Psychodrama with women who are victims of violence: an international project

The EMPoWER research project we are introducing here has been conceived within the framework of the European Daphne initiatives and has already completed the first preliminary organisation opening in the activities promoted during Fepto meetings between 2009 and 2010. The initiative is the second part of a research, already accomplished and directed by Ines Testoni titled “mafia's psychism and female corporeality management1”, whose main objective was to understand what are the psychological and social factors exposing woman to the trade of the international prostitution market. The achieved results demonstrate that in several traditionalistic areas, where the family relationship are matrifocal and the social culture is patriarchal, the international mafia gets rich intercepting women and treating them as commodities for sex and servitude trade. It is emerged amongst the main causes of this phenomenon that in the generation mandate between mother and daughter the women’s masochistic attitude towards men is kept unchanged over the centuries. The subordination is a relational mode that the mother teaches to the daughter, demanding her to assimilate it.