En français

Pourquoi pas, après tout c'est ma langue de tous les jours. Avez- vous déjà entendu parler de l'hospitalisme ou de la carence affective chez les bébés ? C'est Spitz en 1945 qui a développé ce concept pour expliquer le phénomène des bébés séparés de leurs mères dans les hôpitaux.
Selon ses travaux, une fois privé des soins maternant, bébé passera par trois phases bien précises:

- phase de pleurnichement ;

- phase de glapissement, de perte de poids et d'arrêt du développement ;

- phase du retrait et du refus de contact, aboutissant alors à la dépression anaclitique.

Ces enfants alors privés de leur «dose d'affection» périssent tout comme un enfant sans nourriture ou sans abri. Le holding ou le toucher est pour les nourrissons la source principale de plaisir, de communication et de sécurité. Lorsqu'il n'est pas pris durant de trop longues périodes, l'enfant risque de se laisser aller dans la dépression. C'est lorsqu'il est enveloppé qu'il est le mieux et qu'il peut vivre pleinement sa vie de petit bébé. Sans ça, il est beaucoup trop effrayé pour apprendre et grandir. On dit alors qu'il vit un arrêt de développement.

Les arrêts de développement ne sont pas rares dans nos garderies et nos écoles. Les petits qui ont de la difficulté à suivre, qui demandent sans cesse l'attention du professeur et qu'on appelle trouve accaparant sont souvent des enfants carencés effectivement.
Parfois, c'est les mauvais coups, parfois c est la victimisation, d'autres fois c'est par le rejet ou l'opposition qu'ils attirent notre attention. Le plus souvent, ces enfants sont catalogués TDAH, Trouble oppositionnels ou dépressifs. Mais mon intuition pairée de mon expérience (quoi que négligeable) m'incitent à croire qu'un bon nombre de ces enfants peut être traité par une approche d'avantage plus relationnelle.
Avez-vous déjà essayé de travailles alors que vous êtes affamé et qu'en est-il lors de votre dernière séparation ?

L'enfant qui est ébranlé dans sa sécurité ne peut se relever sans l'aide d un adulte qui pourra répondre à ses besoins d'attachement.
Pour l'adulte faisant foi de figure de remplacement, infirmière, gardienne, enseignante, éducatrice il s'agit également d'être clair tant que possible dans le rôle et de respecter les frontières de la relation. La mère et le père ne doivent en aucun cas être remplacés (sauf cas extrême), mais les soins doivent quand même être donnés.

Je suis une éducatrice en centre-jeunesse et lorsqu'on me dit qu'il faut rester froid pour ne pas permettre à l enfant de s attacher, je frissonne. Je comprend le bienfondé derrière ce principe, mais je n'y crois pas. Un enfant séparé de sa mère, quelle qu'elle soit, est en peine d'amour, c'est son monde qui viens de s'effondrer. Le manque de contact chaleureux avec les adultes ne fait rien pour aider leur cause selon-moi.

Et si on faisait demi-tour et qu'on pensais différemment, pourquoi ne pas essayer une approche plus relationnelle pour redonner un peu de sécurité à l'enfant?
Qu'en pensez-vous?

Narcissistics are vulnerable human beings

Everyone knows someone «hard to live with» or just very difficult. Just as you and I can be a pain for others at times, people with personality disorders have a special difficulty dealing with others.
Personality Disorders are a cathegory of mental illness characterized by a persistent patthern of rigid thoughts and behaviors.
The DSM-IV lists 10 different personality disorders one of wich is the narcissistic personality disorder.
Individuals who developped a nacissistic personality overestimate themselves, enjoy very much being the center of attention and tend to« show off» . They may appear very secure in conversations and seem to have a fairly high self-esteem. However, people with this type of personality are not healthy, they are mentaly sick. Therefore, their self-esteem is not high or even low but extremely weak or inexistant.
They usually hide behind a grandiose mask and expect to be treated that way. This is why, they are extremely sensitive to criticism because they are supposed to be the best. Whenever a narcissistic experiences a defeat or commits an error he/she will feel higly ashamed for a long time. Shame or embarrassement are one of the most horrible feeelings we humans can live.
Shame is so hard to deal with that young children entering enter the social age (two/three) need support from a parent to deal with this feeling.
Those who laked this kinf of support will develop their own imature way to deal with it. Children will use their imagination to feel better and they will imaginate themselves as strong, powerful and important. This will become their self-defence mecanism against shame, directing shame outside of themselfs far from their self. «It's not my fault» will happen more and more.
Therefore shame is behind every unhealthy narcissism.
A very common way used to avoid shame are cognitive distortions or illusions. These individuals will act as if they are big deal, big shot, different, better. They will exagerate their actual potential and comment on their accomplishment over and over. They will deni or disminish every fact that puts them back in reality. When they do see reality as it is, they will feel very much disapointed on themselves and their narcissistic wound will be expressed as anger against others and shame against themselves.
More on personality disorders soon...
take care

