Sottocorrente (Undercurrent): Clinic, Training and Social Vision
Sottocorrente (Undercurrent) is a research movement inhabiting the boundary between the psychotherapy room and collective space.
We believe that care cannot be limited to individual adaptation; it must become a tool for liberation and social change.
We operate across three fundamental pillars:
The Clinic of Relationship: We move beyond isolating individualism to bring the encounter back to the center. We see the person before the patient, integrating diverse epistemologies to address the complexities of the contemporary world.
Experiential Training: We offer group-centered training models, where the development of the future professional stems from a genuine contact with the self and the collective matrix.
OpenToTheInsideOut: We transform clinical narrative into social performance. We bring the “inside” of psychotherapy into the “outside” of the community, breaking the boundaries between care, art, and citizenship.
Our goal is clear: Stop adapting, start being free.
Our Mission
Sottocorrente aims to spread the voice of psychotherapy to the widest possible audience. It is a project dedicated to training and research, designed to bridge — through a unified language — the many currents that separate students, professionals, and patients from the intimacy of relationship. We are an undercurrent movement.
For too many years, psychotherapy has remained fragmented, often retreating into frameworks that mirror social individualism by focusing solely on a single person: the patient.
We believe training should instead focus on the future professional. This requires a cross-cultural perspective that sees the person before the student, and the person before the patient, utilizing training models centered on experiential group work. Without this, we lose sight of the relational foundation of any therapeutic bond: the encounter between human beings before the roles of professional and patient.
Our project seeks to foster a universal dialogue based on the core of psychotherapy: Relationship. We create a space for sharing diverse models of intervention and care, specifically through a social lens, as a vital response to the exhausting spread of individualism.
Sottocorrente promotes activities such as conferences, meetings, publications, and any form of collective expression, using dialogue, narrative, and shared reflection as its primary research tools.
About Us
Sottocorrente was born in April 2024 from a shared vision held by Nicole, Fabiana, and Michele: to create a space for psychotherapy that speaks an open, inclusive, and collective language. Our bond is rooted in a passion for group dynamics, recognized as a powerful tool for social healing and a vital antidote to modern individualism.
We integrate training, research, and clinical practice to transform the “encounter” into a force for social change.
The Team
Michele Battuello Sports Physician and Psychotherapist. With a background in psychiatry and infectious diseases (Sapienza University), Michele pioneered experiential emotional-processing groups in Italy for healthcare professionals. He founded the Strategic Experiential Group (GSE), focusing on the “here and now” and the transcultural systems in which we are all immersed.
Nicole Guido Communication Expert and Coordinator, Relational Counselor. Bringing over a decade of experience in high-level management and communication, Nicole coordinates the collective’s resources. She is a firm believer that self-growth must pass through the “other,” using empathy and mediation to break the barriers of individualism that paralyze both personal and social evolution.
Fabiana Albanese Internist Physician and Group-Analytic Psychotherapist. Fabiana bridges the complexity of the human body with the depth of the psyche. As Head of an Internal Medicine department, she integrates dream interpretation and group-analysis into the medical field, advocating for group-based psychotherapy as a specialized skill to overcome individualistic healthcare models..
OpenToTheInsideOut
The OpenToTheInsideOut Project is a group performance open to the public that acts as a sliding door for the relationship. We use art as a catalyst to break the isolation of subjective experience and transform it into collective sharing.
Why Performance? In an era of widespread individualism, psychotherapy must “lay itself bare.” We step out of traditional settings to inhabit museums and public spaces, guided by three pillars:
The Group as Social Care: Moving beyond the concept of the “patient” to rediscover the person in their transcultural reality.
Art as Disruption: Utilizing artistic language to stimulate reflection that disturbs the status quo and breaks the paradigms of dominant culture.
The Performative Turn: We believe that individual experience is only fully realized when communicated and made intelligible to others (V. Turner).
How it Works
In this space, art becomes a bridge to your deepest emotions. The only thing you need to do is join the group and sit for as long as you wish. You may share thoughts, feelings, and gestures, or simply remain in silence and listen, in an atmosphere of total freedom and without judgment. Experienced group psychotherapists will be present. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background or experience.
It is a unique experience that combines art, psychotherapy, and active public participation. The performance invites spectators to live a group experience where art becomes a tool to explore emotions and connect with others. It is an invitation to step out of traditional ways of consuming art and open oneself to new experiences and perspectives.
SottocorrenteARTE
Seeking “Disturbers of the Peace”: An Invitation to Artists
SottocorrenteARTE is not a “white cube” gallery.
It is a living organism in the heart of Rome’s historic Garbatella, nestled within the urban fabric of the Roma3 University district. Our 70-square-meter studio is a place where stories intertwine daily—for 14 years, it has been a sanctuary for psychotherapy and training.
We have three rooms—two spacious and one more intimate—connected by an ancient staircase that links different worlds. It is a “small” place when measured in square meters, but vast when measured in resonance.
At Sottocorrente, we have believed from the very beginning that the therapy room should not be an aquarium isolated from the world, but a space for social contamination.
This is why, through the SottocorrenteARTE project, we are opening our doors to artists who feel the urgency to let their work dialogue with the deep lives of individuals and groups. We invite artists to challenge themselves with this proximity.
We look for works that are not afraid to be “close” to people. We seek marks and signs capable of inhabiting the walls of a psychotherapy studio, flowing down the stairs, or settling into our rooms, becoming an integral part of the healing process.
We host worldviews.
An artist chooses to exhibit at SottocorrenteARTE because of an elective affinity: their artistic message must vibrate in harmony with our social mandate. Art becomes a “necessary disturbance” that helps us view collective change and social bonds through a lens different from a purely clinical one.
Why exhibit with us? Because here, the artwork is not an object to be viewed from a safe distance; it is an element that “sits in the circle” with us.
Exhibiting at SottocorrenteARTE means accepting that your work will become part of a clinical and social setting. It means your message will resonate with the emotions, silences, and words of the people who inhabit this space during their weekly therapy sessions.
We are looking for artists who:
Feel a connection between their research and our commitment to social and collective change.
Wish to experiment with how art can act as a “necessary disturbance” to break the patterns of individualism.
Are ready to see their work transformed into a bridge, a “sliding door” between the “inside” and the “outside.”
If your art is not afraid to “get its hands dirty” with clinical practice and to become a message of inclusive change, our space is ready to host your interference.
No decorative artists, please. We are looking for those who know how to face silence as an equal, without fear.
If your research vibrates with our desire for social and collective change, and if you love the idea of art that allows itself to be “inhabited” in everyday life,