Promoting Awareness about Psychological Consequences of Living in a Community Oppressed by the Mafia: A Group-Analytic Intervention

Abstract

The effects of the Mafia have been extensively studied from sociological, economic, and historical points of view. However, little research has investigated the influence of the Mafia on individuals and communities in terms of its psychological and social impact. In order to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the psychological effects of the Mafia on individuals and communities and to promote a participative process of social change, a group analytic intervention was conducted within a Community Based Participatory Research carried out in Corleone, a small Sicilian town with a historically recognized role in the evolution of the Mafia, as well as in the fight against its control. Qualitative findings from the group intervention revealed the development of an awareness process that allowed participants to become aware of their social unconscious anxieties and defenses and to recognize and manage the strong emotional impact related to the Mafia's presence in their lives. Highlighting how psychological processes can have negative impacts on individual and collective capacity to pursuit transformation and resilience, this article provides important insight on how clinical psychology may operate in socio-cultural contexts to promote the reconstruction of the traumatic social dimensions in the community.

Full text

ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 20 September 2017
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01631
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631
Edited by:
Francisco José Eiroa-Orosa,
University of Barcelona, Spain
Reviewed by:
Jungsik Kim,
Kwangwoon University, South Korea
Giovanni A. Travaglino,
University of Kent, United Kingdom
Keiko Ishii,
Kobe University, Japan
*Correspondence:
Cecilia Giordano
cecilia.giordano@unipa.it
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Clinical and Health Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 29 May 2017
Accepted: 05 September 2017
Published: 20 September 2017
Citation:
Giordano C, Cannizzaro G, Tosto C,
Pavia L and Di Blasi M (2017)
Promoting Awareness about
Psychological Consequences of Living
in a Community Oppressed by the
Mafia: A Group-Analytic Intervention.
Front. Psychol. 8:1631.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01631
Promoting Awareness about
Psychological Consequences of
Living in a Community Oppressed by
the Mafia: A Group-Analytic
Intervention
Cecilia Giordano*, Giusy Cannizzaro, Crispino Tosto, Laura Pavia and Maria Di Blasi
Department of Psychological and Educational Sciences, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
The effects of the Mafia have been extensively studied from sociological, economic, and
historical points of view. However, little research has investigated the influence of the
Mafia on individuals and communities in terms of its psychological and social impact. In
order to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the psychological effects
of the Mafia on individuals and communities and to promote a participative process
of social change, a group analytic intervention was conducted within a Community
Based Participatory Research carried out in Corleone, a small Sicilian town with a
historically recognized role in the evolution of the Mafia, as well as in the fight against
its control. Qualitative findings from the group intervention revealed the development
of an awareness process that allowed participants to become aware of their social
unconscious anxieties and defenses and to recognize and manage the strong emotional
impact related to the Mafia’s presence in their lives. Highlighting how psychological
processes can have negative impacts on individual and collective capacity to pursuit
transformation and resilience, this article provides important insight on how clinical
psychology may operate in socio-cultural contexts to promote the reconstruction of the
traumatic social dimensions in the community.
Keywords: Mafia, Antimafia, social unconscious, group analysis, group process
INTRODUCTION
The Mafia is a criminal organization that uses the strength of intimidation to commit crimes and
to acquire the management and control of economic activities, public contracts, and services, in
order to enhance the control of territory and economic profits (Paoli, 2003; Finckenauer, 2005;
Lavorgna and Sergi, 2014). The Mafia’s presence has been negatively affecting social and economic
development in Italy from more than 150 years (Gambetta, 2000; Daniele and Marani, 2011; Dalla
Chiesa, 2014). Specifically, by means of violent and illegal instruments, the Mafia hinders Italian
financial, cultural, and social development through its members’ infiltration in the most important
institutional and political networks (Ruggiero, 2010; Pinotti, 2015; Savona, 2015).
Similarly to other criminal organizations, the Mafia shares in particular with gangs some social
and cultural features as the achievement of a higher status, power, respect and a sense of protection
from social threats (Taylor et al., 2008; Goldman et al., 2014; Travaglino et al., 2014). With regard to

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
southern Italian countries, criminal organizations provide a
distinctive social identity and a sense of belonging that may
be particularly appealing to youth that confront high levels
of job insecurity, unemployment, and weak youth policies
(Travaglino et al., 2014; Di Blasi et al., 2016). Nevertheless, the
Sicilian Mafia shows some distinctive characteristics such as a
more formal interne structure, well-defined economic activities
and political relationships, specific codes of conduct, especially
when compared to gangs (Paoli, 2003; Travaglino et al., 2014).
Moreover, the Mafia maintains the monopoly of violence and
the control of a territory since it illegally ensures several services
that the State is unable to provide to citizens (Gambetta, 1993;
Paoli, 2003, 2004; Schneider and Schneider, 2005). It should
also be considered that the Mafia requires swearing a lifelong
allegiance to its membership (Paoli, 2003; Lo Verso and Lo Coco,
2004).Violence is used to ensure the absolute obedience of the
affiliates and to punish those who betray or disrespect the rules
and the authority of the group. The menace or the effective
use of violence is also employed to impose obedience on the
communities in which Mafia exerts its influence and to frighten
or eventually eliminate those who oppose the power and the
economic activities of the criminal organization (Paoli, 2003;
Travaglino et al., 2014).
Through an extensive infiltration of the vital fabric of the
communities, the Mafia exerts a form of social control that can be
described as a “private security system” that ensures protection,
while imposing the respect of the criminal organization’s rules
(Gambetta, 1993). This social control implies submission and
omertà (the law of silence) for both affiliates and citizens (Paoli,
2003; Lo Verso and Lo Coco, 2004). Omertà requires the duty of
loyalty, obedience, and silence of affiliates and when these rules
are transgressed members are punished through the use of violent
and cruel acts (Paoli, 2003). However, the law of silence applies
to everyone else and implies to avoid the collaboration with the
forces of law and order if being victims or witnesses of illegal
activities (Lo Verso and Lo Coco, 2004).
Travaglino et al. (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017), in their recent
studies, clearly highlighted how in the Italian criminal
organizations omertà is a key socio-cultural dimension linked
to the concepts of honor and masculinity. The link between
honor and masculinity is evident in linguistic expressions such
as “men of honor” (Paoli, 2003), which describe the affiliates to
the Mafia. A “man of honor” is required to be able to avenge
crimes and offenses without the help of the authorities and
police. Specifically, individuals’ higher acceptance of omertà
and honor-related ideology was related to both the perception
of greater legitimacy of the criminal organizations and fewer
collective action intentions against them.
