The Rite of the Madonna of Servigliana – a research study with social dreaming matrix and dream icons

In the following work we will describe the research project “Social Dreaming in Val D’Agri”, which was carried out in Montemurro (PZ) between the second week of May  and the second week of September 2014.

The subject of the work is the rite of the Madonna of Servigliano and the cult of the Seven Madonna Sisters which the rite forms part of.

Taking part in the rite in person enabled me to gain a vivid perception of the experience which envelops the community before, during and after the event, the emotions with which the preparations are experienced and the feeling of union and cooperation which accompanies every moment of the ceremony.

Together with direct observation, the dream was the main tool of investigation, the lens which enabled us to study the role of the rite within the community and its unconscious, collective and cultural dimension.

In particular, thanks to the analysis of the oneiric icons which emerged from the dreams recounted within the matrices of Social Dreaming, it was possible to examine the unconscious group dimension of the experience and put forward some hypotheses regarding the founding myth at the origin of the rite and hence of the community itself.

The Rite of the Madonna of Servigliano

The rite we examined in our research was that of the Madonna of Servigliano, which is held in Montemurro in the province of Potenza.

Maria SS. of Servigliano is in the hearts of all the inhabitants of Montemurro and at the centre of the identity of the people of the village. Her statue represents a real and consoling sign of the presence of Jesus’ mother for the whole community, an encouragement and an invitation to hope.

Closely connected to this statue, which is considered precious and miraculous, is the whole complex of rituality and traditions which unite the people of Montemurro of every age and social condition in an extraordinary way, creating a sort of indestructible spiritual thread linking the various generations of the community through the centuries.

The sanctuary in which the statue is kept is of great importance. It has stood on the plateau of Santo Joso since 1911 and was rebuilt after a natural catastrophe which occurred in 1907: on the morning of the 27th of February of that year, a landslide about three kilometres in length descended on the west side of the village, occupying the catchment area of the ditch in Servigliano. After causing serious damage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna situated in the district of the village bearing her name, it continued to advance rapidly, destroying in a few hours two entire districts before stopping, to the astonishment of the local people, at the chapel of San Sebastiano. The growth of new vegetation and time have slowly healed the wounds that the disaster brought to the village, but the scars are still clearly visible in spite of the newe configuration of the places affected by the catastrophe.

The reconstruction of the Chapel dedicated to Maria was the answer of the christian community to the adversities which destroyed one of the most ancient and dearest places of devotion and collective identity for the people of the village.

The legend narrates that a young man of the village had a dream in which the Virgin Mary with a sad look on her face asked him if she could have a new house. In the dream the Madonna indicated the exact location, situated on a hill, in which a bush of red roses marked the precise spot where the people of Montemurro were to build the house of the Celestial Mother who had saved the village from complete destruction. On numerous occasions the youth tried to tell his fellow villagers about the dream, but his words met with a wall of indifference as he was of humble origins and was considered too simple to have received the grace of a message from the Virgin Mary. The young man had the same dream three times and finally he plucked up the courage  to go to the priest at that time to explain what had happened and  see whether  he at least would give some importance to his words. The youth insisted on being listened to and after numerous attempts convinced the priest to go to the mountains which surrounded Montemurro to look together for the place which Mary had chosen for her new church and where the local population had to to fulfill the will of the Virgin. For seven days they looked for the place and the bush on the path which led from the village to the mountains but the youth did not recognize them. On the seventh day they set off in the early morning and reached the hill bearing the name of San Jaso. The youth finally felt that this was the place which had been chosen and that there they would surely find the bush of roses on which the Madonna had asked the local community to erect the Church.

It was the priest who showed the bush to the boy who, after throwing himself to the ground in joy and bursting into tears, marked the spot with a stone, and from that moment the place become sacred.

From that moment on, the people of Montemurro all worked together until the sanctuary was built. The elders of the village told how their parents carried stones from the rubble of the ancient sanctuary up the mountain and how all the inhabitants, the men, the women and the elderly, took part in the work. The children had small stones tied around their necks so that they could also give their contribution to the building of the sanctuary, as an ex voto offering and as protection for themselves and their families.

So the church now situated at Santo Jaso was built with the same stones used to build the old church in Servigliano, using the strength and faith of the local people who have made this place a real anthropological site, a place with a collective cultural identity, the property of all the inhabitants of the village and a patrimony for future generations to whom the love for the Madonna and her sanctuary will be transmitted.

Since the sanctuary was reconstructed, the local community have revived the ancient tradition of carrying Maria SS. of Servigliano in solemn procession, from the Mother Church to her House, on the second Sunday of May. The faithful carry the Effigy of the Virgin on their shoulders in a specially built canopy. The procession of the faithful and the statue is marked by seven poggi (stands), one every two kilometres, on which the statue is placed to allow the carriers to rest and refresh themselves with food and drink specially prepared by the women of the community the day before the procession. These refreshments are offered to all the pilgrims who, together with the staue bearers, respect the pauses during the procession.

