{"title":"Gaetano Benedetti's psychoanalytical psychotherapy of psychoses: Illustrations from a number of clinical situations","authors":"Christophe Chaperot (Psychiatre, Chef de pôle)","doi":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.01.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.01.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Objective</h3><div>The psychotherapy of psychotic patients is the subject of much debate and discussion, with two underlying factors: firstly, the fear of doing worse than better, and secondly, the need to flush out the underlying ideologies likely to aggravate the implicit discrimination of patients under the mask of benevolence, which in reality is rejectionist. To put it bluntly, there are three main approaches: containment of enjoyment, which allows the patient to elaborate at the same time (with the risk of psychic sclerosis), cognitive remediation, with the risk of ideological normalisation, and finally immersion in the psychotic world (with the risk of supporting delirium and its suffering). In this paper, we will discuss this third possibility, drawing on the thinking of Gaetano Benedetti, and consequently on a psychoanalytical basis. It is neither a question of proselytising Benedetti's thought, nor of ostracising other approaches.</div></div><div><h3>Method</h3><div>The main principles of Benedetti's thinking will be taken up again, at the same time as we propose clinical illustrations from our own practice. A brief reminder of the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and psychoanalysis will be offered, as well as the impossibility of psychoanalysis with a psychotic patient, which is why our title indicates ‘psychoanalytic psychotherapy’.</div></div><div><h3>Result</h3><div>It appears that Benedetti's theses, and the praxis that follows from them, do not concern all psychotic patients or all psychoanalysts; they require a kind of special nature that Freud was already talking about in his day. The crucial point is, on the one hand, ‘positivisation’ (considering that the delusional patient is telling the truth because it is his reality). The other aspect concerns an attitude of ‘partial identification’, i.e. identifying with the patient in his psychosis and working in solidarity with him on the basis of his truth.</div></div><div><h3>Discussion</h3><div>Psychoanalytic psychotherapy of psychotic patients using (partial) identification can be an interesting way of gaining access to the patient's most intimate psychopathological mechanisms, in order to offer help in the same way as an architect rather than an archaeologist (in Freud's sense of the typical cure).</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>Benedetti has devised a way of approaching psychosis that may prove useful in a number of cases, while putting the possibility of success into perspective. Success results in the construction of an undecidable structure combining unconscious elements of the patient and others of the analyst as a result of identification effects causing a form of unconscious hybridisation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45007,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Psychiatrique","volume":"90 2","pages":"Pages 197-206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144090538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Théodore Onguene Ndongo (Psychologue clinicien, Chercheur associé, Chargé de cours) , Daniel Derivois (Psychologue clinicien, Professeur des Universités en psychologie clinique et psychopathologie)
{"title":"Du processus psychique de transformation d’enfants en soldats : une clinique de la janissarisation","authors":"Théodore Onguene Ndongo (Psychologue clinicien, Chercheur associé, Chargé de cours) , Daniel Derivois (Psychologue clinicien, Professeur des Universités en psychologie clinique et psychopathologie)","doi":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Objectives</h3><div>This article focuses on the process of enlisting and transforming children into soldiers in Congo. It analyzes the psychological mechanisms at work in this dynamic.</div></div><div><h3>Method</h3><div>As part of a Unicef project (DDR-Demobilization, Disarmament, Reintegration), many children (9–17 years old) associated with armed forces and groups were met several times (five interviews per child) in Centers for Transit and Orientation (CTO) upon their return from combat zones. An interview grid was constructed which allows us to explore their family situation before enlistment, their motives, their account of their stint in the armed groups, and the reasons for remaining in the armed groups. This article focuses on six emblematic cases.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>The process of transforming children into soldiers is understood through what we propose to call the process of Janissarization. This process reflects the recuperation of the effects of societal catastrophes with the aim of actively transforming children/adolescents into soldiers by means of the subversion of the usual maturation processes of the psychic apparatus: psychic rearrangement in connection with puberty, choice of genital object, and redirection of the referential system (and of the ideal) in which these different mutations take place.</div></div><div><h3>Discussion</h3><div>The discussion focuses on the warlord's approach, which includes the reversal of the structuring symbols of the group-community, the development of a paradoxical bond of attachment to the warlord, the instrumentalization of the figure of the intruder, and finally the establishment of a monstrous victim-executioner scene. The figure of the child soldier is strongly based on the more common figure of the intrusive and unwanted child. The main differences between these two figures lie in the lifting of the ban on murder and in the establishment of an executioner-victim scenario.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>Janissarization is thus an active process, which concerns the manipulation of the symbolic, and an active operation of creating and then hijacking a universe of meaning, codes, and ideology within the group. Whatever their modes of enlistment, the child/adolescent soldiers concerned by this process require sustained and adapted support that frees them from armed conflicts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45007,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Psychiatrique","volume":"90 3","pages":"Pages 373-384"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144779331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ketty Steward (psychologue clinicienne, docteure en psychologie de l’université Paris 8) , Arnaud Plagnol (psychiatre, professeur de psychologie à l’université Paris 8) , Renald Asvazadourian (psychiatre, spécialiste de la psychiatrie du sujet âgé)