As highlighted in recent literature (Natale et al., 2013; Di Blasi
et al., 2015; Nardin et al., 2016; Travaglino et al., 2017), the
Mafia affects the Italian context not only from the economic and
political points of view but it also weakens the whole community
system compromising social capital, values, social identities, and
mental representations. This study aimed to deepen these aspects
and to show the need for a psychological intervention in social
contexts in order to weaken the negative impact of the Mafia
on individuals and communities. While the effects of the Italian
organized crime have been widely examined from sociological,
economic, and historical points of views, little research has
focused on the influence that the Mafia exerts on individuals
and communities in terms of its psychological and social impact.
Over the past two decades, our research team has been studying
the Mafia from a psychological perspective in order to achieve a
deeper understanding of the culture and mentality underlying the
Mafia behaviors from interviews with relatives and affiliates and
clinical reports of Mafia members’ psychotherapies. These studies
have highlighted how the Mafia generates suffering and distress
both in its family’s members and in its victims and how the
identity of Mafia members is inextricably nested in the culture of
the families and the community to which they belong (Lo Verso
and Lo Coco, 2004; Giordano and Di Blasi, 2012; Giordano and
Lo Verso, 2015; Mannino et al., 2015). Moreover, these studies
suggest that the identification with the group represents a core
dimension in order to explain affiliates’ and citizens’ attitudes,
behaviors, and the overall Mafia’s culture (Lo Verso and Lo Coco,
2004; Schimmenti et al., 2014; Mannino et al., 2015). Finally,
prevalent denial defense mechanisms to cope with emotions,
inflated self-representations, and the lack of guilt observed in
Mafia members suggest the presence of specific psychological
traits (Lo Verso and Lo Coco, 2004; Schimmenti et al., 2014;
Giordano and Lo Verso, 2015).
Recent literature has also provided additional psychological
and sociological contributions that examine processes of social
change in opposition to the Mafia’s control promoted by activists,
citizens, and associations. Specifically, the anti-racketeering
campaign promoted by Addiopizzo’s in Palermo from 2004
represents a significant attempt to carry out long-lasting cultural
and social changes involving the civil society and the public
administration. Addiopizzo in a unique experience of a bottom-
up Antimafia strategy aimed to promote extortion resistance
through entrepreneurs’ public refusal to pay the racket to the
local Mafia and encouraging consumers to practice a critical
consumption buying good from firms that joint Addiopizzo.
Recently, cultural and social determinants of firms’ decision
to join Addiopizzo have been investigated (Vaccaro, 2012;
Giannone and Ferraro, 2015; Vaccaro and Palazzo, 2015), in
parallel with other studies that explored values that can prompt
entrepreneurs and consumers to engage in anti-racketeering
actions (Natale et al., 2013; Gunnarson, 2015; Elsenbroich, 2016;
Marin and Russo, 2016). Nonetheless, little has been written
about the Mafia from a psychological perspective taking into
account the individual and collective consequences of living in a
community oppressed by the presence of a criminal organization.
This article would address this paucity of research showing
how the concepts of social unconscious and group processes
elaborated by group-analysis may help to understand how social
constraints imposed by the Mafia’s control over the community
impinge on the individual psychological functioning. The
group-analytic perspective focuses on the interrelations between
social, interpersonal and the intrapsychic levels of individual
life experience (Foulkes, 1948). Recently, the concept of the
social unconscious has increased in importance in the group-
analytic literature. Although Foulkes (1964) mentioned this
concept to describe the social and communicative forces affecting
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
interpersonal and transpersonal processes, he did not elaborate
further on this concept. The social unconscious has been
subsequently defined as a dimension inherent to the social level
and structured by social power relations: it is co-constructed by
members of the same society or culture and contains the shared
unconscious fantasies, myths, anxieties, defenses, and memories
of a specific community (Dalal, 2001; Weinberg, 2007). Hopper
provided a detailed definition of this concept: “The concept of
the social unconscious refers to the existence and constraints
of social, cultural, and communicational arrangements of which
people are unaware. Unaware, in so far as these arrangements are
not perceived (not “known”), and if perceived not acknowledged
(“denied”), and if acknowledged, not taken as problematic
(“given”), and if taken as problematic, not considered with
an optimal degree of detachment and objectivity” (2001, p.
10). Additionally, Brown (2001) stated that the most powerful
defenses to avoid pains or deep conflicts linked to social traumatic
experiences or painful historical events are denial, projection, and
the repression of memory.
Recent research developments have focused on the analysis
of the social unconscious in relation to social trauma and
transgenerational enactments, as in the case of the Holocaustus
(Wilke, 2016), the Palestinian and Israeli conflict (Doron, 2014;
Even-Tzur, 2016), and to social inequalities linked to cultural
hierarchies of sexism, racism, classism (Layton, 2007; Geyer,
2017).
These studies addressed the question of how enactments
of the social unconscious can be studied on a wider social
level in clinical and non-clinical settings and showed how
trauma or social, cultural, and political events stay alive in the
collective consciousness of groups and communities by means
of shared stories and narratives. In line with these studies, we
hypothesized that the presence of the Mafia in the vital fabric
of a community, as a permanent painful dimension affecting
social power relations, requires specific social, cultural, and
communicational arrangements of which people are unaware,
or that are not known or denied. The obedience to the law of
silence (omertà), strengthened by the Mafia through the massive
use of violence and intimidation, contribute to maintain not only
the status quo but also to the enactments of social unconscious
elements that weaken citizens’ capacities and intentions to oppose
the Mafia. Adopting this point of view may help recognize
psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that may increase
individual and collective support for the status quo (Travaglino
et al., 2017), and overcome reductive perspectives according to
which Sicilian people display a collective passivity in opposing the
Mafia only due to legitimization processes (Sciarrone and Storti,
2014) or to widespread forms of social consensus linked to ethical
bases such as amoral familism (Banfield, 1958).
According to Foulkes (1948, 1964), each individual is
inevitably determined by the world in which he lives, by the
community, the group of which he forms a part and common
social perceptions and experience linked to this belonging
penetrate the inmost being of the individual personality.
As within the group analytic approach the group allows
the analysis of both the individual and social unconscious,
it is a very appropriate instrument to help people develop
an understanding of their psychic and social experience.
Providing a theoretical and clinical container to elaborate
thoughts and feelings (Foulkes, 1964), the group experience
promotes a change by creating a holding environment for
analyzing, understanding, and becoming aware of the
social unconscious dimensions in the group and in society
(Weinberg, 2007).
