[White walls for black holes: essay on graffiti psychopathology]. / Murs blancs pour trous noirs: essai de psychopathologie des tags.

Through a clinical case, the authors propose a psychological approach of tagging. The phenomenon that started in Harlem's black ghettos at the end of seventies and appeared in France less than ten years after, does not seem to be a simple sociological one, but seems to take place within the psychic economy of certain adolescents as an attempt to operate the necessary identity work to become an adult. Tagging as well as wandering can be considered adolescents' acting out behaviors and show the externalization of the psychic processes, thus proving a basic insecurity in their psychic space, invaded by anaclitic depression. Graffing, on the other hand, bears a resemblance to strolling in a psychopathologic approach, and already shows an attempt to become a person, and a quest of the Other.

[Usefulness of the concepts of "epigenesis" and "auto-organization" to understand the autistic child syndrome]. / Utilité des concepts d'"épigenèse" et d'"auto-organisation" pour la compréhension des syndromes autistiques de l'enfant.

This article, based more on speculation than on clinical work, aims at clarifying the nature of child autistic syndromes using two elements: epigenetic findings concerning the construction of human brain and the idea that there is a self-organizing development and functioning of the living. First initiated by H. Atlan (1979) and A. Bourguignon (1981), this approach could lead to a fruitful understanding of autistic disturbances, both consistent with developmental neurobiology and psychodynamics. This approach integrates clinical, paraclinical, follow-up and experimental data related to these disturbances. It also might lead to new therapeutic approaches which we are in the process of investigating.

[Training in motor skills and psychopathology. Climbing with psychotic children]. / Apprentissages moteurs et psychopathologie. Pratique de l'escalade chez l'enfant psychotique.

The author investigates learning skills in psychotic and borderline children through the physical activity of climbing. Motor skills are considered as an interaction between the subject and his/her environment. Motor learning skills have been studied throughout 6 training sessions in rock-climbing. Etho-clinical methods of investigation allow to assess behaviors and the meaning given by the subject to different forms of action. The author emphasizes here the pleasure/anxiety dimensions of this activity. Results show remarkable learning skills in these children. Significant increase in motor activity and in the height reached point to an obvious integrity of the mechanisms necessary to motor acquisitions. These results are closely linked with the characteristics of rock climbing, a sport involving clinging behaviors and leading to a mastering of the primary anxiety of loosing support.

[Management of the mother-infant couple at risk at a joint hospitalization unit]. / Prise en charge des dyades mère-enfant à risque dans une unité d'hospitalisation conjointe.

The authors report a four year experience of conjoint mother and child hospitalization in a specialized unit in a child psychiatry department. The intervention on the disorders of the early relation between mother and child is a way of prevention of the psychic pathology of the child and eventually of the adult. The objective is an individual primary (or primo-secondary) prevention among other processes of preventive intervention. The initial project and the actual functioning are described. A retrospective observation suggests the interest of this type of unit in the early medico-psychosocial prevention, in the training of the staff in contact with the infant and in the clinical research in the field of the development of the very young and of his interactions with his mother.

[Depression in the child: Clinical and psychopathological aspects]. / La depression chez l'enfant: aspects cliniques et psychopathologiques.

The present work is exclusively about depressions in childhood till the end of latency (11--12 years old children). It serves a double purpose: to try and show that children from their earliest childhood can be subject to feelings of sadness, moodiness, dismay, self-depreciation; to facilitate, through a better clinical and psychological knowledge, diagnoses in (cases of) depressions. In the first part, we shall study the different clinical forms of depressive states, their factors and their evolution. Three cases of personnal observations will illustrate those theoretic data. The relations between suicide and depression are introduced in the second part of this work. Finally, the authors will tell about the main psychanalytic works which permit to progress towards the recognition of the central function of the depressive phenomena in the structure of a personnality.