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Les enfants à haut potentiel intellectuel (EHP) peuvent être en difficulté scolaire et/ou psychologique. Des études épidémiologiques sont nécessaires pour déterminer la réelle fréquence des EHP en difficulté. Les résultats du Centre national d'aide aux enfants et adolescents à haut potentiel (CNAHP) montrent que les EHP peuvent présenter des problèmes scolaires avérés (dont l'échec scolaire : 7,5 % sur 611 EHP consultant) et socio-émotionnels en lien avec leur haut potentiel intellectuel (notamment, des troubles anxieux associés au haut potentiel verbal). C'est dire l'importance de proposer des prises en charge thérapeutiques et pédagogiques adaptées à ces enfants. C'est une question d'éthique et de société. Children with high intellectual potential (HP) can have scholastic and/or psychological difficulties. Epidemiological studies are needed to know the real frequency of HP children with difficulties. The results from the National Center for Assistance to High Potential children and adolescents (CNAHP) indicate that HP children can show notable scholastic problems (including school failure: 7.5% of 611 consulting HP children) and socioemotional problems related to their high intellectual potential (notably anxiety-disorders associated with high verbal potential). This highlights the importance of proposing adapted therapeutic and educational care to HP children in difficulty. This is a question of ethics and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article, based on links between the mind and body, highlights the interest of a dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The mind has an effect on the body and can lead to biological modifications. The effects of the psychic realm on the body are “materialized” in terms of observable, measurable objective traces. Inversely, progress in biology can help us to understand better the relationships between mental and biological states. Thus, it is interesting to foster cross-talk between psychoanalysis and neuroscience while respecting the specificities of each perspective. The goal is to confront different perspectives given the links between mind and body, without imposing one approach on the other. This confrontation can allow us to defocus from ourselves, to move beyond the detailed analyses specific to a certain approach, in which we are often absorbed. It can also serve to highlight that psychoanalytic theories, as biological ones, are constructions, and therefore can be modified, questioned, and deconstructed. Through the confrontation of these two different perspectives, associations of ideas or innovative concepts can form, new light can be shed, stimulating our creativity within each specific approach. The goal is not to be everywhere, but rather to create a dialogue and link between psychoanalysts and biologists respecting the specificities, complexity of thought and well-differentiated functions within each domain. Developing cross-talk, means involving the body when we work on psychic processes and inviting the psychic realm to be present while working on biological analyses. Finally, cross-talk involves recognizing our incomplete state of knowledge and becoming richer from differences with others, through a complementary approach, rather than a totalitarian one. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The relationship between autism and schizophrenia has been subject of debate since the very appearance of the term “autism” in the nosography, and led to many studies with contradictory results. This question remains current and is nowadays the focus of renewed interest on the part of both clinicians and researchers. This article analyzes the clinical cases of two brothers. One showed autism in early childhood (according to the diagnostic criteria of the American and WHO classifications, and Kanner autism according to the French classification), with severe impairments in social communication and psychomotor development (diurnal and nocturnal enuresis and encopresis persisting until the age of 14, balance impairment, and severe fine and gross motor skill problems), which evolved towards very early onset schizophrenia (mixed form) at 11 years of age, whereas he had not yet entered puberty. His brother displayed psychomotor development impairments in early childhood (nocturnal enuresis persisting to the age of seven years, motor stereotypies that disappeared towards five years of age, substantial fine motor coordination problems still present in adulthood with later progressive deterioration of gross motor skills), and became schizophrenic (deficit form) at the age of 17 (schizophrenia with onset marked by dysmorphophobia associated with self-injurious behavior and withdrawal in terms of social communication). Based on these two clinical cases, the relationship between autistic disorder and schizophrenia is reviewed and discussed. In particular, we develop the hypothesis that developmental disorder in body image, already present since early childhood, may be a dimension common to schizophrenia and autism relevant to a possible problem in the development of body self conscience, leading to problems differentiating self/non-self, and consequently problems in social communication development that are expressed very early in some cases (when psychomotor development is highly altered) and at puberty in other cases (when psychomotor problems are less severe). The physical changes inherent to puberty, occurring in an already vulnerable individual may add to the pre-existing difficulties in body image construction and the development of body-self conscience, and therefore be a decompensatory factor participating in the onset of schizophrenia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Today, we live under the reign of the “brain” and brain imaging. The first part of this article raises questions about interpreting brain anomalies observed with imaging, and understanding this phenomenon. It seems more prudent, concerning brain-imaging results, to think in terms of bio-psycho-environmental interaction rather than linear causality. One can think that brain imaging is reassuring because it gives concrete visualizable results, which seemingly brings objectivity and control facing incomprehensible and uncontrollable behaviors. The question is to know to what extent one should use such difficult invasive techniques in order to get reassurance through concrete results. The second part of the article emphasizes the interest of subjectivity concerning evaluation as well as general research methodology. Subjectivity is related to a dynamic relation and allows, if taken into account and analysed, one to work on the possible meaning(s) of the symptoms, including identification of the circumstances in which the symptoms appear. The third part of the article proposes to understand better the links between the psychic realm (desires, beliefs, emotions...), which