The present study reports a group analytic intervention aimed
to enhance participants’ awareness through a shared reflective
process about the social unconscious dimensions, in terms of
affects and defenses, linked to the presence of the criminal
organization in the territory. The intervention took place within a
Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) conducted in
Corleone, Sicily (Italy), a territory with a significant historical role
both in the evolution of the Sicilian Mafia and in the fight against
Mafia organization. Specifically, during the years 1970-1980, the
clan of Corleonesi, headed by Luciano Liggio and Salvatore Riina,
became dominant within Cosa Nostra. In the early 1980s, Riina
and Provenzano decimated other Mafia clans through a fierce
mafia war that caused hundreds of murders including heads of
rival clans and members of Antimafia (Andretta, 2005; Lupo,
2010). Many of these victims were children and women who were
often murdered by horrifying methods, such as being liquefied
into acidic compounds (Schimmenti et al., 2014). On the other
hand, the Anti-mafia movement in Corleone has an important
tradition that since the nineteenth century began with trade
union activists and cooperatives of agrarian workers (Santino,
2009;Rakopoulos, 2017; Scalia, 2017). With this regard, the story
of Placido Rizzotto, a union trade activist killed by the Mafia in
1948, is emblematic since his mutilated body was found only in
2009. The figure of Rizzotto has been evoked in numerous films
and television series and a red wine produced by the Antimafia
cooperative “Libera Terra” still bears his name. Moreover, the
first confiscated good, belonged to Riina the leader of the Sicilian
Mafia, was a vineyard located in Corleone. In 1999, the plot was
conferred to the “Lavoro e Altro” cooperative. As Rakopoulos
(2017) underlined, this was the beginning of the formation
of an Antimafia cooperativism system in Corleone territory
that today involves about 10 agrarian cooperatives across Italy.
As mentioned above, in order to understand the relationship
between Corleone citizens and the Mafia, it is important to
consider that social and historical trauma or/and cultural and
political events can persist in the collective consciousness of
groups and communities producing a damning impact in terms
of individual and collective psychological functioning (Mohatt
et al., 2014; Geyer, 2017). Moreover, to avoid conflicts and
anxieties linked to these social traumatic events, powerful
defenses as denial, projection, and the repression of memory
are activated at a social unconscious level (Brown, 2001). These
unconscious psychological arrangements are reinforced by some
cultural, political and anthropological aspects such as omertà
and a widespread distrust in institutions and law enforcement,
too often ineffective or colluding with the criminal organization.
The interplay between psychological, socio-cultural, and political
elements affects the capacity of Corleone, and overall Sicilian,
citizens to successfully oppose to the Mafia’s control over their
lives.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
METHODS
The present study sought to analyze a group-analytic
intervention carried out in order to promote participants’
awareness of the adverse effects of the criminal organization on
their lives. Group meetings took place within a CBPR conducted
in Corleone, Sicily. The CBPR started in January 2011 and ended
up in January 2012 and was developed through three interrelated
steps: the context analysis, the group meetings, and the final
public meeting. The partnership was composed by the academic
team (two senior researchers, who were also the conductors of
the groups, and two facilitators), the Municipality of Corleone,
and a group of community members (local administrators,
teachers, college students, housewives, and representatives of
Antimafia associations).
The Context
Since the Mafia spreads differently depending on socio-
cultural features that characterize a specific geographical
area, a strong focus was primarily maintained on the
request for the intervention and on the link between such
a request and the current features of the local community.
Specifically, the request for the research was introduced to the
team by a psychology student at the University of Palermo
who had previously met the City Mayor. Following the
request reported by the student, the team met the mayor,
and other local administrators individually in order to
clearly define the motivations underlying the request for the
intervention.
As mentioned above, the Mafia has affected the history of
Corleone and its citizens’ social imagery, and some relevant
events had occurred at the time when the intervention was
requested. Some months earlier, one of the mafia boss Salvatore
Riina’s sons returned to Corleone to undergo preventive special
surveillance, after he had been imprisoned for 8 years and
10 months for Mafia association crime. This event upset
Corleone’s inhabitants: once again they were forced to share their
everyday living spaces with a Mafia bosses’ family members and
experienced worries about the risk of overbearing behaviors and
threats to individual freedom and safety. In fact, only a few
bosses’ family members have chosen to live outside Corleone
during their relative’s hiding or imprisonment. Moreover, many
bosses’ siblings, children, grandchildren, wives, and sisters-in-
law currently live in Corleone. As a consequence, Corleone’s
citizens often meet Riina’s wife or Provenzano’s children during
their daily commitments. Acting on behalf of most Corleone
citizens, the mayor took a very courageous stance. He declared
to the press: “Riina’s junior is not welcome here.” First, such a
strong public declaration produced the mayor’s awareness that
he was not opposing only an individual (Riina’s junior) but a
criminal organization as a whole. With regard to citizens, they
had to take a stance: either with the mayor or with the Mafia.
Most of the citizens had no doubt over which side to choose and
felt represented by the mayor’s words, however, it is likely that
some felt unable to decide because the conflict was too strong.
Furthermore, for a small minority, the mayor’s statement was
probably interpreted as an offense to the criminal organization.
Five meetings with the mayor and local administrators
allowed the team to better understand the meaning of the
intervention request: on one hand, the mayor and municipality,
at a sensitive time in the town’s history, wished to strengthen their
protection network by giving voice to many honest Corleone
citizens’ consensus; on the other, they wished to provide citizens
with a space where they could elaborate feelings prompted
by the presence of the boss’s son in town. Drawing on these
lines, after the meetings, the following goals were planned:
(a) helping Corleone citizens to share emotions and fears
linked to their cohabitation with the Mafia; (b) promoting an
emancipation process from Mafia oppression, starting from an
increased awareness of the thoughts, behaviors, and feelings that
contact with the Mafia arouses in people; and (c) analyzing the
psychological and social consequences produced by organized
crime in the local population and detecting consensual future
developments.
Moreover, the psychology student, who acted as a facilitator,
was in charge of inviting people to participate in the CBPR
introductory meeting during which the team announced that it
would be possible to register for discussion group meetings so
as to actively participate in the CBPR. Given that some people
might need more time to decide to actively intervene when a
relevant them such as the Mafia is dealt with, researchers added
that people could attend the first group meeting even though they
had not previously enrolled.
Group Meetings
The CBPR approach conceptualizes community as a dimension
of collective and individual identity in which individuals
share common symbolic systems, social norms, interests, and
needs(Israel et al., 1998; Wallerstein and Duran, 2008).Consistent
with this theoretical framework, the group analytic approach
focuses on the interrelations between individuals, families,
community, and social network (Foulkes, 1948). Specifically,
group analysis is based on the principle that human beings
are deeply social by nature since their lives are inextricably
linked in many ways. Given that group membership reflects the
wider norms and values of society, the group is a privileged
tool to explore social unconscious dimensions and promote
deep lasting attitude changes by facilitating interaction and for
exploring social unconscious (Dalal, 2001, 2011).Consistent with
other participatory research studies utilizing psychodynamic
groups in educational and work settings (Leclerc and Maranda,
2002; Newton and Goodman, 2009; Giannone et al., 2015),
the group work promotes participants’ interactions, aiming at
an intersubjective analysis of their experiences and feelings.
