Topical clonazepam in stomatodynia: a randomised placebo-controlled study.

Stomatodynia is characterised by a spontaneous burning pain in the oral mucosa without known cause or recognised treatment. The purpose of this double-blind, randomised, multicentre parallel group study was to evaluate the efficacy of the topical use of clonazepam. Forty-eight patients (4 men and 44 women, aged 65+/-2.

Socio-economic and schooling status of dental undergraduates from six French universities.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the socio-economic status of French undergraduate dental students.

Methods: A 46-item questionnaire was completed by the dental students of six universities between 1992 and 1995. Subjects related to family background, housing, schooling, income, expenditure and participation in student life were investigated.

[The desire for a child and the wish to become a mother].

The author presents excerpts from individual and group interviews with infertile women offered participation in an in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) programme. The analysis of these interviews allows a distinction between the explicit desire for a child and a multiplicity of unconscious wishes underlying that desire. It also makes manifest the fantasies attached to these new forms of reproductive engineering, not only on the part of the women involved but also on the part of the physicians wielding these new technologies.

[Maternity, sterility and reproduction technology].

The idea of maternity--and paternity as well--reaches far beyond the field of biological reproduction inasmuch as it implies a subject's desire, besides being regulated by the symbolic order: Language, myths, patterns and values of a given culture. From this point of view, infertility cannot be considered as a mere somatic illness, but as a human problem implying psychological and social aspects that require a search for solutions unlikely to be reduced to a sole medical operation. The development of the new reproductive technology is in keeping with the increasing medicalization of human lives, human sexuality, and human bodies.

[Women: psychopathology and cultural malaise].

An account of the incidence of mental health and disease criteria in feminine psychopathology is presented as well as a consideration on the increasing medicalization and psychiatrization of women's demand for sanitary help. Symptoms should not be understood separately from the discontent relevant to the place femininity is given in society--hence women's subjective suffering. Observes Freud that, as a child bearer, a woman is more involved with sexual functions--thus placing her at the pulsional pole of culture which reduces a propitiatory space for sublimation processes.