is related to subjectivity and our humanity, and the biology of the organic substrate (molecules, neurons, neurotransmitters...), which offers measurable, quantifiable, reproducible and apparently objective data. Finally, the interests of an integrated psychodynamic and biological approach applied to the study of normal and pathological development in child and adolescent are presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Prenatal stress has become a topic of increasing interest in the past few decades. The first studies examined the consequences of prenatal stress on pregnancy, and in particular the effect on prematurity and small birth weight. Based on animal studies, authors are currently interested in the effect of prenatal stress on fetal development but also on psychomotor and affective development. This article provides a literature review on the effect of prenatal stress in animal models and in humans. Then, the limits of these studies and new perspectives will be discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Beyond clinical cases, we have long wondered about the frequent occurrence of sexuality scenario among subsaharan adolescents looking like hystreria. The code by which this suffering appears is full of symbolism. Transformations of traditional family structures under the effect of the internationalization or the migration have created new familial links. Very often, our patients seem committed in a process of elaboration of a special personality composed of two parallel psychic structures, constructed one with cultural materials and the other using foreign cultural elements. The cut with roots and the tradition entails identity loss and identity crisis, the loss of cultural buoys renders naked. The change and even the inversion of the parental role face to children that advance more rapidly are very problematical. The novelty is the conflict between a father and his daughter or between a mother and her son. Conflict that is often won by the child. This heavy victory of the adolescent leads her in the pathology not much different from beauty, sickness and tradition. The culpability of the transgression makes the bed of the anguish of death that precipitate the subject in conversif disorder sometimes delirious. Therapeutic management becomes then delicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé La famille est le lieu où s’exerce la grande majorité des violences envers les enfants. L’enfant peut être maltraité et il se retrouve alors victime d’une violence intentionnelle qui lui est destinée. L’enfant peut aussi être « exposé » indirectement à la violence intrafamiliale, violence dont il est témoin, comme c’est le cas des violences conjugales, mais qui le place dans une situation qu’il subit et dont les conséquences peuvent être pour lui délétères. L’exposition à la violence intrafamiliale peut en effet entraîner chez les enfants mineurs, ce d’autant que cette exposition est précoce et répétée, des difficultés psychiques s’exprimant par des symptômes internalisés ou émotionnels et/ou des symptômes externalisés, difficultés qui vont perturber leur développement psychoaffectif. Ces enfants/adolescents accèdent peu souvent au soin de façon directe à partir d’une demande de consultation faite par leur représentant légal. Les établissements scolaires et services sociaux peuvent repérer des enfants et adolescents en souffrance et les orienter, mais interviennent souvent tardivement quand les symptômes sont déjà installés, après plusieurs mois voire années d’exposition à la violence intrafamiliale. Les services de gendarmerie peuvent avoir alors un rôle de prévention lors de leurs interventions « sur le terrain » des violences intrafamiliales ou lors de rencontres avec le représentant légal violenté au moment d’un dépôt de plainte. C’est ainsi qu’un partenariat a été mis en place depuis 6 ans entre la pédopsychiatrie et les services de gendarmerie donnant lieu à un dispositif innovant : l’équipe mobile de crise intrafamiliale (CrIFEM). Ce dispositif permet aux enfants/adolescents et aux familles de mobiliser le travail psychique de chacun, de désamorcer certains conflits impactant négativement la dynamique familiale et d’orienter, après évaluation, les enfants/adolescents qui nécessiteraient un suivi sur le plan psychologique. The family is the place where children are most likely to be exposed to violence. The child may be abused and then becomes the victim of an intentional violence directed towards him/her. The child may also be “exposed” indirectly to domestic violence as a witness, but may suffer from this situation can lead to deleterious consequences for him/her. In under age children, exposure to domestic violence can indeed lead to psychological problems expressed through internalized or emotional symptoms and/or externalized symptoms. These problems may disrupt emotional and psychological development in children, especially when facing early and repeated exposure to domestic violence. These children/adolescents have most of the time little access to care directly from a request made by their legal representative. Primary and secondary schools, and social services can identify suffering children and adolescents and guide them, but they often intervene late when symptoms are already settled, following months or years of exposure to domestic violence. Then, Police/Gendarmerie services can have a preventive role when they intervene “on the ground” of domestic violence or meet the abused legal representative at the time of the complaint. Thus, a partnership was established 6 years ago between child psychiatry and the Police/Gendarmerie services leading to an innovative creation of a mobile team of domestic crisis (équipe mobile de crise intrafamiliale [CrIFEM]). This mobile team allows the children/youth and their families to psychically mobilize themselves, to defuse some conflicts negatively affecting the family dynamics and to guide, after evaluation, children/adolescents that would require psychological care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sensory motor integration approach of severe pervasive developmental disorders has become more popular during the recent years thank to research and findings in the field of developmental psychology. In the current paper, we aim: to summarized André Bullinger''s research on infant development, in particular the relation between tonic regulation and representation of the organism, the course and the integration of the so called “corporal axis”, and early sensory skills; to show how these theoretical and developmental tools may shed new light on the clinical manifestations of autism in particular at the level of their sensory or motor understanding, and how they can be investigated in a novel specific manner with the sensory motor assessment helping clinicians to formulate therapeutic proposals for remediation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]