La psychologie communautaire en Amérique du Nord : historiques et applications

Community psychology is an applied discipline that emerged during a time of political upheaval and social unrest in the United States and Canada. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the history of community psychology for both countries and pinpoint some crucial elements that influenced and shaped this discipline. In order to explain community psychology and to concretely demonstrate the diversity of community research and actions, we propose some examples of practical applications of this active field in North America today.     

Les bases du développement de la psychologie communautaire en Europe

Community psychology was born in the USA during the sixties, in a context of poverty, social reforms and deinstitutionalisation. In Europe, because of government policies (dictatorships in Spain, Portugal…) and the orientation of Psychology Institutes, community psychology developed lately. On the other hand, there has been for a long time experiments of alternative care to the hospitalization which are based on the same principles (the experiment of Basaglia in Italy, the district policy in France…). Since the eighties, there are also much more courses in European universities. Finally, the creation of the European Network Community Psychology (ENCP) in 2005 illustrates the expansion of community psychology in Europe. In this article, we will reexamine the various medical and social policies in Italy, in France, in the United Kingdom, and in the other countries of Europe which supported the establishment of Community Psychology.     

Le « sens de la vie » comme paradigme pour le conseil en orientation

Choosing a career requires the fundamental question of life meaning. If this issue was not treated in the career counseling research, his interest was reaffirmed by the development of new trends around life designing and positive psychology. This article discusses the various components (philosophical, theoretical and empirical psychology) of work on life meaning. It aims to demonstrate the usefulness and the unity of the concept for vocational guidance and model the theoretical principles. Finally, new directions are outlined in the design of new methods of guidance and researches.     

L’activité comme support théorique et pratique pour le conseil en orientation

In today's society, instable and uncertain, individuals are more and more often confronted with multiple personal or occupational changes in their life course. In this context, the notion of transition appears as a major one in vocational psychology, the domain of which becomes the individual's own self-construction. This article aims to define a theoretical framework for this perspective, and to point out how the concept of activity can be useful, both for researchers and practitioners. As an example, the case of a young student in a vocational school, who participated to a longitudinal study about self-construction, will illustrate this proposition which considers the individual as “actor of himself”.     

Applications cliniques en psychologie de la santé

The aim of the present article is to present recent and validated clinical applications in the field of health psychology, in particular regarding pain and chronic disease management. Techniques such as acceptance and engagement therapy, mindfulness meditation and positive emotions enhancement have proved to be successful. Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. It is commonly defined as the state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present. By this way, mindfulness meditation learns to patients with chronic pain to reduce their pain sensation. Moreover, encourage patients to have positive emotions, such as gratitude, is efficient in long term well-being. Prospective studies reveal that optimism, coping strategies such as positive reframing and acceptance, and social support yield less distress for patients with chronic disease. Similarly, psychosocial interventions that foster optimistic appraisals, build coping strategies, and bolster social support are benefit for patients. Other methods such as Cognitive Behavioral Stress Management (CBSM), enable to significantly enhance quality of life, adaptation to illness and chronic disease patient compliance. This 10-week group CBSM intervention that includes anxiety reduction (relaxation training), cognitive restructuring, and coping skills training is tested among women with breast cancer and HIV patients. The intervention reduces reports of thought intrusion, anxiety and emotional distress. Furthermore, biofeedback through Heart Rate Variability appears to be an important component of the development of patient potential in terms of cognitive and emotional resources enabling better coping with stressful situations and hence maintaining optimal health conditions. Biofeedback treatment intervention on pain and quality of life is helpful in the rehabilitation of patients with chronic pain. Limits of these applications are discussed as well as future research directions.     

La mesure en psychologie : pour une démarche pragmatique

Measurement in psychology is at the heart of a major debate in the academic literature. We aim to contribute a critical discussion of this issue. We propose to reposition the object of measurement, namely mental properties. On the basis of a clarified ontology, we consider that an empirical approach to measuring a mental property is possible. This approach must be resolutely pragmatic–realist. In practical terms, this means that a test needs to be renegotiated relative to the context. The validation of quantitative measures requires verification of a certain number of criteria. Consequently, our work critically explores measures as they are usually conceived in psychometrics domain.     

La méta-analyse en psychologie sociale : principe,méthode et illustration

For several decades, the meta-analysis technique emerges as the most employed method to synthesize a whole of research relating to the same topic, the same process… While synthesizing, statistically, the studies, meta-analysis makes possible to measure the effect-size of a phenomenon and to see which factors influence this phenomenon. This method, well-developed in the Anglo-Saxons' reviews, is little known in France in particular by social psychologists. The following paper presents the basis of the meta-analysis technique, its advantages and the way to use this method if statistical data are presented in frequencies form (a second paper with continuous data and correlation measurements will be submitted later). A case-study presenting the meta-analysis interest is proposed with the help of real data resulting from the comparative study of two well-known psychosocial processes.     

Concevoir et construire sa vie : un modèle général pour l’accompagnement en orientation au xxie siècle

The many constructivist and narrative methods for career intervention that have been developed in the last two decades share an implicit pattern of counseling. This pattern or paradigm can be made explicit by abstracting its key elements from each of the specific methods that express the new conceptual model. The paradigm for life design interventions constructs career through small stories, reconstructs the stories into a life portrait, and co-constructs intentions that advance the career story into a new episode.     

Ouvrir le dialogue pour comprendre l’activité. Un exemple de méthode en psychologie du travail

The investigations in occupational psychology are conditioned by the way events are observed and interpreted. When we approach subjectivity, it is necessary to understand what is hidden. And the angle from which we look at determines the analysis. This is to highlight the significance of the action. Those who work interpret situations, so they cannot be reduced to their action. But how can we reach the sense of a behaviour? The problem of interpretation arises. Understanding the activity, is trying to share the contents with the subject investigated. Therefore, the direct observation of a behaviour is not synonymous with objectivity. Through two examples of the preparatory phase of our inquiries, we present persons who explain us their professional activity. In these exchanges, what is said depends on the mode of entry. The objective is to engage the subject to explain his work to understand and transform. For this, the methodology can only be indirect. The resulting methods enable the subject to talk about what he does and come back on his activity to develop.