The conductor’s capacity for holding is crucial to creating a
safe communicative space (Newton and Goodman, 2009) in
which feeling and emotions can help participants in collectively
reconsidering their relations to each other and to their
environment.
As previously pointed out, one of the biggest difficulties in
the fight against the Mafia is omertà, defined as an implicit
law of silence that originates from a fear of retaliation, and
conveys a direct or indirect solidarity with the authors of a
crime. As a consequence, participating in a group where publicly
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 4September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
talking about the Mafia is required means, first of all, breaking
the law of omertà. An individual who expresses his/her point
of view against the Mafia is, at the same time, engaged in an
action of strong political, social, and individual significance, thus
experiencing deep unpleasant emotions. For this reason, it is
particularly important to build a relationship based on trust
with the partnership, as highlighted in the literature (Christopher
et al., 2008; Shalowitz et al., 2009; Lucero et al., 2016).
In this study, the group meetings took place at the Mafia
boss Bernardo Provenzano’s house, a seized asset and the seat
of some cultural associations committed to the fight against
the Mafia, which promotes awareness campaigns and training
courses. Currently named the Legality Lab, it is located close to
the house where Provenzano’s brother still lives. This location
contributed to making the experience emotionally intense due to
repeated intimidating acts which have been occurring over the
last 20 years in Sicily and Corleone against the managers and
users of seized and confiscated assets.
The team expected a numerically poor participation to the
group. During the introductory meeting, only 14 citizens had
registered to participate in group meetings. Despite being the
first time that research against the Mafia involving citizens’ active
participation had been proposed in Corleone, unexpectedly, 31
citizens attended the first group meeting. Since the number of
participants was greater than fifteen, the research team decided
to set up two groups, each with a conductor and a facilitator.
Only one of the two groups was entirely recorded and transcribed
after consent from all participants was obtained, while the second
group could not be registered because two participants did not
give their consent. In the latter group, the facilitator acted as a
recorder, transcribing the most significant sentences and aspects
of the process. The group’s work included three meetings of two
sessions, lasting for an uninterrupted 75 min with one break
of 20 min, using an intensive group format over 3 days. Two
senior researchers, who are also group analytic therapists, acted
as conductors.
The first group consisted of 16 participants (9 female),
aged between 18 and 62, while the second group consisted
of 15 participants (7 female), aged between 19 and 58. Two
group-analytic therapists lead the groups, encouraging the
establishment of a free-flowing discussion. The group analytic
therapist tends to be referred to as a “conductor” rather than a
“leader” (Foulkes, 1948). This reflects both a strong democratic
principle that underlies the group analytic approach, and an
understanding that the therapist’s role is not to start a discussion
or overly direct the group, but to interact in order to help the
group make sense of the stories that are told, the feelings that
resonate, and the resonances and dissonances that arise.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The present study reports the experience of a group analytic
intervention aimed to enhance people’s awareness through
a shared reflective process about the social unconscious
dimensions linked to the presence of the criminal organization
in the community of Corleone. In this section, we sought to
highlight some significant passages characterizing the group
process that led participants to recognize and share unconscious
or unknown feelings and emotions linked to the influences
of the criminal organization on their lives. During the early
phase of the first group meeting, discussion of the Mafia took
place at a shallow level, highlighting both the need for putting
aside an early personal and emotional involvement and the
presence of denial defenses to avoid pains or deep conflicts
linked to the social unconscious dimensions related to the
Mafia (Brown, 2001; Hopper, 2001). Thereafter, starting from
some interventions about personal daily experiences, the law
of omertà was broken, thus allowing most of the members to
express doubts and difficulties in sharing everyday spaces with
bosses and their relatives. These shared narratives represented
the first important passage allowing participants to voice the
“unthought known” (Bollas, 1989) about the Mafia and showed
the presence of specific social and cultural constraints of which
participants were unaware before (Hopper, 2001). The possibility
to consciously think about their past and current experiences
allowed participants to make a further progress during the second
meeting, coming into contact with painful feelings and emotions,
and making them available for thought. Through this second
passage, participants could start to recall traumatic memories
and events and recognize that they had built strong defenses and
developed specific behaviors to avoid the sufferance the Mafia had
caused in their lives (Weinberg, 2007). During the third group
meeting, the previous emotive and cognitive engagement helped
participants to recall and re-interpret their current and past
experiences, increasing awareness of the limitations of freedom
and expression that the Mafia imposes on their lives and their
community. Becoming aware of this influence and sharing ideas
about the modalities available for coping with it was the third and
final step of the group process.
First Group Meeting:Voicing the
“Unthought Known”
At the beginning of the first group session, the conductor asked
the participants to introduce themselves and explicate their
expectations with respect to the experience they were about
to start. Everybody initially assumed a “passive” position with
respect to the group experience. Many participants seemed to
be pushed by curiosity and intellectual interest, rather than the
need to share lived experiences and thoughts connected to the
Mafia. Moreover, as the following quotes show, great diffidence
and skepticism initially seemed to linger in the group, and
many participants expressed a stronger need to listen rather than
intervene.
My name’s Laura, I’m an office worker at school. The topic we are
talking about is interesting; however, I’m not quite sure things will
change. Sometimes it seems that everything is going to change but
eventually it remains the same... In short, I count on young people...
My name’s Mario, today I’m here as a listener, may I?
My name’s Piero, I’m an estate agent and curious to listen to
all of you.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 5September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
I’m a police commissioner. I’m here because I’ve been invited. I’m
not here to talk because in that case I should be authorized by the
police Headquarters...
However, some young participants started to show a greater
propensity to confront and share their experience from the
beginning.
My name’s Paola and I’m from Corleone. Going into this theme is
such a great pleasure for me because I’d like to have a confirmation
about the stories my parents have been telling me. I’m pleased to
talk about this theme with people of my age, as well as with all the
people present here.
My name’s Maria, I’ve got a degree in Educational Science and
I’m working in Palermo. I chose to participate because I consider
this topic very interesting and also wish to talk about my experience.
Thereafter, some participants started to discuss the Mafia through
a narration of their personal experiences, specifically talking
about the “law of silence.” They spoke about the trouble of
living in a city where they often feel observed not only by
the Mafia but also by law enforcement agencies and others
citizens. They also reported episodes that highlight the anxieties
and difficulties caused by sharing daily life spaces with Mafia
members’ families, as the quotes of three participants below
illustrate.
I wish to talk about my everyday life in Corleone. As well as being
an employee, I also work here as a municipal councilor. My father
is a retired police officer and, even though my parents are not from
Corleone, I was born and grown up here and I hope to continue to
live in Corleone (...) Since I have been living in this town, I know
who belongs to the Mafia and who doesn’t and I also know how
to behave, even though it’s not always easy... (...) Every morning
I go to a café to have breakfast; sometimes it can happen that
some people connected to Mafia families enter that café so I have
to choose, in a heartbeat, if I have to say hello to them or not.