The statue of Maria SS. Of Servigliano remains in the church built at Santo Jaso throughout the summer, facing the valley in which Montemurro is situated, as if she were watching over the village and blessing it.

The sanctuary is always open for those who want to pay homage to the Virgin Mary, but the area around the sanctuary, with its green areas and picnic tables, is a popular destination for the families of the village wishing to spend a day in the country.

In the second week of September, the local community live the other part of the rite, which begins on Friday with a prayer vigil for the Madonna, an important moment of congregation for the people of the village.

After the night of the vigil, on Saturday afternoon the people of the village set off once again towards the village, following the same route they took in May, respecting the same stops, using the same strength of spirit and faith, sometimes having to challenge the adverse weather conditions but never stopping.

At dusk the Madonna makes her triumphant entrance into the village, accompanied from the last resting point near the cemetery by  torch bearers and all those who were not able to follow the procession from the beginning but wish to at least take part in the last stage.  

The festivities in honour of the Madonna in September are ceremonial, because the people are happy to have their Queen with them once again and wish to give her their full attention as a sign of their devotion and worship.

During the winter the statue of the Madonna remains in its place of honour in the Mother Church of the village, awaiting its eventual return to the sanctuary.

The Cult of the Seven Madonna Sisters

It is well known that the cult of Mary is deeply rooted in catholic countries; proof of this is the large number of sanctuaries which can be found all over Europe and in other continents. 

The rite of the Madonna of Servigliano is part of a wider cult, that of the “Seven Sisters”, practised in Val D’Angri and widespread in many areas of the centre-south of Italy.

This cult is founded on the belief that there are seven different Madonnas, considered sisters, who have been given seven different names taken from the various attributions of the life and cult of the Mother of Jesus.

The cult of the Seven Madonna Sisters has some general unusual characteristics: the Madonnas are represented with sculptured or painted images and are generally kept in different sanctuaries, grouped together in seven in number within a certain area; usually the sanctuaries, which are pilgrimage destinations, are situated at the top of a mountain – the height puts the pilgrim in immediate communication with the Celestial Kingdom and allows him to feel the presence of the Sacred (on a mountain one is closer to God, the purifying climb) – which can be reached only after a strenuous climb; every pilgrimage includes the double rite of going up and going down the mountain, as a reminder of the ancient custom of the transhumance (the sheep are taken up the mountains in spring and brought back down in autumn).

The seven churches are chosen for their vicinity to each other, and their visibility (some believe that in this way one church would lead to the discovery of the others), but also because of the thaumaturgical power attributed to the single images. The churches of the Seven Madonna Sisters have a legend regarding their foundation which is similar to many sanctuaries of the Virgin Mary, legends based on the events of the Epiphany closely linked to the territory and its people. 

The images of the Madonna, even more if they are sculpted, are often treated like real people. In fact they are dressed, crowned, adorned with jewels, taken to firework displays etc… They are subject to a kind of idolization process. The Seven Madonna Sisters are invoked for the solving of social and personal problems, the curing of individual illnesses and the keeping away of epidemics, storms, droughts etc…

There is a tendency to believe that the Madonnas invoked are really seven different people, in fact seven sisters and this is the reason for the title dedicated to them.

It is of common belief that the “Seven Sisters” are the daughters of Sant’Anna and San Gioacchino, as can be inferred from the Neapolitan song which says: “Blessed is that beautiful Sant’Anna! Seven daughters, all seven Madonnas!”. Of the seven one is referred to as “ugly”, because she is depicted with a dark skin and, in the cult of Campania, she is called a “schiavona”, that is a foreigner, and yet she is the most venerated of them all. In this regard it should be remembered that the exhortations of the bishops to the priests to teach their parishioners that there is only one Madonna is proof of how widespread this popular belief was.  

The devotion to the Seven Madonna Sisters has an extra-liturgical character. There are numerous legends that enrich the existence of the Marian churches, but one of the most popular is the strange legend of the six beautiful sisters in contrast with the ugly one and, vice versa, the six ugly sisters in contrast with the beautiful one, or six good ones in contrast with one bad one, or six happy ones and one sad one.

The cult of the “Seven Madonnas” has ancient origins. In his work “Popular songs and traditions in Campania” (1979), Roberto De Simone sustains that the devotion to the Seven Madonna Sisters, which in the Neapolitan area, like in Val d’Agri, is also linked to the devotion to the Black Madonna, has pagan origins. The author states: “As concerns the meaning, I think that it refers to the representation of the months of the year, the seasons and the peasant culture. The number seven (which is a magical number) must not be thought of only as seven: since six are white and one black, six represents spring and summer, the seventh – black and ugly – represents autumn and winter, and this long period in which the earth welcomes the sowing of seeds and promises the return of the six beautiful sisters is enclosed in just one sign” (pages 190 – 191). A further proof of this thesis is the temporality which marks the rites in honour of these Madonnas, rites which inevitably recall the peasant rites of fertility, since they take place on the changing of the seasons and the arrival of the periods which are considered crucial for a successful harvest.

