This article traces the history of the behavior therapy movement in French-speaking Europe between the 1960s and the 1990s, focusing on its geographically located development, whether on a national, sub- or supra-national scale. By examining the trajectories of the three main behavioral therapy associations in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, we show that it is not possible to subsume them under a common intellectual history. Despite the importance of theoretical debates in the emergence of this brand of psychotherapy in English-speaking countries, adherence to this type of explanation falls short of accounting for the differential reception of behavioral therapies in these countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhat do we know about the history of John Broadus Watson's behaviorism outside of its American context of production? In this article, using the French example, we propose a study of some of the actors and debates that structured this history. Strangely enough, it was not a "classic" experimental psychologist, but Pierre Naville (1904-1993), a former surrealist, Marxist philosopher, and sociologist, who can be identified as the initial promoter of Watson's ideas in France. However, despite Naville's unwavering commitment to behaviorism, his weak position in the French intellectual community, combined with his idiosyncratic view of Watson's work, led him to embody, as he once described himself, the figure of "the damned behaviorist.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis topical review outlines the resilience pathway to adaptive functioning in pediatric pain within a developmental perspective. Self-Determination Theory proposes that the satisfaction of one's basic psychological needs (for autonomy, relatedness, and competence) is crucial for understanding human flourishing and healthy development. However, the role of the basic psychological needs received little attention in a pediatric-pain population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: The aim of this study was to examine the course of headache diagnosis, headache frequency, anxiety, comorbid depressive symptoms and school absenteeism in adolescents with migraine and tension-type headaches five years after baseline.
Methods: We followed a group of 122 children with a mean age of 10.1 (±1.
In 1960s France, behavior therapy attracted the attention of a group of isolated pioneers largely composed of psychiatrists and some experimental psychologists. At the beginning of the 1970s, after a discreet introduction, the development of this movement provoked an adverse reaction related to the French intellectual context, which was characterized by a taste for psychoanalysis. At the height of the Cold War, this new form of therapy was, moreover, seen as a typical product of American culture, and viewed as a technique for mind control that would be incompatible with French humanist values.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article is focused on the figure of personal secretary in the history of science with the example of Anne Berman (1889–1979) who was, between 1933 and 1962, the secretary for the psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte (1882–1962). Berman was not a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic historiography considers her as a minor figure. However, her career as a personal secretary and her role in the French psychoanalytic movement should be considered in conjunction with her involvement with the feminist movement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBetween 1927 and 1931 Marie Bonaparte had herself operated upon her clitoris three times. She did so against Freud's advice with whom she was in analysis. Among psychoanalysts these operations are still often regarded as "errors" or aberrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Chronic daily headache (CDH) in children has been documented in general and clinical populations. Comorbid psychological conditions, risk factors and functional outcomes of CDH in children are not well understood.
Objectives: To examine anxiety and depression, associated risk factors and school outcomes in a clinical population of youth with CDH compared with youth with episodic headache (EH).
Int J Psychoanal
December 2011
John Rodker (1894-1955) was the founder of the British publishing house--the Imago Publishing Company--which undertook the republication of the complete works of Sigmund Freud in German just before World War II. Rodker, himself a writer as well as a publisher, was initially tempted by a psychoanalytic career; numerous obstacles, however, lay in his path. War, along with the complicated management of the royalties from Freud's writings, compromised the progress of what seemed to him to be 'a serious venture'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMarie Bonaparte (1882-1962) played a critical role in the development of psychoanalysis in France. Her clinical activity is not well known yet she was one of the first female French psychoanalysts. The journalist-writers Alice and Valerio Jahier were Bonaparte's first two patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVues analytiques sur la vie des abeilles et des termites (Analytical perspectives on the life of bees and termites) is a letter from L. R. Delves Broughton to Freud dated the 7th of August, 1927.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWilhelm Bölsche (1861-1939) is the author of a poetic history of the evolution of love entitled Das Liebesleben in der Natur (1898-1903). This work, inspired by the writings of biologist Ernst Haeckel, was greatly successful in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Freud kept a copy of the three volumes in his London library and cites the text in his lectures on an Introduction to psychoanalysis.
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