History
The società italiana biosistemica was founded in 1986. Biosystemic Psychotherapy origins from Jerome Liss, American psychiatrist and psychotherapist who studied and taught psychoanalytic psychotherapy at Harvard University and trained in Community Psychotherapy methods with Maxwell Jones and in Encounter Groups with Bill Schutz.
Liss was Full Professor of Clinical Psychology at Düsseldorf’s Westdeutche Akademie. His therapeutic approach was influence by his active collaboration with Henri Laborit (neurophysiology of emotions), Ronald Laing, David Cooper (phenomenological psychiatry) and David Boadella (embryological model).
Even before 1986 a wide group of psychotherapists from schools with different approaches and various countries (France, Switzerland, Belgium), had gradually gathered around Jerome Liss’ theories and techniques. At the same time, a collaboration began between Liss and some Italian scholars working at the universities of Rome, Genoa, Florence and Bologna. Over the years a core group of scholars and later their students formed around a project of theoretical and clinical research with a fundamental focus on emotions due to their psychocorporaal complexity, neurophysiological aspects, impact on the fields of immunology and, more broadly, psychosomatics, and their centrality in all clinical and psychopathological issues.
The school solidified itself in a constant collaboration between Italian professionals of the private sector, several international scholar, such as David Boadella, Max Pages, Joyce McDougall, Rubens Kignel, Edward Tronick, Stephen Porges and Italian university professors making it possible to build connections between different academic departments.
Finally, in 2002, under the direction of Professor Maurizio Stupiggia the Biosystemic School received official recognition from the Ministry (MURST, Ministerial Decree 509 of 12 February 2002) to offer postgraduate training programs qualifying students for the profession of psychotherapist.
Nowadays the biosystemic model has been incorporated in study programmes of some Italian and international university courses such as Brazil, Japan, Hungary and Turkey.