1To conclude the year 2018, we have the honor to publish a Letter from Rio de Tania Rivera in the context of the presidential elections in Brazil after the shock of the results.
2We begin this issue with a presentation of an original research conducted by Jean-Michel Thurin and his team. Their article presents a complex case which was treated through psychotherapy. This study was undertaken in the first instance using the methodology of the French Psychotherapy Practice-Based Research Network (Réseau de Recherches Fondées sur les Pratiques Psychothérapiques), then subsequently in the course of a seminar made up of experienced clinicians. The study focuses on the process of change by highlighting the actions and attitudes of the therapist to support his patients in tackling his problems and sufferings. Several evaluations tools (qualitative and quantitative) are used. To begin with the Case Formulation, that brings to bare a fundamental clinical expertise; then two tools centred on the patient: the Health-Sickness Rating Scale and the Psychodynamic Functioning Scale; and finally a tool specific to psychotherapy, the Psychotherapy process-Q-set. The methodology put in place makes it possible to have reliable indications regarding what is taking place in the psychotherapy, and the impact it is having on the positive evolution of the patient. Discussion of the results after a year of therapy already make it possible to draw links between theory and practice on certain aspects, notably the framework, or the difficult place of the therapist in this psychotherapeutic context. It is an in-depth research and testimony on the case study that appears important in the evaluation of psychotherapies, of which the main author is an eminent specialist. The methodology used in this article is therefore an original contribution that we hope will inspire research.
3The following articles are grouped under a heading Varia. The New York psychoanalyst, Jamieson Webster, inaugurates it and suggests that we think about the death drive from the psychoanalyst's point of view. Is the death drive in relation to the clinical psychoanalyst a hypothesis or is it a clinical guarantee. Facing the death drive, does the analyst here hypothesize, explain, investigate, or attempt to understand it, or does the analyst provide a response, even act as a fail-safe, a frame for its undertaking, the who or what that we have there at the ready when it comes to death drives? The present article makes use of multiple clinical situations to present some elements to answer these interrogations.
4In her article, Keren Mock presents the doppelgänger as a shadow of the object and discusses its connections with melancholia and mourning. Freud’s metapsychological theory, clinical work, and transference relationships illustrate the function of the doppelgänger and its vicissitudes in the mourning process.
5Manon Bourguignon et Murielle Katz aim to bring to light a certain vagueness inherent in the terminology developed in the field of group psychoanalysis, especially with respect to the concept of psychical space. For years, psychoanalysis seems to have limited itself to the intrapsychical. Today, it appears that it is necessary to distinguish three spaces of psychical reality: intrapsychical, intersubjective, and transsubjective. However, the concepts that define these three psychical spaces vary both in their theoretical use and their explanatory value. Their critical literature review identifies the different definitions in use in the French and Argentine schools of psychanalysis while also delineating the limits of these definitions.
6To close this issue, we are opening a dossier on Psychoanalysis, Genetics and Neurobiology, which we hope will continue in future issues.
7In their article, Annik Beaulieu and Chantal Lheureux start from the observation that moderate neonatal hyperbilirubinemia may induce neurological impairment as in the BIND syndrome (Bilirubin-induced neurologic dysfunction). Some American studies now question the current standard of bilirubin level, suggesting that a more subtle clinical evaluation of the infants concerned should be made, as neurologic dysfunctions may be induced at a lesser degree than previously published. The PREAUT grid helps detect those infants who are not actively engaged in a pleasant interaction with their parents. The authors wish to highlight these issues for better clinical management, in order to pave the way for harmonious development and preventing the infant at risk from slide into autism.
8In the following article, Jessica Tran The revisits Georges Canguilhem's work in her essay on Le normal et le pathologique. His theorization of a qualitative approach to the individual who is in a state of morbidity, although not referring specifically to psychoanalysis, is nevertheless rich in possible links to Freudian psychopathology according to the author. She proposes to study what changes have been made as a result of recent neuroscience discoveries regarding the qualitative and quantitative aspects of psychopathology.