The rural nature of the rites is also underlined by the fact that the devotion to the Seven Madonna Sisters occurs primarily in mountain areas and in the country, extending to the boundaries of the country villages, but is almost entirely absent in  big towns and cities.

The magic of the number seven is probably derived from considerations of an astral nature, linked above all to the lunar month which consists of twenty eight days, that is four weeks, one every quarter moon, and we know how important the moon was for ancient agricultural cultures.

Finally we should point out that seven is also the number of the Pleiades, the stars of the Great Bear constellation which are visible to the naked eye. One of these, Merope, is less brilliant than the others and for this reason it is often called the “Lost Pleiade”. These stars were of vital importance because they became visible at the beginning of spring, and so indicated to the peasants the most fertile period in which to work the land.

The Myth of Pleiades 

The Pleiades, called Vergilie by the Romans, are figures from Greek mythology. Born on Mount Cillene, they are seven sisters, the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Their names are: Alcyone, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope and Taygete. According to one of the versions of the myth, the Pleiades are the virgin companions of Artemides, the goddess of hunting. Persecuted by the savage hunter Orion, they were transformed by Zeus first into doves (peleiades) and then, together with Orion, into constellations.

They are the emblem of female virtues like marital fidelity and the rejection of adultery: images of temperance and virginity which define a whole aspect of the young woman, the one who the Greeks called nynphè (nymph) and who is particularly desirous of submitting herself to violence?. One of the main functions of the Pleiades is that of taking Zeus the ambrosia which helps babies to grow and indefinitely renews the vitality of the gods.

All the Pleiades marry divinities except for Merope who weds the notorious criminal Sisyphos. One myth says that Merope shines with less intensity because she was the only one to marry a mortal and had to cover her face out of shame.  

Sisyphos was the son of Aeolus. His union with Merope gave him a son Glauco. Sisyphos lived in Efira, in the corner of the Isthmus where Corinth, the city he was considered founder of, would later rise. He was very cunning, and succeeded in deceiving Thanatos, the god of Death, and also Persephone, the queen of the Underworld. However, in the end, weakened by old age, he also died. His tomb lies on the Isthmus where a statue of the Hero Sisyphus was erected. His famous punishment represents the useless, eternal attempt to escape from the fate of all mortals: in the Underworld he has to eternally roll a stone towards the top of a mountain, helping himself with his hands and feet, but when he is about to reach the top, the stone suddenly falls and rolls back to the bottom, and so Sisyphus has to continually start again in his vain effort to reach the top.

Hypotheses 

During our research it became immediately clear how the function of the rite is above all that of maintaining the identity of the community, calling people back to the place (many go back to their place of origin even though they now live in other places) and allowing them to take part in a common event which enables them to remember their own origin. In this way the rite is an expression of a collective unconscious identity which sees in the rite itself its only form of representability. This happens because at the base there is an archaic thought, a founding myth characterized by an undifferentiated dimension, or rather by preverbal unconscious contents which are not otherwise representable if not through a psychosomatic dimension. The rite represents this dimension and, in this sense, the symptom of community, which is understood as the only possible expression of an embedded unconscious experience, which is not thinkable or communicable and which finds in this way its only form of expression. From this point of view the founding myth represents this unconscious, archaic, collective experience.

The myth is a tale in images on the belief of the people towards the gods, the origin of life and death,  and the relationship between man and the sacred. It can narrate the cosmogony, it can explain the creation of the world or it can justify a situation by projecting it into the past; in any case it is at the beginning of a history and legitimizes its tradition.

As a form of revelation capable of creating a stable belief, the myth is able to explain the existent and to lay the foundations for moral and ritual behaviour. It is performed on the occasion of festivities, learnt on initiation and handed down from one generation to another with modifications in its details, sometimes in the form of fables or legends. Basically it is a fundamental charter which orients procedures, legitimizes the state of things and promotes it with rules.

 It reveals the unconscious of a people and expresses in symbols the meaning of primordial questions.

The mythical thought strives to find imaginary solutions to face real and insoluble contradictions, transmitting the same messages with different codes (Lévi-Strauss, 1971).

As R. Menarini sustains (2013): “such collective and mass experiences are characterized by a combination of psychic (collective) representations of a simple emotional nature: it is a question of observing relations built by visual appearances with a strong suggestive value so that they convince those who receive them that they are an objective reality”.

D. Agresta states (2014): “ The Sacred, in fact, is a pre-consciential experience in which the equivalent of the experience of the undifferentiated is observed (and is “lived”). The undifferentiated and the sacred experience are together the equivalent of mana-corpo, in which mana is nothing more than the projective identification with the experience of the Sacred as a psychic non introjected object, and corpo, instead, is the psychosomatic reaction with the object (icon, statue, prayer, rite) which is always of a collective nature. The mana-corpo thus becomes a group psychic process, through which the thought is collectively born.”

Myths and rites are different ways of gaining access to the unconscious and the imaginary. The rite is a physical representation of the founding myth; through the rite the community participates actively in the miracle and lives it on a psychosomatic, total and group level.