Sometimes I realize that some policemen are coming in at the same
time. I feel cornered, at a turning point, and wonder: What if I
don’t say hello, close my eyes, play dumb and go away? Should I
say hello even if I know that the policeman could write in a report
“Today the municipal councilor said hello to the dude at the café”?
Almost every morning I usually find myself at this turning point.
My fiancée is not from Corleone, so she doesn’t know the houses
where Mafia family members live. Sometimes she points her
finger at a house and says: “Look how beautiful that house
is!”. Aware of the fact that Mafia members are living in that
house, I beg her to lower her finger. (...) It’s great to talk about
the Mafia but it’s really difficult to talk about the Mafia in Corleone.
Let me tell you one of my experiences... When I was at school, one
day a teacher told us: “Guys, let me inform you that in our class
there’s going to be a new student. I would highly recommend you
have to behave properly and, starting today, we will not talk about
issues relating to the Mafia”. My new classmate was the daughter of
a boss. My classmates and I were shocked, we were afraid. However,
we started a more or less friendly relationship with her, despite the
fact that we knew that we had to be careful what we could or could
not say when we were talking to her.
During the first group meeting, a lot of questions, doubts,
and dilemmas emerged. Moreover, the quietest participants
nodded while hearing other people’s tales of their experiences.
It seemed clear that all participants had found themselves at a
challenger turning point at least once in their life: “Should or
shouldn’t I say hello to the boss’s relative? Should I welcome
him into my house? How can I conquer my fear of talking
about the Mafia if, since I was a child, adults have always
taught me not to speak about or oppose to the presence of
the Mafia in my town?”. Painful conflicts not clearly perceived
before that time or not “known” (Hopper, 2001) linked to
the experience of sharing spaces of everyday life with Mafia
members’ children and relatives started to emerge and became
an important theme during this meeting. In this first meeting,
the main conductor’s tasks were to create a safe communicative
space, a holding environment in which both cognitive and
emotional unconscious or unknown feelings in relation to
the Mafia could be listened to. Such a holding environment
supported the emergent understanding of an important passage:
from the narration of the Mafia as an external criminal
organization far from citizens’ lives to the narration of a
present and close Mafia who observe, impose silence, and
influence community members’ public and private behaviors
and lives. To summarize, the group process started to work
for participants as a holding environment in which they could
analyze, understand and become aware of the social unconscious
processes they shared as a result of living in a close contact with
the Mafia.
Second Group Meeting: Voicing Emotions
and Feelings
The second group meeting was characterized by the possibility of
sharing emotions mainly connected to past events of Corleone’s
history within the group. The holding environment built in the
first meeting allowed participants to reveal, and later elaborate
on, the painful emotions that they had experienced in relation
to the Mafia. As Weinberg (2007) pointed out, the group process
allows members to unconsciously re-live and re-enact in the here-
and-now relationships emotions related to painful or traumatic
past events. The role of the conductor was mainly oriented to
facilitate reflective and constructive encounters with the past.
The word “fear” was often present in several interventions. For
example, a mother talks about the fear for her children’s safety
that she had been feeling for many years:
I felt scared when my children, when they were kids, lingered on
the street with friends. Sometimes they could have been talking
with a boss’s son... and I was afraid they could be involved in an
ambush...even if you were not the target, you could be killed... It
could have been fatal!”.
In another example, a young woman remembers her frustration
during adolescence, presenting the following episode:
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
“Once, while I was joking with my friends, I pronounced the
name of a boss... They glared at me and looked around scared to
death... From that day on, I understood that I had to give up my
spontaneity, the spontaneity of my language”
During this second group meeting, some participants could also
tell the group about memories connected to Mafia violence.
I remember that there was a local festival and many people around.
Suddenly, we heard a woman yelling “Bastards, bastards”. My
sister and I got closer to the place these voices were coming from. A
woman was shouting “They killed him”. We stopped in front to the
place of the homicide, I saw a white car—I’ll never forget—and as
soon as my sister understood, she immediately pushed me in such a
way that I couldn’t see anything!
... Years ago there was a murder and my father, who was working at
the Town Hall (...), was called very early in the morning because he
was asked to clean the roads. When he came back, he told us about
this river of blood which was flowing down... I was still too young to
understand these things, but I could see my mother’s fear every time
my father had to go and pick some panjandrums at the airport or
take the mayor somewhere... I really remember this fear...
These narratives opened a space of resonance and mirroring
(Foulkes, 1948) in the communication process of the group thus
activating a growing emotional flow. Participants could share
emotions and anxieties connected to the Mafia and recognize the
relevant psychological and social effects that organized crime had
caused in local people.
Almost at the end of the second meeting, a young woman’s
intervention moved the group members, who could finally
recognize the suffering the Mafia produces in citizens and the
community.
For me, the Mafia is pain, an immense dark pain. The pain I feel is
not abstract... (...) one of my schoolmates suddenly disappeared: he
was first killed and then chewed up by dogs. Then they put him in
a jeep and set it on fire. (...) From that moment onwards I escaped
and stayed away from Corleone for many years; I didn’t want to
live there any more... (...)
Mafia is pain, a strong pain which is also present in Mafia relatives.
(...) Sometimes, when I speak with these people, I realize the
immense dark pain they feel inside; they’d like to talk to you, but
cannot; they do not reveal much, but they have passed down a huge
pain.
During the second group meeting, the holding environment
enabled participants to recognize their shared painful emotions
linked to the violence of Mafia, which they had had to keep
silent for a long time. In a recent review on the impact of
historical trauma, Mohatt et al. (2014) proposed a perspective
that interprets trauma as a psychological process independent
from the specific traumatic event, as a narrative representation of
the past that contains both personal and collective components
and that continuously affect present-day representations of
people. Through the possibility of sharing public narratives
about violent and traumatic social unconscious dimensions
participants could recognize the psychological suffering the Mafia
had produced over the years, as well as the pain rising from
the awareness of feeling oppressed by a hidden power that was,
at the same time, clearly visible in many inhabitants’ faces and
stories.
Finally, it is important to note that at least two elements
contributed to promote the willingness to explore these social
unconscious dimensions in the group. First, the capacity of the
conductor to encourage and contain the emotions that surfaced.
Second, the emotional group dynamics are also influenced by the
affective dimension of group identities and by people’s specific
interest in a particular situation (Hoggett and Thompson, 2002).
As a consequence, the affective and current factual dimension of
the Mafia in the group culture of Corleone’s citizens made them
passionate and willing enough to express their feelings in a safe
communicative space.
