy, pain, traumas, statements and submission, and for meeting one another (Dotti, 1998).
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