What is your attachment style?

I'll just start by saying that the study of this theory probably changed the cursus of my life. I remember the day I heard about it the first time sitting in that overcrowded stadium at université de Mtl (they call it an undergraduated class).


I knew that whatever I ended up doing with my life it had to have something to do with this theory.


Developped by a couple geniouses only half a century ago, attachment theory is what I like to call the key to many, many questions. It is what unites us all no mather what social status, gender or ethnic backround.



What is attachment?



In 1950 john Bowlby came up with the hypothesis that early attachement (0 to 3 year old) is a innate set of beahviors present in the primates and most specialy in humans. The main idea behind the theory is that this set of definite behaviors are developped to increase chances of survival. Crying to get attention, looking towards the parent, looking to be close physicaly to the main parent during the first year of life are all signs of attachment. If for any reason the physical proximity is not given or is disturbed, it might lead to a series of symptoms that the baby will carry all its life.

If for a long period the infant does not receive the care he longs for, he might develop an attachment disorder.



Following this idea, Mary Ainsworth, one of Bowlby's students, created a scientifc procedure to measure attachment on yong children. It was named the Strange Situation Protocol . Through her studies, Ainsworth identified four different attachment styles in children: secure, anxious-avoidant, anxious-ambivalent and disorganized.



You developped a Secure attachment style as a baby if :

your parent responded appropriately, promptly and consistently to your emotional as well as your physical needs. Your attachment figure (most probably your mother) helped you regulate stress, and as a result, you used him/her as a secure base to go out and explore the environment.

Today, as an adult, you are confident that you deserve love and respect and are able to enjoy a sain and balanced love life. You are a curious person and you can cope with regular stress of daily life.

You are part of 60% of the population (northen industrialised societies)

You developped an Avoidant attachment style if: When you experienced a stress and showed it to your parent, he/she did not awnser properly to your need of confort. Your attachment figure encouraged you to be independent at a very young age and discouraged you from crying and asking for help.

Today you have a tendency to be overly independent and even avoid intimate relationships. You might think that your invulnerable and self-sufficient and don't need a relationship. When you do have a partner you rarely seek closeness. 20% of the population.

You developed an Ambivalent attachment style if: Your attachement figure couldn't be consistent. At times she could satisfy your needs appropiately and at other times she was neglectful. It wasn't easy for you to be secure enough to go play with your toys and explore your environment without her beeing constantly by your side. Inconsistency created deep anxiety.

Today it's not easy for you to trust your partners and you rarely allow yourself to get too close to someone. Usually, you see yourself as unworthy of a relationship or even of love. It is hard for you to express your feelings and to feel any intimacy with others. 15% of the population.

If you developped a Disorganized attachment style as a baby, it means you had a parent that could hardly be there to securise you. You acted frightened and confused around him/her. Because your parent did not help you develop an inner security, as a baby you couldn't explore and learn very fast. Your attachment figure was clearly neglectful and even abusive.


Unfortunately a huge percentage of these cases turn out to develop a psychopathology as an adult.
Only about 5% of the population has this style of attachment style.

Risks for pathology start at a very young age and attachment styles are frequently transmissible
from generation to generation. That is if you never knew how to develop a secure attachment realationship you will have difficulties building one with your own baby, and so on.

Don't you think any parent should know about this? Do you want to know more about attachment styles?

What causes Psychopathology?

Is is in the genes, is it my parents or my personality?