The rite represents the memory, the mnestic trace of an event. Thanks to this function of “remembering”, the rite allows the subject or the social group to always reinterpret the historical event evidently making it more and more accessible, but also more and more potentially problematic, conflictual and traumatic (D. Agresta 2016).

In this sense the symptom can be seen as a mnestic symbol of the unconscious trauma: “a subjective experience of an objective event, transformed into a traumatic memory. The memory is inherent to a historical event which, once it has been localized in the body, is overwhelmed by an energy which transforms it into a traumatic mental fact. According to Menarini: “In other words, a temporal dimension (history-memory) takes the form of a spatial dimension (body-instinct) and is characterized as a trauma: an eziological event which no longer belongs to the conscious but rather to the unconscious”. The symptom takes a symbolic form which hides something distressing which cannot be historicized because history has sunk into the unconscious. A rite can thus be a symptom, or perhaps it is constantly the representation of a symptom and hence, although it is present in the collective imaginary as a synthetic representation of a trauma, it is in fact symbolically already in the unconscious” (ibidem).

Another aspect we examined during our research was the social and public dimension of the religious phenomenon. We can state the existence of a social nature of the same phenomenon  which, as stated by W.R. Smith and subsequently by Durkheim, points to a fundamental homology between religious and ritual activity on the one hand and political and social identity on the other. In particular, with regard to the Marian rites, they are generally practised in communities in which subsistence is prevalently entrusted to “Mother Earth” within a society with a matriarchal organization. In such societies the whole community are involved in economic, political and religious matters, in a continuous search for shared compromises. In a community with a matriarchical structure the dimension of the undifferentiated reigns, meaning a psychic dimension characterized by an absence of boundaries in which it is impossible to complete the process of separation. We are in the area which Bion defined as protomental, in which the individual is only a part of a system, even when he has realized the distinction at other mental levels. Bion represents the protomental system as something in which the physical and the mental are in an undifferentiated state. At this basic level of mental life of a group, the people who operate in this state respond to collective stimuli with the activation of automatic responses. In fact the behaviour of the members, and thus of the group as whole, is directed and managed by a rudimental collective brain: the protomental system. We should remember that the studies of E. Neumann, a pupil of Jung who dedicated his research to various aspects of the female, provide evidence of how this archetype is tendentially conservative and an enemy of differentiation, and how it is the main obstacle to the development of the individual Self which, to conquer its female part, must develop its own capacities for separation and self-assertion.

Consequently the individual is not able to acquire his own autonomy and individuality: the price to pay would be the loss of his identity and having to bear too strong a sense of guilt, to such an extent that only the thought of such a  prospect would prove difficult   for him.

Within such a structured common imaginary, those who succeed in crossing the boundaries attract upon themselves the status of taboo. Freud defines the taboo as any kind of prohibition which is derived from the “special” nature of something or someone, or by the fact that this something or someone has come into contact with a person or an object that are considered “contaminated”. Another fundamental characteristic of the taboo is its being the object of a strong emotional ambivalence. If, on the one hand, it is observed with scorn and fear, on the other, at the unconscious level, nothing would be more pleasant than transgressing. According to the hypothesis proposed in this research, Merope incarnates the taboo because she is guilty of trying to differentiate (the taboo of the matriarch): unlike her sisters, who lay with divinities, Merope married Sisyphus who, by challenging the gods, sullied himself with iubris. Being his companion and accomplice, Merope attracted the same guilt upon herself. Looking at the story of Merope from a psychoanalytical point of view, we can hypothesize that her guilt could be the result of a crucial Oedipus complex.

The Oedipus complex marks the way of choosing the partner and the solving of this complex gives the child the possibility of becoming a woman, reaching sexual maturity and choosing the new object of love.

In the undifferentiated dimension it is impossible to reach sexual maturity, because it is not possible to gain access to the elaboration of the Oedipus complex as the paternal figure is completely denied.

Merope tries to differentiate and assert herself by violating the law establishing that she should marry a divinity and decides to marry a mortal, but this choice leads her to cover herself out of shame and guilt. Merope’s attempt to differentiate could only remain so without her being able to complete it: the result was not the reaching of a new and differentiated identity, but rather the emergence of a feeling of shame which appeared on her body through the colour black, which represents a difference but which is due only to guilt and not to a separation.

Merope was not able to escape from the law of matriarchy, and in her attempt to do so she brought upon herself the status of taboo and the punishment of the colour black, a warning for those who wished to follow her example.

On analyzing the history and the figure of Merope we were able to propose the hypothesis according to which the rite of the Seven Madonna Sisters is based on the myth of the Pleiades. Of particular interest is the superimposition of the figure of Merope on that of the Black Madonna. Like Merope, the Black Madonna is also different because of her colour. She is the most “human”, because she is “ugly” and so different. The Black Madonna in Val D’Agri is the most venerated of the Seven, the one that attracts the most pilgrims.

However, her cult is inseparable from that of her Sisters: like Merope, her diversity does not correspond to a real differentiation, since it is as if her existence were legitimized only by her belonging to her group of origin.

