Tag: countertransference

The Hikikomori Body

Fiorenzo Ranieri

Paper presented at the conference “Solitude and Relationships”, organised by the Order of Psychologists of Tuscany on 22–23 January 2026 (proceedings available at:

https://www.fondazionepsicologi.it/quaderni/solitudine-e-relazioni-volume-2/)

Introduction

This contribution offers some reflections on the relationship that adolescents and young adults living in voluntary social withdrawal — commonly referred to in the literature as hikikomori — have with their own bodies. These observations draw on my clinical experience and on findings from the scientific literature. Further valuable insights emerged from the annual seminar The Hikikomori Phenomenon – A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Psychic and Social Withdrawal Across the Life Cycle, organised by the Martha Harris Study Centre in Florence and co-led with Dr Miriam Monticelli.

When we meet adolescents and young adults in social withdrawal, what strikes us is not only their absence from the world, but also a particular mode of bodily presence. The body is there — yet somehow withdrawn, suspended, as though it needed to pass unnoticed. Continue reading The Hikikomori Body

Place Identity: From Traumatic Fragmentation to Reconstruction in Psychotherapy

Fiorenzo Ranieri

Introduction

Places can be understood as contexts of life, concentrations of relationships and social practices, and areas of experience and meaning. In this sense, they influence the way we think, our consciousness, the course of our lives, our social structures, our health, and our well-being.

Place identity, a concept originating in environmental and social psychology (Proshansky et al., 1983), is a component of personal identity that emerges from our relationship with the physical, affective, and symbolic places of our existence. Also referred to as environmental identity (Ranieri, 2022), it is not a fixed map of the world, but rather a subjective geography of the Self, shaped by emotional attachment, loss, and transformation. Place identity is not a linear archive of past places, but a living network that is reactivated through memory, dreams, and play. It provides a relatively stable framework for the elaboration of the Self across different stages of development.

The formation of place identity is not linear, but is instead determined by interweaving connections, discontinuities, and lines of flight; in other words, it develops rhizomatically. In this process of identity formation, places interact with the subject according to a non-hierarchical organisation made up of emotional connections that are often unpredictable. Continue reading Place Identity: From Traumatic Fragmentation to Reconstruction in Psychotherapy

The Denied Body: Clinical and Countertransference Dynamics in Hikikomori Withdrawal

Fiorenzo Ranieri

The article “The Denied Body: Clinical and Countertransference Dynamics in Hikikomori Withdrawal” was published in the March 2026 issue of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy.

Abstract

Social withdrawal, known as hikikomori, represents a complex clinical condition in which the body is often silenced and withdrawn from relational exchange. This paper explores the role of the bodily dimension in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with adolescents and young adults, with particular attention to the therapist’s countertransference reactions. The concept of psychic retreat is used to understand how the body becomes the main vehicle for non-symbolisable communications. Starting from the premise that enactment is the language of the retreat, clinical vignettes illustrate how this process can become a transformative moment when recognised and worked through within the analytic field. The containing function allows the transformation of what has been evacuated into the body into shareable thoughts, thereby reopening a relational space. The paper emphasises the importance of keeping the patient’s body alive in the therapist’s mind, to give meaning to what cannot be said and to restore the possibility of connection with the Other.

Keywords:

Hikikomori; body and psychotherapy; psychic retreat; countertransference; enactment

Ranieri, F. (2026). The denied body: clinical and countertransference dynamics in hikikomori withdrawal. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2026.2639574