Mental disorder's causes are multi factorial. It means that there are various causes to any given mental disorder. This is better understood with Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems. This theory is one of the simplest and straight forward ones. Basically it says that individuals receive influences and feedbacks from their actions from the different layers of the environment.
Each of these layers have an effect on a child’s development.

First of all: the individual him/herself is born with strengths and difficulties inherited by the genetical history and also birth situations ( lacking of oxygen, premature babies...).

Then, the microsystem has an enormous impact on the development of insecurities, self-esteem, attachment patterns and so on. The microsystem is the close family.

When kids enter school they enter the mesosystem which is also composed of all the other influences parents might have such as religion, working conditions... which will have an indirect impact on the childs development.

The culture a child is raised in, his community and the neighborhood he lives in are all part of the exosystem.

The macrosystem is composed of the values, laws and political beliefs of society.

Finally, the chronosystem refers to the dimension of time.
Elements within this system can be either external events, such as the timing of a parent’s death, or internal developments, such as the physiological changes that occur with the aging of a child.


How does it work?

Every layer, starting with external ones, have an influence on all the other layers. For
example, if it is the belief of the culture that parents should be solely responsible for raising their children, that culture is less likely to provide resources to help parents. This, in turn, affects the structures in which the parents function. The parents’ ability or inability to carry out that responsibility toward their child within the context of the child’s microsystem is likewise affected.

One thing to remember also is that the younger the child, the stronger these effects are.

This is an extremely good reason to take good care of every single child and to give the best help possible to struggling parents.

Many mental disorders are due to lack of security in the first years of life. When mother and father live recurrent stress ( working conditions, lack of social support, etc) the infant feels it and is tremendously affected by it. Babies are very strong and try hard to cope with environmental difficulties so they adapt to that stress. In other words they become slowly much more demanding to make shure they get their parents attention and they act out.
Mommy and daddy are already stressed so baby might get punished, harshly beaten or even abandoned.
This will cause what psychologists call an attachment disorder, which is one of the strongest links to later mental disorder. But that will be the subject of my next entry.

If you are a young parent and you recognize yourself on these lines, please reach for help, take some free time for yourself. Your baby and the rest of society will benefit of your good health.

Ale

Psychopathology or being crazy

Psychopathology is the clinical word for what people used to call ( and sometimes still) being Crazy.
If you listen to the first video to your left, there is a very interesting testimony from a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder( we'll get to that later).

She explains the difference between having a mental disorder (or a psychopathology) and living a "normal" depression episode.
Symptoms might be similar, for example Dany is diagnosed with major depression, his symptoms are: loss of interest, drastic change in appetite and sleep, suicidal thoughts (amongst others). Dany feels demoralized and doesn't seek help. He's been feeling like this for almost 6 months.
Marianne's mother just died she now lost appetite and can't sleep at night, she doesn't want to go to school or see her best friends anymore, she even told her psychologist she misses her mother so much sometimes she would want to go meet her...

Dany and Marianne are living what psychologists call major depression.
To be called depression, these symptoms need to last for 6 to 24 months.


The difference between Dany's depression and Marianne's:
Dany's depression was not triggered by any stressful event. Dany would most probably be diagnosed with major depression and be prescribed antidepressants. Dany will have to take the drug for the rest of his life.
Marianne will also take drugs but she will slowly come back the way she used to be, as time and therapy goes by.
Anyone could live a depression the way Marianne did, but only a few will live with depression for the rest of their lives, like Dany will.

Then why some people have mental disorders and others just episodes?

Scientists and mental heath professional are still trying to figure it out.
the most common answer to it is that mental illness is multi factorial.

And that will be the subject of my next entry. Until then, be safe and please talk to anyone you trust if you recognize yourself in Dany or Marianne.

Ale

A birds view

Psychology is basically the study of human behavior.
Most of the scientific knowledge gathered on this domain goes back to only fifty years ago.
Psychology is in fact one of the youngest human science wich is exactly why it is so exsciting to study it; everything is yet to be explained.
On this blog I'll introduce you to the basics of all the main cathegories of the study on human beahvior., wich are:
- developmental psychology
- learning psychology
- neuropsychology, cognitive psychology
-psychometrics
- personality psychology
-psychopathology
-social psychology