Determinants of HIV Testing Among Migrant Men Who Have Sex With Men from Sub-Saharan Africa and Other Regions Residing in 10 European Countries.

Migrant men who have sex with men (mMSM) from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and other regions outside Europe are highly vulnerable to HIV. However, research on the determinants of HIV testing among mMSM from SSA, and how these differ across the categories of mMSM living in Europe, is limited. Using data from the European MSM Internet Survey (EMIS-2017), we assessed HIV testing prevalence and recency in mMSM from SSA and other mMSM residing in ten European countries, as well as the determinants of HIV testing across different mMSM categories with logistic regression analyses. Ever-testing for HIV was slightly higher in mMSM from SSA (83%) compared to other mMSM categories (75-80%), except for mMSM from Latin America and Caribbean region (84%). Overall, 20% of mMSM had never tested. In multivariable analysis, higher age (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01-1.10), higher HIV knowledge (AOR 1.45, 95%-CI 1.11-1.90), and residence in smaller settlements (AOR 0.45, 95%-CI 0.21-0.96) were significantly associated with ever testing for HIV in mMSM from SSA. Comparing mMSM from SSA to mMSM from other regions, we found varying significant similarities (higher age, residence in smaller settlements and HIV knowledge) and differences (lower educational attainment, not identifying as gay, being a student, and limited disclosure of homosexual attraction) in the determinants of ever-testing for HIV. Community-specific interventions addressing identified sociodemographic and behavioral determinants to increase HIV testing uptake in the different mMSM categories and better data for further research are warranted.

A French Translation of the Pleasure Arousal Dominance (PAD) Semantic Differential Scale for the Measure of Affect and Drive.

Multivariate studies have repeatedly confirmed that three basic dimensions of human emotional behavior, called pleasure (P), arousal (A) and dominance (D) are persistent in organizing human judgments for a wide range of perceptual and symbolic stimuli. The Mehrabian and Russell's PAD semantic differential scale is a well-established tool to measure these categories, but no standardized French translation is available for research. The aim of this study was to validate a French version of the PAD. For this purpose, (1) Mehrabian and Russell's PAD was translated through a process of translations and back-translations and (2) this French PAD was tested in a population of 111 French-speaking adults on 21 images of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). A confirmatory factor analysis revealed the expected three-factor structure; the French PAD also distributed the images in the affective space according to the expected boomerang-shape. The present version of PAD is thus a valid French translation of Mehrabian and Russell's original PAD.

Running away from phonological ambiguity, we stumble upon our words: Laboratory induced slips show differences between highly and lowly defensive people.

Introduction: Freud proposed that slips of the tongue, including apparently simple ones, always have a sense and constitute « a half-success and a half-failure ¼ compromise resulting from defensive mechanisms. Material and methods: A total of 55 subjects participated in a French adaptation of the Spoonerisms of Laboratory Induced Predisposition or SLIP-technique including 32 "neutral" and 32 taboo spoonerisms and measures of defensiveness. In accordance with a psychoanalytical and empirically supported distinction, we considered two kinds of defenses: elaborative or primary process and inhibitory or secondary process defenses, which were operationalized with the GeoCat and the Phonological-Nothing (PN) WordList, respectively. The GeoCat is a validated measure of primary process mentation and the PN WordList was shown to measure the defensive avoidance of language ambiguity. Results: Participants produced 37 slips, with no significant difference in the number of "neutral" and taboo slips. The GeoCat and the N/PN parameters explained 30% of the variance in the production of parapraxes, confirming the defensive logics of slips. When dividing the population into lowly and highly defensive participants (with the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability scale), primary process mentation appears as a baseline default defense, but only highly defensive participants mobilize an additional inhibitory secondary process type of defense. Taking into account the a priori difference between taboo and "neutral" parapraxes, highly defensive participants made 2.7 times more taboo parapraxes than lowly defensive participants. However, if "neutral" parapraxes in both subgroups followed the same logic as the total group of parapraxes (significant contribution of primary process mentation in lowly defensives and of primary and secondary process mentation in highly defensives), these measures had no contribution to explain the occurrence of taboo parapraxes. Conclusion: We propose that Motley et al.'s prearticulatory editor, ensuring the censorship over taboo parapraxes, is an external instance of inhibition, proximal to uttering, equivalent to the censorship between the systems Preconscious and Conscious in Freud's metapsychology. By contrast, the defenses measured in this research are internal, intimate control systems, probing for the censorship between the systems Unconscious and Preconscious, this is, for repression. This study contributes to support a psychodynamic explanatory model for the production of parapraxes.

Smoking addiction: the shift from head to hands: Approach bias towards smoking-related cues in low-dependent versus dependent smokers.