Third Group Meeting: From Emotions to
Awareness
Sharing unconscious emotions and aspects connected to the
Mafia allowed participants to gradually become aware of the
power that the Mafia has exerted over them and to reflect on
personal and collective initiatives to cope with the threat of the
Mafia in everyday life. Two participants stated:
I paradoxically came here to meet the Mafia through your stories
(...). After these group meetings, I realized I had seen, met the
Mafia, but I didn’t think that the Mafia also meant this... I met it,
let’s say, in many small things, in many little moments of my life
(...) I realized, for example, that the family who was living next
door when I was on holiday was a Mafia family.
Once, I was in the garage with my boyfriend (...) he comes from a
different town (...) he is more free from such concerns (...) a child,
son of the Boss living in my apartment building, deliberately stepped
on my boyfriend’s foot with his bicycle. My boyfriend gave him a slap
and I’ve been scared for a week (...). I realize now how much I have
been conditioned.
The quotes mentioned above clearly show how the frequent
contact with Mafia’s member or relatives in everyday life
caused anxieties and pains against which participants had
built strong defenses in order to protect themselves. As
highlighted by Weinberg: “Uncovering these traumatic memories
or the way they unconsciously impact on a society is the
essence of the Social Unconscious.” (2007, p. 316). Mutual
resonance and mirroring facilitated in the group the emergence
of analogous narratives increasing participants’ awareness
growth.
Subsequently, a participant shared with the group a narrative
about his parents’ ways of coping with the perceived threat
exerted by the Mafia that provides an example of the reenactment
of the memory of a suffered humiliation:
My father is a customs officer and his station has recently been
transferred near to Totò Riina’s house (...) Once, he told me he had
to leave his station with his service car but he found another car
closing the exit (...) he began to honk and, after a really long time,
Riina’s wife and their daughter (...) she moved her car apologizing
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 7September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
(...) my father is a big man and he was driving his service car (...)
Do you think that he was able to affirm the government power? (...)
but would he be able to do it as an ordinary man?
During the third group meeting, participants could also
recognize that the Mafia strongly limits their personal freedom.
For example, noting this negative influence, two participants said:
I live in a special apartment building where Mafia families also
live. Every day I have to deal with people who literally limit my
freedom!
I lived in Palermo to attend the university (...) I come from a town in
which the presence of the Mafia is relevant and nothing shocking has
ever happened to me. However, I’ve reached a deeper understanding
of many events of my life in Sicily by participating in this group (...).
My father used to bring me to Palermo with his car and to park it
in a small street near my house (...). He always found a flat tire or
a rear-view mirror (...) It did not happen by accident, we could not
park the car in that street (...) A girl living in my building also found
her car to be burned twice.
The above reported quotes represent a shared anxiety
among Corleone’s citizens, and they mirror the original
motivation for the intervention request. The return of the
Boss’ son to Corleone seems to have created an emotional
imbalance in its citizens. His homecoming compelled them
to face the painful experience of living once more with
the frustration of being silent, obeying the Mafia codes,
and being limited in one’s own freedom of expression and
action.
At the end of the third group meeting, the conductor pointed
out some aspects which highlighted the possibility of giving a
shared meaning to social unconscious emotions felt outside and
inside the group.
One might think that the idea that the son of the boss came back
and we do not want his presence here is, like,... an ideological or
political opinions... In contrast, in the course of these meetings, you
have spoken of a strong emotional imbalance. As though Corleone
had suddenly lost a bit of serenity and integrity laboriously acquired
before. The story told by one of the participants can be considered
a strong metaphor of this process. Just like Maria’s father, Corleone
had to clean its roads from the blood that the Mafia had spilled!
Therefore, the idea that the boss’s son is returning causes an
imbalance, makes you feel the smell of blood once more. In my
opinion, during these group meeting, a mostly emotional process
took place which had its peak, when you spoke about your pain, the
deep pain that Corleone has been experiencing and that strongly
touched us, mostly because it’s as if you had spoken about the most
brutal aspect of the Mafia, that is its inhumanity, the annihilation
of freedom which had corroded the community’s social networks.
During this last meeting, the experience of a safe communicative
space allowed the expression of the unconscious and
unthinkable about the Mafia and made it possible for
participants to contemplate new thoughts and hope
for a less problematic future. Below, a participant’s
intervention explains his perspective on the group meeting
experience:
I had the feeling that we did something which in Corleone had
never been carried out (...) because each one in the group has given
evidence of his or her experience or anyway told his or her personal
opinion and had the chance to confront with other citizens about
the Mafia. (...) For those who were present, this has been something
very strong which has left a seed. I’m sure that this work is really
useful, way more than any face-to-face meeting, demonstration,
book presentation, because I had the feeling that we were willingly
putting ourselves in the first person and this allowed us to make a
step up. In my opinion, this has been important for all participants
and for our community.
This last quote highlights how the enactment of social
unconscious aspects through public narratives of significant
shared painful experiences could sustain resilient responses.
As suggested by Mohatt et al. (2014), historical trauma
narratives could inhibit psychological growth and collective
future-oriented aspiration or sustain lasting community
transformation and resilience. One of the most important
challenges that clinical psychology has to deal with operating
in socio-cultural contexts is to investigate and identify the
conditions that could sustain the change and the reconstruction
of the social traumatic and conflictual wounds in the
community.
CONCLUSIONS
As Geyer (2017) suggested, the group-analytical oriented group
provides a window into the social unconscious and the
unconscious power relations that sustain it, showing to be a
very appropriate tool for research issues analyzing social change
processes. In this paper, we sought to broadly report the most
salient passages of a group-analytic intervention highlighting
how the enactment of social unconscious dimensions allowed
participants to become aware of the negative influences exerted
on them and on the community of Corleone by the presence
of the Mafia. This experience provided to participants a greater
ability to manage the negative impact caused by the Mafia in
their lives and this could promote a future-oriented capacity
to oppose the criminal organization. Indeed, during the group
meetings, participants could experience a holding environment
in which they could become aware of their social unconscious
anxieties and defenses and find new ways for re-thinking and
interpreting their cognitive and emotional experiences, as well
as discussing further collective actions to oppose the oppression
of the Mafia. Although for the first time, this intervention gave
participants the chance to be aware of the ways in which the
Mafia oppresses their lives, one important limitation needs to
be acknowledged. Due to the lack of financial resources, this
intervention was time-limited and involved a small number
of citizens while a more effective action would have required
a more extensive participation and a long-term intervention.
Nevertheless, we think that this intervention could represent a
useful model to analyze the mutual influences between social
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 8September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
phenomena and processes and subjective experience and to
inspire future psychological intervention to promote lasting
changes in the fight against the Mafia. Because no single
approach by itself can fully be effective to promote social
change against a complex phenomenon such as the Mafia,
this article sought to highlight that psychological processes
can have damaging impacts on the capacity of individual
and collectivity to pursuit transformation and resilience. This
evidence also provides important insight on how clinical
psychology may operate in socio-cultural contexts to promote
the reconstruction of the traumatic social dimensions in the
community.