All Seven are imprisoned in their rite/symptom, constituted by a continuous movement which consists in leaving the village to go to the sanctuary situated on a mountain and then, after a few months, returning to the village. A movement which makes us think of the possibility of leaving and separating, but then limits itself to an eternal returning. Once again we observe this attempt to separate which constantly fails.

This movement also reminds us of the punishment of Sisyphus, which consists in him eternally rolling a stone towards the top of a mountain. When he is about to reach the top, the stone rolls back down to the bottom, forcing him to continually repeat his task in vain.

In this way the theme of punishment and guilt and the need to expiate it re-emerge.

Methodology 

Every civilisation, from ancient times to the present day, has been interested in dreams and has dedicated articles, reflections, fantasies, interpretations and associations to them. The importance Sigmund Freud gave to the dream marked the beginning of a specific interest for what in a rationalist era is considered to be deprived of meaning and importance.

Today it is now recognized how the dream is not only the “via regia” to gain access to the unconscious of the individual, but is also a carrier of symbols and meanings linked to its culture of belonging and group dimension.

The dream is, in fact, formed in relations, and it is exactly this relational nature of the human mind that allows us to see the dream as a “group event”. Instead what characterizes the individual dream is the connection with the group nature of the human mind to which it is closely linked.

It is for this reason that, in the oneiric experience of the indivudual, it is possible to identify transgenerational elements of the culture of belonging. It can be affirmed that there is a psychic groupality at a cultural level and that the observation of oneiric productions points to a particular collective imaginary constituted by a combination of cultural themes based on the isomorphism of the plot (Menarini R., 2013).

This is because “the dream enables us to integrate the complex reality of the mind and the same concept of the mental, which is the equivalent of an unconscious process expressed in the conscience with reference to social groups and the culture of belonging. Cultures without the presence of a psychic representability highlighted in the dream do not exist.

The dream is, in fact, an anthropopoietical and semaphoric dimension, as it is a carrier of sign and meaning. Remotti describes the process of building social individuals associated with the modification of the body: the modification and the dramatic transformation of the body determines the building of social individuals. The Community, that is the corporeal dimension in culture, also involves the social area. I would add a movement of an exquisitely psychological – clinical nature precisely on the mental and above all on the experience of the oneiric process as a system and specific way of thinking of the mind.

Thus by “anthropopoiesis of the dream” we mean a psychic and corporeal process in which the symbolized body becomes the narrative and construction of thought. As the anthropopoiesis is, as we have said, a process of construction and definition of the human identity, the analytical work proceeds from an eziological imaginary (the saturated matrix) towards a symbolopoietic imaginary (the unsaturated matrix): “the dream thus becomes a semiophore, a carrier of meaning” (D. Agresta., 2016).

Hence if we think about the semiophoric and anthropopoietical functions of the dream, we realize that it evidently contains both the basis of a memory and the basis of a trauma or conflict, both inherent to a “historical moment”. The dream is thus a double founding myth (Menarini R., Marra F., 2015) in which by founding myth we mean the history which is built around a real historical event which undergoes modifications until it becomes more accessible to the thought of the community; by double founding myth we mean the fact that when faced with a historical event there is not only the event in itself but also the emotional involvement released by this event, and, as a consequence, memory and trauma coexist.

In our research we made the following observations: starting from the study of the rite of the Madonna of Servigliano, thanks to an analysis of the oneiric icons which emerged from the dreams recounted within the matrices of Social Dreaming, we were able to observe the unconscious group dimension of the community, and also  propose hypotheses regarding the founding myth at the origin of the rite and hence the community itself.

Social Dreaming 

Social dreaming is a method which uses the contribution that dreams can give to the understanding of the social reality (group, organisation, society) in which the subjects live. It was conceived by G. Lawrence at the end of the 70s when he was the director of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, and is studied in the faculty of psychology at the G. D’Annunzio University, one of the few in Italy in which lessons are given on Social Dreaming.

A Social Dreaming programme can be divided into two phases:

1)   Social Dreaming Matrix

2)   Dream Reflection Group

In the Social Dreaming Matrix the participants are arranged freely in a particular structure, the matrix, in which the seats are arranged in a spiral or snowflake shape, so that the participants are not looking directly at each other. In this way the usual circle adopted in group therapy is avoided and  importance is given to the dream and not to the dreamer.

The task of the matrix is to transform the thought of the dream using associations, in the form of dreams, memories, or images. A chain of associations is formed which allows for the development of links and connections in order to create new thoughts.

In the Dream Reflection Group, on the other hand, the participants are arrangd in a circle and reflect on the dreams narrated in the matrix with the aim of identifying the pattern which connects them and the themes which emerge and formulating hypotheses on the reality shared, so that the group can reflect on its intrinsic universe  and open themselves towards a new vision of the universe which is situated “outside the room”  and of which they are a significant and indicative part.

The term “matrix” is derived from the latin matrix-icis and literally means utero, which is in turn derived from mater or madre.

The matrix of a group is what transforms a small number of unconnected people who do not know each other into a group with its own life, culture and history: it is the mother of a collective.