The dual process theory is central to several models of addiction, implying both an increase of stimulus salience and deficits in inhibitory control. Our major aim is to provide behavioral evidence for an approach bias tendency in smokers and more specifically during smoking cue exposure. The second aim is to examine whether this bias differs in low-dependent versus dependent smokers. Thirty-two smokers (17 low dependent and 15 dependent; cut-off FTND of 4) and 28 non-smokers performed a modified Go/NoGo task using tobacco-related words and neutral words as stimuli. Smokers generally made more mistakes and tended to be faster for smoking-related cues specifically. Low dependents acknowledged more their dependency in declarative questionnaires while making more errors and being slower specifically on smoking cues; dependent smokers were less prone to indicate their addiction, but were faster and accurate when it came to picking the smoking cues. These results suggest that a shift has operated from a mental preoccupation with smoking in the low-dependent group, to smoking as a motor habit in our dependent group. This finding invites experts to rethink smoking addiction in the light of this crucial moment, namely, the shift "from head to hands".

The Mark, the Thing, and the Object: On What Commands Repetition in Freud and Lacan.

In Logique du Fantasme, Lacan argues that the compulsion to repeat does not obey the same discharge logic as homeostatic processes. Repetition installs a realm that is categorically different from the one related to homeostatic pleasure seeking, a properly subjective one, one in which the mark "stands for," "takes the place of," what we have ventured to call "an event," and what only in the movement of return, in what Lacan calls a "thinking of repetition," confirms and ever reconfirms this point of no return, which is also a qualitative cut and a structural loss. The kind of "standing for" Lacan intends here with the concept of repetition is certainly not something like an image or a faithful description. No, what Lacan wishes to stress is that this mark is situated at another level, at another place, it is "entstellt," and as such, it is punctually impinging upon the bodily dynamics without rendering the event, without having an external meta-point of view, but cutting across registers according to a logics that is not the homeostatic memory logics. This paper elaborates on this distinction on the basis of a confrontation with what Freud says about the pleasure principle and its beyond in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and also takes inspiration from Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology. We argue that Lacan's theory of enjoyment takes up and generalizes what Freud was after in Beyond the Pleasure Principle with the Wiederholungszwang, and pushes Freud's thoughts to a more articulated point: to the point where a subject is considered to speak only when it has allowed the other, through discourse, to have impacted and cut into his bodily pleasure dynamics.

A smoking-related background helps moderate smokers to focus: An event-related potential study using a Go-NoGo task.

OBJECTIVE: Cognitive impairment is a major component in addiction. However, research has been inconclusive as to whether this is also the case for smokers. The present study aims at providing electrophysiological clue for altered inhibitory control in smokers and at investigating whether reduced inhibition was more pronounced during exposure to a smoking cue. METHODS: ERPs were recorded during a visual Go-NoGo task performed by 18 smokers and 23 controls, in which either a frequent Go signal (letter "M") or a rare No-Go signal ("letter W") were superimposed on three different long-lasting background contexts: black-neutral, smoking-related and non smoking-related. RESULTS: (1) Smokers performed worse and had an earlier NoGo-N2 latency as compared to controls and independently of context, suggesting a general inhibition impairment; (2) with smoking-related backgrounds specifically, smokers made fewer mistakes than they did in other contexts and displayed a larger NoGo P3 amplitude. CONCLUSION: These data might suggest that background cues related to addiction may help smokers to be more accurate in an inhibition task. SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show the classical inhibitory impairment in smokers as compared to non-smokers. However, our data also suggest that a smoking-related background may bolster the inhibitory ability of smokers specifically.

On the physiology of jouissance: interpreting the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward functions from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Jouissance is a Lacanian concept, infamous for being impervious to understanding and which expresses the paradoxical satisfaction that a subject may derive from his symptom. On the basis of Freud's "experience of satisfaction" we have proposed a first working definition of jouissance as the (benefit gained from) the motor tension underlying the action which was [once] adequate in bringing relief to the drive and, on the basis of their striking reciprocal resonances, we have proposed that central dopaminergic systems could embody the physiological architecture of Freud's concept of the drive. We have then distinguished two constitutive axes to jouissance: one concerns the subject's body and the other the subject's history. Four distinctive aspects of these axes are discussed both from a metapsychological and from a neuroscience point of view. We conclude that jouissance could be described as an accumulation of body tension, fuelling for action, but continuously balancing between reward and anxiety, and both marking the physiology of the body with the history of its commemoration and arising from this inscription as a constant push to act and to repeat. Moreover, it seems that the mesolimbic accumbens dopaminergic pathway is a reasonable candidate for its underlying physiological architecture.

De lo que se inscribe y no se borra: pequeña fisiología de la represión y del goce / On what is inscribed and not erased: short physiology of repression and enjoyment

El presente trabajo se centra en la relación existente entre el psicoanálisis y las neurociencias. El trabajo comienza con una referencia a los conceptos de sensación y percepción así como al de activación motora que resulta de la información consiguiente, para presentar una visión de los conceptos de representación y represión. A continuación, los autores proponen un modelo de la pulsión que incluye concepciones de Freud y de Lacan y luego se explayan en los sistemas fisiológicos subyacentes al placer y al goce de este modelo. Los autores sostienen que el lenguaje, al permitir trazar la huella de la historia personal, otorga al goce una forma precisa que permite, a veces, volver a trazar esa historia. Para terminar, a modo de ejemplo, ilustran esta postura mediante una viñeta clínica.