ETHICS STATEMENT
This study was carried out in accordance with the
recommendations of the Ethical Code of the University of
Palermo and of the Code of Ethics approved by the General
Assembly of the Italian Association of Psychology held on
March 27, 2015. All subjects gave written informed consent in
accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The real names
of participants have been replaced with pseudonyms to ensure
confidentiality and anonymity.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
CG, GC, CT, LP, and MD had substantial contribution to the
conception of this work. CG and MD designed the study. GC,
CT, and LP collected and analyzed the data and all authors had
substantial contribution to the interpretation of the data. CG
and MD drafted a previous version of this article and all authors
critically revised it for important intellectual input and finally
approved of the version to be published. All authors agree to be
accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions
related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are
appropriately investigated and resolved.
REFERENCES
Andretta, M. (2005). I corleonesi e la storia della mafia. Successo, radicamento e
continuità. Meridiana 54, 211–232.
Banfield, E. C. (1958). The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. New York, NY: Free
Press.
Bollas, C. (1989). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought
Known. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Brown, D. (2001). A contribution to the understanding of the social unconscious.
Gr. Analysis 34, 29–38. doi: 10.1177/05333160122077695
Christopher, S., Watts, V., McCormick, A. K. H. G., and Young, S. (2008).
Building and maintaining trust in a community-based participatory research
partnership. Am. J. Public Health 98, 1398–1406. doi: 10.2105/ajph.2007.125757
Dalal, F. (2001). The social unconscious: a post-Foulkesian perspective. Gr.
Analysis 34, 539–555. doi: 10.1177/0533316401344011
Dalal, F. (2011). “The social unconscious and ideology: in clinical theory and
practice,” in The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies,Vol. I:
Mainly Theory, eds E. Hopper and H. Weinberg (London: Karnac), 243–63.
Dalla Chiesa, N. (2014). Manifesto dell’Antimafia [Manifesto of Antimafia]. Turin:
Giulio Einaudi Editore.
Daniele, V., and Marani, U. (2011). Organized crime, the quality of local
institutions and FDI in Italy: a panel data analysis. Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 27,
132–142. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2010.04.003
Di Blasi, M., Cavani, P., La Grutta, S., Lo Baido, R., and Pavia, L.
(2015). Growing in Mafia Territories. World Futures 71, 173–184.
doi: 10.1080/02604027.2015.1113772
Di Blasi, M., Tosto, C., Marfia, A., Cavani, P., and Giordano, C. (2016). Transition
to adulthood and recession: a qualitative study. J. Youth Stud. 19, 1043–1060.
doi: 10.1080/13676261.2015.1136055
Doron, Y. (2014). The Israeli social unconscious as revealed to me during
the GASI International Summer School in Serbia. Gr. Analysis 47, 128–141.
doi: 10.1177/0533316414532427
Elsenbroich, C. (2016). The Addio Pizzo movement: exploring social
change using agent-based modelling. Trends Organ. Crime 20, 120–138.
doi: 10.1007/s12117-016-9288-x
Even-Tzur, E. (2016). “The road to the village”: Israeli social unconscious
and the Palestinian Nakba. Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Stud. 13, 305–322.
doi: 10.1002/aps.1478
Finckenauer, J. O. (2005). Problems of definition: what is organized crime?. Trends
Organ. Crime 8, 63–83. doi: 10.1007/s12117-005-1038-4
Foulkes, S. H. (1948). Introduction to Group Analysis. London: Meresfield Prince.
Foulkes, S. H. (1964). Therapeutic Group Analysis. London: George Allen and
Unwin.
Gambetta, D. (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: the Business of Private Protection.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gambetta, D. (2000). “Mafia: the price of distrust” in Trust: Making and Breaking
Cooperative Relations, ed D. Gambetta (Oxford: Department of Sociology;
University of Oxford, electronic edition), 158–175.
Geyer, C. (2017). The social unconscious in action: linking theory to group work
with young adults. Gr. Analysis 50, 203–213. doi: 10.1177/0533316417702265
Giannone, F., and Ferraro, A. M. (2015). Victims of racket: entrepreneurs and
traders dealing with Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, and Camorra. World Futures
71, 228–241. doi: 10.1080/02604027.2015.1113799
Giannone, F., Giordano, C., and Di Blasi, M. (2015). Group psychotherapy in Italy.
Int. J. Group Psychother. 65, 501–511. doi: 10.1521/ijgp.2015.65.4.501
Giordano, C., and Di Blasi, M. (2012). Identità e omofobia in Cosa Nostra: un
contributo gruppoanalitico soggettuale [Identity and Homophobia in Cosa
Nostra: a Subjectual Group-Analysis Contribution]. Narrare Gruppi, 7, 46–55.
Giordano, C., and Lo Verso, G. (2015). The Mafia boss yesterday and today:
psychological characteristics and research data. World Futures 71, 137–152.
doi: 10.1080/02604027.2015.1113766
Goldman, L., Giles, H., and Hogg, M. A. (2014). Going to extremes: social
identity and communication processes associated with gang membership.
Group Process. Intergr. Relat. 17, 813–832. doi: 10.1177/1368430214524289
Gunnarson, C. (2015). United, yet divided: analysing the cohesion of Addiopizzo’s
anti-racketeering campaign in Palermo. Global Crime 16, 139–161.
doi: 10.1080/17440572.2015.1013210
Hoggett, P., and Thompson, S. (2002). Toward a democracy of the emotions.
Constellations 9, 106–126. doi: 10.1111/1467-8675.00269
Hopper, E. (2001). The social unconscious: theoretical considerations. Gr. Analysis
34, 9–27. doi: 10.1177/05333160122077686
Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., and Becker, A. B. (1998).
Review of community-based research: assessing partnership approaches
to improve public health. Annu. Rev. Public Health 19, 173–202.
doi: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173
Lavorgna, A., and Sergi, A. (2014). Types of organised crime in Italy. The
multifaceted spectrum of Italian criminal associations and their different
attitudes in the financial crisis and in the use of Internet technologies. Int. J.
Law Crime Justice 42, 16–32. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlcj.2013.11.002
Layton, L. (2007). What psychoanalysis, culture and society mean to me. Mens
Sana Monogr. 5, 146–157. doi: 10.4103/0973-1229.32159
Leclerc, C., and Maranda, M. F. (2002). The psychodynamics of work: action
research in an academic setting. Can. J. Couns. 36, 194–210.
Lo Verso, G., and Lo Coco, G. (2004). Working with patients involved in the Mafia:
considerations from Italian psychotherapy experiences. Psychoanal. Psychol.
