The Prenatal Lausanne Trilogue Play: A New Observational Assessment Tool of the Prenatal Co-Parenting Alliance.

The goal of this study is to present a new observational assessment tool, the prenatal Lausanne Trilogue Play situation (LTP). Expectant parents were asked to role play their first meeting with their baby using a doll, and the videotaped interaction was subsequently coded. Scores were correlated with measures of the couples' marital satisfaction as well as the postnatal family alliance 3 months after the baby's birth. Results showed that the prenatal co-parenting alliance was positively linked to both fathers' marital satisfaction as well as to the postnatal family alliance at 3 months. Thus, the prenatal LTP allows for assessment of the prenatal co-parenting alliance at the interactional level. It predicts the place the parents will afford their baby after birth and can contribute to methods of clinical assessment and prevention.

[Which psychological support for couples seeking medical assistance for procreation?]. / Quelle assistance psychologique pour les couples requérant une aide médicale à la procréation?

OBJECTIVES: The objective of our qualitative study was to define modalities of psychological support to be offered to couples seeking medically assisted procreation. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Forty couples participated in a semi-structured videotaped interview, which touched on themes such as personal and family histories, the couple's relationship, etc. We focused on the "narrative mobility", that is the way in which the couples transmit their personal and family history during the interview and the interviewer's impression that he may or may not share this with the couples. RESULTS: Observed differences in narrative mobility led us to distinguish three groups of couples and to propose various types of psychological support. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: This exploratory study, with its interest for the narrative mobility, concerns the couples' capacity to stand back from their own story as responsible interlocutors. We made the hypothesis that this capacity is linked to their capacity to handle their emotional stress, to act as partners to the medical team and to prepare themselves for their future parenthood.

Noverbal communication and alliance in therapy: the body formation coding system.

Body formations of therapist and couple during therapy sessions mainly function to signal their degree of readiness to interact or their degree of engagement in the therapeutic process, which is one contextual display of their affective communication. For this study, we developed the Body Formation Coding System (BFCS), a 4-category instrument to assess engagement at the triadic level. This article presents the BFSC method as well as a first validation on a sample of 14 triads. The results show that (a) triads vary according to their degree of triadic engagement; (b) engagement is related to the degree of therapeutic alliance; and (c) when the alliance is sufficient, a triadic invariant of engagement emerges. This means that partners regulate and coordinate their behaviors to maintain a stable level of engagement, whatever changes in their conversational organization. Finally, it discusses the potential of this method for describing the interactive aspects of the therapeutic alliance.