Psychiatry and religion: a perspective on meaning

ABSTRACT

A Position Statement on Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry was issued by the World Psychiatric Association in 2016. Among many recommendations, this statement underscores the need for research on both religion and spirituality in psychiatry, especially on their clinical applications. In this contribution we will put light on the issue of meaning and meaning-making, i.e., an important field for every human, Particularly for individuals suffering from severe mental disorders. After an introduction about meaning in its religious/spiritual dimension, we will describe what needs to be studied in order to get a better knowledge as to how patients cope with meaning, and how they process (in terms of meaning-making) the outburst of a severe mental disorder such as schizophrenia.     

L’équipe paramédicale à l’hôpital psychiatrique : Retentissement actuel d’une évolution de deux décennies Analyse d’un entretien de supervision

At the advent of the reform of nursing education in France, this study attempts to give an overview of changes in the work practices of nurses and the employment of nurse’s aides in psychiatric wards of hospitals. Based on the assumption that interaction acts as an interface between the individual on one side and collective systems on the other, the authors approach this issue by analyzing a supervisory meeting of a caregiving team in a psychiatric hospital.     

A microgenetic model of paragrammatisms produced by a schizophrenic speaker

A series of papers appearing in Brain and Language ask whether schizophrenic language irregularities can be understood in linguistic terms. This literature is reviewed and the contrary positions of different authors are highlighted. The clinical presentation of a schizophrenic male is described. In a single interview he produced a set of paragrammatical errors which are noteworthy insofar as they indicate sustained epochs of diminished expressivity. In this sense, they differ from schizophasic deviance, which is described by Lecours and Vanier-Clement (Brain and Language, 3, 516-565, 1976) as an enhanced expressivity cooccurring with intact language competence. They are also partially decodable, which distinguishes them from the schizophrenic segments discussed by Chaika. Analyses of the paragrammatisms indicate disruptions at three discrete representational levels. One involves the formation of abstract speaker intentions, while the second organizes syntagms into some serial form, and the third level takes content words belonging to a particular syntagm and positions them in a syntactic frame. A microgenic model of these representational planes is proposed that is based on the theoretical perspective of Brown, as well as Garrett's investigations of normal speech errors. The model is justified insofar as the paragrammatisms indicate "linguistic regressions" back to more "thought-like" linguistic representations. Moreover, a recapitulation of specific linguistic mappings is demonstrated to occur between processing levels. This microgenetic model represents an extension of previous work in aphasiology insofar as it targets combinatorial rather than selectional processes as primary planes of disruption.     

Training referential communication skills: The limits of success

We explored why an effective speaker-training technique failed to generalize to listener skills by comparing the relative effectiveness of speaker and listener training. Our hypotheses were that: either listening tasks utilize different skills than speaking tasks (thus one should not expect transfer), or the acquisition of listener skills precedes the acquisition of speaker skills (thus the transfer patterns tested in our previous research—speaker to listener—violated the normal developmental sequence), or there is no spontaneous transfer between tasks in different modalities (even though such tasks require the use of some of the same skills). This research utilized a referential communication paradigm. Five-year-olds received either speaker training, listener training, or both speaker and listener training. Children were tested for transfer on speaking and listening task after a 1-week delay. The results suggest that although speaking and listening tasks appear to require, at least in part, certain of the same skills, preschoolers do not exhibit spontaneous intermodality transfer. Theoretical implications for the relationship between speaker and listener skills are discussed.