In the specific case of Social Dreaming, on the other hand, the term matrix, in the use made by G. Lawrence, evokes not so much the mother as the maternal uterus, a place from whcih something is born and develops. It also evokes the emotional nebula in a continuous flow and transformation which records, in a transpersonal way, the experiences and the events in a shared environment. It becomes both a form and a process. As a form, it organizes itself using a configuration of people, which provides a single space, a container or indicator to think about the content of dreams and consider or discover their most intimate, profound and infinite meaning. As a process the matrix represents the system of emotions and thought present in every social relationship but to which perhaps attention is not given. The matrix also becomes the mirror which during the day reflects the unconscious processes and the infinite which give rise to the night dream. The dream in the matrix strips itself of every individual reference of the dreamer and assumes the indicators of the culture, collectivity, society, time, space, places and motives which characterize the group and its life. The meaning of the dream is amplified and developed through free association, amplification and systemic thought to give a voice to the thought that fluctuates between the minds of the individuals who live in a shared environment. More importantly, dreamers no longer feel the burden of having to defend their internal world because they co-operate in a collective venture able to create knowledge to understand the social context since the focus is transferred from the dreamer to the dream. The matrix thus becomes the place in which the personal conscience is suspended and in which the use of the logic of conscience is combined with the non logic of the unconscious, starting from the finite to arrive at the infinite.

The technique of social dreaming thus has a double structure and a double nature: one systemic and one analytical. By systemic nature we mean the basic characteristic of always organizing work on the gestalt and never on the single individual separated from the system of reference; the analytical dimension, on the other hand, indicates that the Social Dreaming  concentrates on the dream and its social reading and allows the participants to know and understand the unconscious processes underlying the group, its becoming and its transformative aspects (D. Agresta., 2005).

Precisely for these characteristics has the method of Social Dreaming been used to identify the oneiric icons which emerge during matrices.

As R. Menarini (2013) affirms: “Etymologically the word icon is derived from the Greek-Byzantine eikòna which means “sacred image”. The icon is a structure since it represents the creative dimension of the collective soul which expresses the sacred mystery of origins. The production of icons, in fact, is the representative property of the matrix, which generates images which acquire a shared meaning. These mental images are nothing more than internal images which refer to a universe or archetype. This represents an indelible imprint which takes us back to something original: a pre-existing form, which is unrepresentable and which refers to a structure of meaning. The images of the dream are thus called icons because of their belonging to the creative dimension of the imaginary. The fundamental characteristic of the mind is its universality and the image is the expression of this totality. In Libido, symbols and transformations (1912) Jung discovered the phenomenon of collective representations, typical motives which are repeated in myths, legends and fables, but which can emerge as psychic material also in symptoms and dreams. The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes, whose form is in itself unsaturated, meaning that it can originate countless derived forms with various meanings.

How the Study was Conducted 

In this project the work team was led by Professor Domenico Agresta, promoter and teacher of the technique of Social Dreaming and associate member of the “Gordon Lawrence Foundation for the Promotion of Social Dreaming UK”. The other members of the research project were Doctor Maria Antonietta Martelli, Doctor Maria Teresa Latorraca and Doctor Giuseppina Marolla. During the period of work the team came into contact with the reality of Montemurro, an experience which they lived to the full. The research was a thesis degree in Clinical and Community Psychology at Faculty of Psychology in Chieti-Pescara.

First the team introduced the methodology of Social Dreaming and the project through a convention held in Montemurro in the council rooms of the Monumental Complex of San Domenico, which was open to anyone wishing to participate.

The research, on the other hand, began on May 10th 2014 and involved applying the technique of Social Dreaming to the rite of the Madonna of Servigliano. Three matrices of Social Dreaming were conducted at different moments of the rite, and all those interested were invited to attend.

The first matrix was carried out on the day before the rite (Saturday 10/05/2014), the second immediately after the procession of the Madonna of Servigliano, which proceeded from the village towards the mountain on which the Sanctuary is situated (Sunday 11/05/2014); the third matrix was carried out on the day after the procession, during which the statue of the Madonna was brought back to the village (14/09/2014).

At the end of our study on the field, the team met to analyze the icons which had emerged from the matrices in order to verify their hypotheses.

Themes, Icons and their Analysis 

The dreams collected in the matrices of Social Dreaming were noted, transcripted and studied in order to bring to light the oneiric icons and the recurring and fundamental themes for the analysis of the final results of the research.

During the first matrix the first theme underlined was that of following and being followed. This theme was associated with the themes of emptiness, the unknown, which in turn is connected with the themes of flight and freedom, an opening which is, however, immediately subject to control and which immediately assumes a character of induced castration by something which is following us.

“I had a dream which agitated me. I was working on a farm and I found a hostile environment, both from a point of view of the environment and a human point of view. I went into the room where I would stay for the period of work and it was untidy and dirty. I found myself in an animal shed and I saw a beast which, however, I didn’t recognize. At first I wasn’t worried about not recognizing it. Then I found myself on a road.  

