On the Importance of the Superior's Interpersonal Sensitivity for Good Leadership

This research is aimed at showing that interpersonal sensitivity (being attuned to and correctly inferring another person's thoughts and feelings) is an important aspect of what people expect from a good leader and that interpersonally sensitive leaders have more satisfied subordinates. In the first study, participants indicated how much they expected a good superior to be interpersonally sensitive (among other characteristics). People expect leaders to be interpersonally sensitive more so than subordinates. In the second study, participants interacted in same‐gender dyads as leaders and subordinates. We measured subordinate satisfaction and leader interpersonal sensitivity. More interpersonally sensitive leaders had more satisfied subordinates. Interpersonal sensitivity is important for good leadership: It is expected from leaders, and it contributes to increased subordinate satisfaction.     

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The fi rst stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefi ed. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation. The changes in children observed by the authors during the therapeutic process lead them to offer a psychodynamic assessment tool, which revolves principally around the development of body ego. After the initial state of 'severe autism', the authors describe three stages: the stage of 'recovery of the skin' (Bick); the established 'symbiotic phase', subdivided into 'vertical then horizontal splitting of the body ego'; and fi nally the stage of 'individuation'. First, the authors describe the principal psychoanalytic approaches to autism and refl ect on the links possible with nonpsychoanalytic work.