{"title":"Écriture de soi et identité narrative : quel apport pour le rétablissement de la personne âgée dépressive ?","authors":"Ketty Steward (psychologue clinicienne, docteure en psychologie de l’université Paris 8) , Arnaud Plagnol (psychiatre, professeur de psychologie à l’université Paris 8) , Renald Asvazadourian (psychiatre, spécialiste de la psychiatrie du sujet âgé)","doi":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Aims</h3><div>Based on Michel Foucault's notion of subjectivation through self-writing and Paul Ricœur's reworking of narrative identity, our aim is to clarify the clinical relevance of an autobiographical writing group for depressed seniors.</div></div><div><h3>Method</h3><div>After an analysis of Foucault's self-writing and its relationship to Ricœur's narrative identity, we illustrate its scope by studying the dynamics generated by the participation of an elderly depressive patient in an autobiographical writing group. The effects of the participation on depression were assessed using the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale, an observation grid of the group activity, a semi-directive interview held at the end of the program, and a series of remote clinical interviews.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>In addition to an improvement in mood, the way the person appropriated the writing process gives evidence of an experiential recovery, with a new meaning conferred to one's existence and an in-depth reconfiguration of the subjective universe.</div></div><div><h3>Discussion</h3><div>The concepts of self-writing and narrative identity are complementary in shedding light on the dynamics observed in the reported case. The data gathered from the person, who was not initially expected to embrace the invitation to write (lack of educational achievements, entrenched depression in a 70-year-old complicated by dependency), confirms the clinical potential of an approach based on self-writing within a group of elderly people.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>The proposal of a structured writing activity, based on the conceptual contributions of Michel Foucault and Paul Ricœur, may prove fruitful in the recovery process for elderly people with depression, even if this can only be confirmed by the appropriation of the process within the person's lived experience.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45007,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Psychiatrique","volume":"90 3","pages":"Pages 385-398"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144779332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monisme primaire ou primat de l’autre. Considérations théoriques et implications cliniques à l’adolescence à partir d’un cas d’anorexie mentale","authors":"Elise Pelladeau","doi":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Objective</h3><div>In this article, we will look at the object in psychoanalysis, and more specifically the object of excitation, as a drive coordinate between original monism and the primacy of the other. We will question the function of the object in the relationship to excitation, particularly in adolescence.</div></div><div><h3>Methodology</h3><div>To illustrate our remarks, we will use the weekly psychotherapy of an adolescent girl presenting an anorexia nervosa syndrome.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>The treatment also brought up to date the link to the drive object by accentuating a relationship to excitation locked in the pubertal process. Instead of emancipation, it would seem to be a form of reactionary over-investment of the biological body in its very constraints, in order to counterbalance them: it would be a question of drying up the drive body, by systematically going against the needs of the biological body, whatever the cost. The question of the object is thus very much embroiled in this biphasic sexuality in its adolescent version, but also in the negotiation of arousal under the primacy of the other, which is particularly precocious.</div></div><div><h3>Discussion</h3><div>If adolescence is not “a period of reliving this separation-individuation”, then how can we think about the instinctual impact on the negotiation of the bond with the other of an effective separation, whether total or partial? The question of the object caught in the net of libidinal subversion and its pitfalls would then open up avenues of release in therapy directly linked to the modalities of satisfaction in the transference.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>The purpose of this article is not to make a generic decision in favor of one theoretical/clinical model that would supersede others in all circumstances, but our clinical practice clearly invites us to subscribe to the contributions of Laplanche, and also of Dejours, for whom the involvement of the body is at the forefront of libidinal subversion and its designs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45007,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Psychiatrique","volume":"90 3","pages":"Pages 443-456"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144779374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christophe Chaperot (Rédacteur en chef de L’Évolution psychiatrique, psychiatre, chef de service)
{"title":"Un certain personnage du psychiatre : « le psychiatre espiègle »","authors":"Christophe Chaperot (Rédacteur en chef de L’Évolution psychiatrique, psychiatre, chef de service)","doi":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evopsy.2025.03.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45007,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Psychiatrique","volume":"90 2","pages":"Page 351"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144090532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}