The Never Land – loss of an idealized pre-birth place and the gain of a thinking mind

This paper describes the main themes in the psychotherapy of a severely epileptic girl, over a period of eleven years, aged 16 at the time of writing. For most of the therapy the girl lacked an ability to differentiate between herself and others, and therefore there was little development of rudimentary Oedipal conflicts. Her severe physical and mental impairments were inextricably linked to this fundamental problem in the process of separating: the physical problems compounding the emotional, and the emotional compounding the physical. Her mother's illnesses were significant factors. Throughout the girl's life she was subject to extreme medical interventions. The paper draws upon psychoanalytic models of mind and body integration, including notions of the 'biopsychosocial dysregulation' model of illness. The clinical material describes the girl's use of the dolls to populate a Peter Pan Never Land, with its many static perspectives, denying growth and the difference between the generations, although therein was the beginning of the use of symbolization. As the child's awareness of her physical impairments grew, so did her despair at her own and her mother's hopeless physical condition. However, she became more able to express her outrage, but with the life-saving awareness of a therapist who was not also ill. This led to the girl's increased ability to acknowledge differentiation between self and other, further painful awareness of her disabilities, losses and possible death, as well as those of her ill mother and, gradually, an ability to acknowledge the passing of time and an appreciation therein of a healthy separate thinking part of her that could use symbolization and allow for some separateness and some emotional growth.     

Le pouvoir d’agir à l’épreuve de la souffrance au travail : émotions,recherche et construction de sens

Work may support personnalization and creation when subjects can transfer and develop in their professional environment what they do, value, plan or got in other domains of life. By contrast, suffering at work traps the subject in a reciprocal causality loop in which agency decrease and loss of meaning go hand in hand. Both depend on work experience’s disconnection from other subject’s life experiences. We hypothesize that emotion, as an antecedent of meaning search (Rime, 2005) and a vehicle for behaviors intersignification, is a means for re-appropriating an identity of “homme capable” (Ricoeur, 2004). An action-research at Purpan’s hospital “Suffering at work” consulting, considers those statements at individual and collective levels by comparing two Groups of Work Situations Analyze.     

The relationship between abusive supervision,distributive justice and job satisfaction: A substitutes for leadership approach

IntroductionRecently, interest in abusive supervision has grown (Tepper, 2007). However, little is still known about organizational factors that can reduce the adverse effects of abusive supervision.ObjectiveBased on a substitute for leadership perspective (Kerr & Jermier, 1978), we predict that job resources adequacy and role clarity act as buffers in the negative relationship between abusive supervision, distributive justice and job satisfaction.MethodA sample of 253 employees from a City Hall was used to test our hypotheses.ResultsWe found that abusive supervision was significant and negatively related to distributive justice when job resources adequacy and role clarity were low, but not when job resources adequacy and role clarity were high, with consequences for job satisfaction.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that job resources adequacy and role clarity can reduce the negative impact of abusive supervision, which then lessens distributive unfairness perceptions and job dissatisfaction.     

Psychometric properties of a French version of the Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale

IntroductionInspired by Carol Dweck's work on naive theories of intelligence, the implicit theory of emotions refers to beliefs regarding the general functioning of emotions, specifically, their controllability. Some individuals view emotions as uncontrollable (entity theory), while others think that emotions can be modulated (incremental theory). These beliefs guide the emotional regulation strategies that individuals use and influence subjective well-being.ObjectiveThe present study explores the psychometric properties of the French version of the Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale developed by Tamir et al. (2007).MethodOne hundred seventy-seven participants aged 18 to 72 years old (M = 34 years old) completed the Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale in conjunction with two other questionnaires: subjective well-being and emotional regulation strategies.ResultsFactor analyses identified a one-dimensional structure; the internal reliability (alpha = .81) and test-retest reliability indices (r = .69) were satisfactory. The study replicated the main results of contemporary international studies concerning the mediating role of cognitive reappraisal and further documents the pivotal role of positive reappraisal in the association between implicit theories and well-being.ConclusionThe discussion highlights clinical and theoretical interests and the usefulness of the Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale.     

On children's interpretations of negation

French children between 4 and 10 years old were asked to draw representations of French negative sentences. The results indicated that in most cases only the verb is negated when the noun phrase to the right of the negation is introduced by a definite article, but when the noun phrase is introduced by an indefinite article, it is most often the noun phrase itself that is negated. This effect is clear even in 4-year-olds, and it serves to demonstrate that the interpretation of negative sentences depends on phenomena of surface structure as well as of deep structure.     

Perceptions musicales et conscience phonologique : recherche auprès d’enfants francophones d’âge préscolaire

Research led with English, Turkish and Slovak-speaking preschoolers have shown positive correlations between musical perceptual skills and phonological awareness. However, limited studies have been conducted in other linguistic contexts. In that regard, the aim of this study is to examine the correlation between musical perceptual skills (pitch and duration discrimination) and phonological awareness (syllable, rhyme and phoneme identification; rhyme identification) among 61 Francophone preschoolers (34 girls and 27 boys, mean age 4.7 months). Each participant completed a phonological awareness test, a music perception test and a non-verbal cognitive abilities task (spatial memory). The relationship between musical perceptual skills and phonological awareness was investigated using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity. There was a moderate positive correlation between the two variables. The syllable identification task was the only one correlated with both pitch and duration discrimination tasks. It is possible to believe that better perceptual musical abilities improve, even boost, syllable treatment among Francophone preschoolers. Since rhyme and phoneme awareness seem to emerge after syllable awareness, this could explain why no correlation was observed with musical perceptual skills among those young participants.