THE WORLDWIDE BURDEN OF INFANT MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DISORDER: REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE OF THE WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR INFANT MENTAL HEALTH

Children worldwide experience mental and emotional disorders. Mental disorders occurring among young children, especially infants (birth –3 years), often go unrecognized. Prevalence rates are difficult to determine because of lack of awareness and difficulty assessing and diagnosing young children. Existing data, however, suggest that rates of disorders in young children are comparable to those of older children and adolescents (von Klitzing, Dohnert, Kroll, & Grube, 2015 ). The lack of widespread recognition of disorders of infancy is particularly concerning due to the unique positioning of infancy as foundational in the developmental process. Both the brain and behavior are in vulnerable states of development across the first 3 years of life, with potential for enduring deviations to occur in response to early trauma and deprivation. Intervention approaches for young children require sensitivity to their developmental needs within their families. The primacy of infancy as a time of unique foundational risks for disorder, the impact of trauma and violence on young children's development, the impact of family disruption on children's attachment, and existing literature on prevalence rates of early disorders are discussed. Finally, global priorities for addressing these disorders of infancy are highlighted to support prevention and intervention actions that may alleviate suffering among our youngest world citizens.     

« Femmes au volant,danger au tournant » Les conductrices sont-elles victimes d’une menace de stéréotype ?

Owing to the sexuation of occupations associating technical attributes with men and relational skills with women, the latter are less numerous in professions where driving is involved. The negative stereotype associating women with poor driving skills is thus likely to have a cognitive and behavioral impact. According to the model of the stereotype threat, could activation of the threat inhibit the performance of women in a Highway Code test? After performing an association task that demonstrated a largely negative stereotype, 56 female students took a Highway Code test in two conditions: an experimental condition where the stereotype was activated by a comparison between men and women (N = 17); and a control condition without activation (N = 39). Subjects performed less well in the experimental condition, demonstrating the expected effects of the stereotype threat.     

Quel type d'approche scientifique pour la description de la personnalité ?

The purpose of the introduction to the special issue “scientific approaches of personality: challenges and controversies” is to present three different approaches to the scientific study of personality and personality judgment: the factorial approach, psychosocial approach, personality assessment at the level of the individual. The theoretical foundations of each field are exposed in the first part of the introduction. In the second part, we present the articles that compose this special issue.     

War: Mentalization and Totalitarian State of Mind

For most residents of Europe, war is a new experience in which they find themselves both as witnesses and participants. In this paper the war in Ukraine serves as an illustration and case example. Like any unfamiliar experience, war elicits profound emotional responses which can be so overwhelming that an individual may be unable to fully process them and to create mental representations of the reality of war. When the psyche becomes entrapped in an unprocessed state, without the capacity to derive meaning from it, this results in the “fossilization” of the psyche akin to what McGinley and Segal describes as a totalitarian state of mind. Subjectivity and individual differences come under collective or personal attack, or both. This state of being prioritizes the needs of the collective psyche over the individual psyche. The image of Gorgon Medusa, who transformed living people into “fossilized” ones, is presented as a metaphor of total identification with the collective dimension. In contrast, the psyche can reveal a creative approach to resolving war-induced trauma. This is depicted in the concept of the Alchemical Stone and its creation, which symbolizes a harmonious connection between the external and internal realms, the subjective and objective experiences, and the real and the imaginal dimension.     

Masks and Faces in the Setting at the Time of Coronavirus

The “health emergency” forced analysts to seek new ways of continuing with analysis. The article focuses, in particular, on the changes brought about in the setting by the presence of the sanitary mask, following a line that begins with the theme of the “mask” in the collective uses of human cultures, and develops through the Jungian concept of persona, as opposed to the “face” that may convey an authentic image of oneself. A clinical vignette illustrates the issues that the mask raises in the setting by obstructing the communication of emotions. When there is no transformative processing of concrete data, “unmasking” can also lead to an uncanny encounter and to moments of darkness and confusion in analysis, when the analyst experiences the kind of “unconscious identity” between therapist and patient that Jung defined as nigredo. The article is intended as a contribution to the analytic community's current reflections on the new and unforeseen challenges encountered in analysis at the time of the Coronavirus. It is possible to learn from these experiences with a view to integrating new elements and thus modify one's own internal setting, the compass with which each analyst orientates himself.     

La localisation cérébrale des facultés mentales

Although the word faculty has been criticized by « scientific » psychologists, Fodor used it more recently in his famous book on modularity of mind (1983). During second half of the xixth, the cerebral localization of faculties or mental functions by phrenologists and physiologists interested most researchers which have continued in the same way but with others technologies like functional cerebral imagery. We underlined in the paper the difficulties associated with the discovery of the precise localization of the mental functions and the necessity of reinforcing the dialogue between neurosciences, psychology and philosophy.     

« Dire une chose et en faire une autre » : de la déclaration de liberté dans le paradigme de l'hypocrisie induite

According to induced hypocrisy paradigm, participants were led to advocate a pro-attitudinal position (commitment step), such as to respect the driving rules. Subsequently they were made mindful of their own transgressions (mindfulness step). Afterwards, the target-behavior was administered: spending time in a safety road association. We manipulated the declaration of freedom either within the mindfulness step (study 1), either at the twice steps (study 2). Results indicated that declaration of freedom increased the hypocritical effect. Implications for further research in the area of hypocrisy are discussed.