The beast was walking ahead and I was following it because I was curious to know where it would take me. Then the thing was overturned: the beast was following me and I was looking at it through the corner of my eye. I stopped because there was a ravine and the beast asked me why I had stopped and it told me that i had to throw myself into the ravine and that I didn’t need to worry because it would also throw itself. The dream ended and I don’t know if I threw myself”.

Another theme which emerged was that of the double. 

“I dreamt about my mother wearing a blue dressing gown with yellow flowers on it. Shortly after another identical one comes out and I ask myself which is the real one. Shortly after one smiles and has rotten teeth and the other smiles and has beautiful teeth. I begin to pedal towards this one because I know that she is the real one and I have to get away from the one with the rotten teeth. All of a sudden I fall in a ditch and everything goes black”.

The double which symbolizes the substitution of the Id with something confusing and standardized, represents  the negative identity, which then tends to possess the body. It is the equivalent of the false-Self, a combination of fictitious identities which substitute the identity of the id.

However, we should also point out the positive value of the double, which regards the possibility of reflecting on the multiplicity which we are made up of and then having access to a greater knowledge and awareness, which can lead to a positive transformation of the individual, or in our case to a greater awareness of our own origins.

As Menarini (1997) points out, the theme of the double is strongly linked to that of the parents, since the mother and father are the figures which are most familiar to us, but in the case in which they suddenly become enemies, they  give rise to what Freud defined as the uncanny.

A recurring oneiric icon is that of the natural catastrophe. In numerous dreams earthquakes, floods and tidal waves put the dreamers in dangerous situations, from which the family provides an escape, a place which is safe but at the same time closed and irreversible.

“A short time ago I dreamt about a terrible flood. We were in quite a safe place where nothing could happen to us, but it was raining really heavily….. the faces of the people, their heads were dripping with water, we were on a kind of terrace. I was with my family. From this terrace we could see a mountain falling and I thought we were lucky to be there”.

“Talking about catastrophes. I remember that we could see a whirlwind coming down the mountain towards my house. I thought we could hide under a trapdoor, because I had seen them doing it in American films. The whirlwind struck my neighbour’s house but not mine, but I couldn’t find my parents”.

From an analysis of the matrices we realized that the icon of the divine child was completely absent.

The child is an iconic structure connected to the psychic creation of the culture of the group, which in the specific case of our matrices arrives only at the end of the first; its presence is unjustified and without principle. In fact it comes to the world but does not belong to anybody, arriving in dreams as an orphan or as an omen of something evil.

“I dreamt that I had my children in my arms. My mother interpreted the dreams and told me to be careful because dreaming about children is not a good sign, and when I dream about children I am always agitated”.

“I often dream of finding a small child who does not belong to anyone and I had to look after it and help it to grow and I was happy”.

“I dreamt that my mother told me she had adopted a child”.

The matrix reflects the impossibility of the collectivity to generate new thoughts, detach itself and strive for an independence which can take society towards another existence, different from the present one.

We are perhaps in front of a matrix which inevitably reflects the image of a tradition based on a myth ( The Great Mother) and a matriarchal function.

With regard to this we should remember that the Great Mother is also a trilogy incarnated by the girl, the woman and the elderly woman. The woman directs the fate of the man (we are born of a woman, we are drawn to the wife and we are taken away by death) and has an important place in our culture from the classical myths to christianity with the Marian cult. The mother, who does not allow the identification of her child, leads to an embroiled relationship in which it is impossible to generate thought and in which, without the generating activity, death arrives inexorably.

The second matrix is characterized by continuous interruptions. They seem to underline the fear of change as if, investigating things too much, their essence may change and, therefore, the equilibrium underlying a status quo may break, taking the collective towards another catastrophe.

The main theme which emerges is that conveyed by the oneiric icon of the place: it is the places that save the group, the narration of the dreams containing places which are known, unknown, forgotten and rediscovered helps to reduce anxiety and silence. The matrix reflects the image of a collective of people who discover they have something in common, the places and the cult of the Madonna.

“I was walking in a beautiful silver coloured valley. On one side there were olive trees and on the other plants. I think:”How beautiful this earth is! But I have never seen it! Who knows who it belongs to”. There were some people with me but they didn’t answer. I told my dream to Don Antonio who told me about the existence of The Prayer of the Valley, the Valley of Giosafat, characterized by olive trees like in the dream”.

The third matrix confirms what emerged in the previous ones. In particular, the icon of the child, which once again has no origin and does not belong to anyone, is reproposed.

“All I can remember is a scene in which I was walking along a mountain road and this road was beautiful, and I was walking along it to go and collect a child.

The association of a memory of a still born child with the dream of the procession of San Rocco is emblematic.

“I remember that when my mother had her last child, who was still born, I dreamt about the procession. I was near the fountain under the square and I was watching the procession with a lot of people and the statue of San Rocco and I was watching everything from a distance.”

After this memory the chain of association (the free association) of the dreams is interrupted, leaving space for the past and the history of the rite. In particular the dreams recall the strong opposition of the entire community to the proposals made by some priests, which were repeated during the years, to modify the rite and make it more accessible and less tiring for the citizens (for example, there was a proposal to transport the effigy of the Madonna on a truck rather than shoulder carrying it.

