The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained international and local response capacity and distressed local populations. Different studies have focused on potential psychological distress resulting from the rupture of consolidated habits and routines related to the lockdown measures. Nevertheless, the subjective experience of individuals and the variations in the way of interpreting the lockdown measures remain substantially unexplored. Within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psychosocial Theory, the study pursued two main goals: first, to explore the symbolic universes (SUs) through which Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life; and second, to examine how the interpretation of the crisis varies over societal segments with different sociodemographic characteristics and specific life challenges. An online survey was available during the Italian lockdown. Respondents were asked to write a passage about the meaning of living in the time of COVID-19. A total of 1,393 questionnaires (mean = 35.47; standard deviation = 14.92; women: 64.8%; North Italy: 33%; Center Italy: 27%; South Italy: 40%) were collected. The Automated Method for Content Analysis procedure was applied to the collected texts to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ discourses. Such factors were interpreted as the markers of latent dimensions of meanings defining the SUs active in the sample. A set of χ² analysis allowed exploring the association between SUs and respondents’ characteristics. Four SUs were identified, labeled “Reconsider social priorities,” “Reconsider personal priorities,” “Live with emergency,” and “Surviving a war,” characterized by the pertinentization of two extremely basic issues: what the pandemic consists of (health emergency versus turning point) and its extent and impact (daily life vs. world scenario). Significant associations were found between SUs and all the respondents’ characteristics considered (sex, age, job status, job situation during lockdown, and place of living). The findings will be discussed in light of the role of the media and institutional scenario and psychosocial conditions in mediating the representation of the pandemic and in favoring or constraining the availability of symbolic resources underpinning people’s capability to address the crisis.

The paper tests longitudinally the hypothesis that educational subcultures in terms of which students interpret their role and their educational setting affect the probability of dropping out of higher education. A logistic regression model was performed to predict drop out at the beginning of the second academic year for the 823 freshmen of a three-year bachelor degree in psychology at an Italian university. The model uses both measures of students' educational subculture and incoming levels of knowledge and skills. The probability of dropping out was used as dependent variable. Results show that the probability of dropping out is significantly associated with students' educational subculture – but not with their incoming level of knowledge and skills. Our results suggest the need to recognize the meaning as a legitimate variable of research and of intervention in the field of educational success.

Objective: The aim of the study is to validate the ability of ACASM (Automated Co-occurrence Analysis for Semantic Mapping) to provide a representation of the content of the therapeutic exchange that is useful for clinical analysis. Method: We compared the clinical case analyses of a good outcome psychodynamic therapy performed by a group of clinicians (n = 5) based on the verbatim transcripts (transcript-based analysis) with the clinical case analyses performed by another group of clinicians (n = 5) based on the ACASM representation of the same sessions (ACASM-based analysis). Comparison concerned two levels: the descriptive level and the interpretative level of the clinical case analysis. Results: Findings showed that, inconsistently with our hypothesis, ACASM-based descriptions of the case obtained worse evaluations than transcript-based descriptions of the case (on all 3 criteria adopted). On the contrary, consistently with our hypothesis, ACASM is undistinguishable from the verbatim transcripts as regards the case interpretation (on 2 out of 3 criteria adopted). Conclusions: ACASM provides a description of the case that, though different from the one provided by the transcripts, enables clinicians to elaborate clinical interpretations of the case which approximate those produced by clinicians working directly on verbatim transcripts.

With the advent of Covid-19, health workers have been under constant physical and psychological pressure. Italy was among the first countries to face the health emergency in a period of great uncertainty about the virus and the ways to treat patients. The present study aims to analyse the levels of emotional distress (ED) and psychosomatic symptoms (PS) of Italian frontline health workers during the Covid-19 emergency, and their relationship with the evaluation of the institutional responses received.

The current study examines whether cultural differences in the way of interpreting the social environment affect the probability of different kinds of addictive behaviours. Subjective cultures of the social environment were detected through the questionnaire on the Interpretation of the Social Environment (ISE) in a convenience sample of 771 participants from Italy. Problem gambling, drinking, internet use and smoking were assessed. A problem group was identified and a healthy group was selected for each of the four kinds of harmful behaviours. Logistic regressions were used to compare problem groups and control on ISE scores of subjective cultures. Problem groups of gamblers, drinkers and internet users were found to differ from control in their evaluation of the social environment, which they considered very unreliable. The problem group of smokers differs from control in their relationship with the social environment, viewed as an anomic place. The findings support the idea that subjective cultures associated with a critical image of the social environment, disparaging social ties and the rules of living together, are more likely to be associated to a maladaptive pattern of behaviour, as addiction can be understood.