21:171. doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.21.2.171
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 9September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631

Giordano et al. Social Change and Mafia Communities
Lucero, J., Wallerstein, N., Duran, B., Alegria, M., Greene-Moton, E., Israel,
et al. (2016). Development of a mixed methods investigation of process and
outcomes of community-based participatory research. J. Mix Methods Res.
doi: 10.1177/1558689816633309. [Epub ahead of print].
Lupo, S. (2010). History of the Mafia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Mannino, G., Giunta, S., Buccafusca, S., Cannizzaro, G., and Lo Verso, G.
(2015), Communication strategies in Cosa Nostra: an empirical research. World
Futures 71, 153–172, doi: 10.1080/02604027.2015.1113770
Marin, L. E. M., and Russo, V. (2016). Re-localizing ‘legal’food: a social psychology
perspective on community resilience, individual empowerment and citizen
adaptations in food consumption in Southern Italy. Agric. Hum. Values 33,
179–190. doi: 10.1007/s10460-015-9628-5
Mohatt, N. V., Thompson, A. B., Thai, N. D., and Tebes, J. K. (2014). Historical
trauma as public narrative: a conceptual review of how history impacts present-
day health. Soc. Sci.Med. 106, 128–136. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.01.043
Nardin, L. G., Andrighetto, G., Conte, R., Székely, Á., Anzola, D., Elsenbroich, C.,
et al. (2016). Simulating protection rackets: a case study of the Sicilian mafia.
Auton. Agent Multi. Agent Syst. 30, 1117–1147. doi: 10.1007/s10458-016-9330-z
Natale, A., Arcidiacono, C., and Di Martino, S. (2013). From” gomorrah
domain” to” don peppe diana lands”. a southern italian experience of work-
based liberation, community networking, and well being. Univ. Psychol. 12,
1039–1049. doi: 10.11144/javeriana.upsy12-4.fgdt
Newton, J., and Goodman, H. (2009). Only to connect: systems
psychodynamics and communicative space. Act. Res. 7, 291–312.
doi: 10.1177/1476750309336719
Paoli, L. (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Paoli, L. (2004). Italian organised crime: Mafia associations and criminal
enterprises. Global Crime 6, 19–31. doi: 10.1080/1744057042000297954
Pinotti, P. (2015). The economic costs of organised crime: evidence from Southern
Italy. Econ. J. 125, F203–F232. doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12235
Rakopoulos, T. (2017). Antimafia families: cooperative work and flexible kinship
in Sicily. Crit. Anthropol. 37, 115–131. doi: 10.1177/0308275X17694942.
Ruggiero, V. (2010). Who corrupts whom? A criminal eco-system made in
Italy.Crime Law Soc. Change 54, 87–105. doi: 10.1007/s10611-010-9242-9
Santino, U. (2009). Storia del Movimento Antimafia: Dalla Lotta di Classe
all’Impegno Civile. Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Savona, E. U. (2015). The businesses of Italian mafias. Eur. J. Crim. Pol. Res. 21,
217–236. doi: 10.1007/s10610-014-9261-7
Scalia, V. (2017). Mafia and Antimafia: a brief history. Global Crime 18, 73–75.
doi: 10.1080/17440572.2016.1235820
Schimmenti, A., Caprì, C., La Barbera, D., and Caretti, V. (2014). Mafia and
psychopathy. Crim. Behav. Ment. Health 24, 321–331. doi: 10.1002/cbm.1902
Schneider, J. C., and Schneider, P. T. (2005). Mafia, Antimafia, and the plural cul-
tures of Sicily. Curr. Anthropol. 46, 501–520. doi: 10.1086/431529
Sciarrone, R., and Storti, L. (2014). The territorial expansion of mafia-type
organized crime. The case of the Italian mafia in Germany. Crime Law Soc.
Change 61, 37–60. doi: 10.1007/s10611-013-9473-7
Shalowitz, M. U., Isacco, A., Barquin, N., Clark-Kauffman, E., Delger, P., Nelson,
D., et al. (2009). Community-based participatory research: a review of the
literature with strategies for community engagement. J. Dev. Behav. Pediatr. 30,
350–361. doi: 10.1097/dbp.0b013e3181b0ef14
Taylor, T. J., Freng, A., Esbensen, F., and Peterson, D. (2008). Youth
gang membership and serious vio- lent victimization: the importance
of lifestyles and routine activities. J. Interpers. Violence 23, 1441–1464.
doi: 10.1177/0886260508314306
Travaglino, G. A., Abrams, D., and de Moura, G. R. (2016). Men of
honor don’t talk: the relationship between masculine honor and social
activism against criminal organizations in Italy. Polit. Psychol. 37, 183–199.
doi: 10.1111/pops.12226
Travaglino, G. A., Abrams, D., and Russo, G. (2017). Dual routes from
social identity to collective opposition to criminal organisations: intracultural
appropriation theory and the roles of honour codes and social change beliefs.
Group Process. Intergr. Relat. 20, 317–332. doi: 10.1177/1368430216682351
Travaglino, G. A., Abrams, D., Randsley de Moura, G., and Russo, G. (2014).
Organized crime and group-based ideology: the association between masculine
honor and collective opposition against criminal organizations. Group Process.
Intergr. Relat. 17, 799–812. doi: 10.1177/1368430214533394
Travaglino, G. A., Abrams, D., Randsley de Moura, G., and Russo, G. (2015). That
is how we do it around here: levels of identification, masculine honor, and social
activism against organized crime in the south of Italy. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 45,
342–348. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2100
Vaccaro, A. (2012). To pay or not to pay? Dynamic transparency and
the fight against the Mafia’s extortionists. J. Bus. Ethics 106, 23–35.
doi: 10.1007/s10551-011-1050-3
Vaccaro, A., and Palazzo, G. (2015). Values against violence: institutional change
in societies dominated by organized crime. Acad. Manage. J. 58, 1075–1101.
doi: 10.5465/amj.2012.0865
Wallerstein, N., and Duran, B. (2008). “The theoretical, historical, and practice
roots of CBPR,” in Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: From
Process to Outcomes, eds M. Minkler and N. Wallerstein (San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass), 25–46.
Weinberg, H. (2007). So what is this social unconscious anyway?. Gr. Analysis 40,
307–322. doi: 10.1177/0533316407076114
Wilke, G. (2016). “The German social unconscious: second generation perpetrator
symptoms in organisations and groups,” in The Social Unconscious in Persons,
Groups, and Societies,Vol 2. eds E. Hopper and H. Weinberg (mainly
foundation matrices) (London: Karnacs Books), 61–81.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2017 Giordano, Cannizzaro, Tosto, Pavia and Di Blasi. This is an
open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original
publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these
terms.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 10 September 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1631