Conclusions 

The analysis of the icons and themes which emerged in the matrices confirms the hypothesis regarding the impossibility of completing a process of separation and change as a paradox considering the creation of the rite to transform the collective trauma as a transpersonal imaginary and experience of the Community. What is new is lived as dangerous and a source of anguish while survival, wellbeing and the identity of the individual and the community itself seem to be guaranteed exclusively by the belonging to the group of origin. Change is attractive but in the same way as a taboo and the attempt to violate it unleashes such a feeling of anguish and guilt that the identity is threatened; the only way to reconquer it is to abandon the new way and go back to the old one.

This is confirmed by the same temporality which, both in the rite of the Madonna of Servigliano and the cult of the Seven Madonna Sisters, is characterized by a circular movement.

In his work “The myth of the eternal rite” (1949) Mircea Eliade states that traditional societies revolted against historical linear time, marked by a beginning and an end, to have access to the mythical time of origins, archetypes and repetition. The author underlines how the rite is the memory of a mythical event and, at the same time, the repetition of the event which relives and repeats what happened in “illo tempore”, in a past outside time.

Freud goes back to the theme of the “eternal return” in his article “remember, repeat, re-elaborate” written in 1914. He examines the compulsion to repeat considering it in the light of the translation phenomenon and affirms: “We immediately realize that the translation itself represents an element of repetition and that repetition is the translation of the forgotten past, not only on the person of the doctor, but on all the other areas of the present situation.  Hence we have to resign ourselves to the fact that the patient is subject to the compulsion to repeat what now substitutes the impulse to remember , not only in his personal relationships with the doctor, but also in all the other current activities and relations in his life [. ….] The more marked the resistance will be, the more remembering will be substituted by repeating. But what are the behaviours that the patient adopts repeatedly? They are his inhibitions, his useless attitudes, the pathological traits of his character, he repeats his symptoms”.  

As we have said the rite allows us to stage a traumatic and emotionally charged event for the community, and in this way makes it tangible, communicable and observable. In this way the rite allows us to remember by repeating and remembering the origin of the community. In this way it is an expression of the founding myth, and the more rigid it is, the more difficult it will be to recover the memory, the more there will be a tendency to build a sort of self deception, on an unconscious basis, so that the belief expressed is different from what happened, and the more the rite will become articulate and immutable.

As for family myths, knowing the founding myth of one’s own community is of fundamental importance for every member, since it represents a sort of guideline which can be used to read reality and give cohesion and identity. Elaborating the myth means distancing oneself and separating from it, but also accepting it and doing it for those aspects which do not threaten individuality but, on the contrary, may be useful for building a sense of belonging.

When the myth is rigid, on the other hand, it risks promoting the formation of a closed system deriving from the lack of differentiation and every attempt to attack it is obstructed and rejected, because it represents an attack on the identity: faced with a threat to your beliefs, you fear for your survival and if someone challenges the myth in a persistent and effective way, they are then transformed into a scapegoat.

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Domenico Mimmo Agresta, Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Group Analyst, Psycho-oncologist. President of CSPP (Centre for the Study of Clinical Psychology and Psychosomatic Medicine). Formerly Trustee of the Gordon Lawrence Foundation (UK), now a founder member of SDiN (Social Dreaming International Network). Full Member GASI (Group Analytic Society International). Academic member in AGPA (American Group Psychotherapy Association). Past-Chair of Family Therapy Section and Webinars Committee in IAGP (International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes). Board Member of SIMP (Italian Society of Psychosomatic Medicine). Member of The Balint Society (UK). Faculty Tele’Drama Institute (USA) and Rakhawy Institute (Egypt). Director of Training, Internship and Tutorial Management at School of Psychotherapy “Psicoterapia Conversazionale” (Parma). He teaches at University and School of Psychotherapy. He lives and work in Pescara (Italy). Mail: mimmoag@hotmail.com

Giuseppina Marolla Graduated in Clinical Psychology at the G. D’Annunzio University of Chieti, specialized in Psychotherapy with a psychoanalytic address at the International School of Psychotherapy in Institutional Setting (SIPSI) in Rome, carrying out my clinical internship in the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic (Rome). In 2011 I started my training at the Clinical Psychology and Psychosomatic Studies Center of Pescara (CSPP), obtaining the certificates to work with the Autogenic Analytical Training with Guided Visualizations. At 25 I begin my psychoanalytic and group Psychotherapy (still in progress) with Dr Fausto Agresta. Since 2016 I work privately as a psychotherapist and since 2022 as a psychologist and psychotherapist at the Child Neuropsychiatry Department of the ASL of Pescara.

Maria Antonietta Martelli, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist specialized in group analysis. Expert in psychosomatic medicine and body therapy. She is the vice-president of the Clinical Psychology and Psychosomatic Studies Center of Pescara (CSPP). IAGP Member and Full member of the SIMP (The Italian Society of Psychosomatic Medicine). Certified trainer and conductor of  Analytic Autogenic Training with Guided Visualizations.