[Early infantile autism: from a psychoanalytic point of view in 1993]. / L'autisme infantile précoce: un point de vue psychanalytique en 1993.

The syndrome of early age autism sets in during the first two years of life. Various theories have been developed on the basis of etiological hypotheses postulating the occurrence of an accident in the psychic development of the infant. According to their personal theoretical orientation, authors have formulated the consequences of this accident in terms of a deficit or a regression. The author investigates various contexts in which the syndrome develops before continuing on its own. Outcomes are also diverse and do not seem to be always linked to the initial modes of organization, therefore raising some therapeutical questions.

[Psychoanalysis and the child psyche. An encounter in "a fertile land" or in a desert?]. / La psychanalyse et le psychisme de l'enfant. Rencontre "en pays fertile" ou dans le désert?

How can we have a representation of and describe early psychic life in its beginning activity before any language formation, before the child can talk about it, before it becomes organized in a sequence of memories? Construction of these early moments is part of the analytical understanding but what are the conditions necessary for its relevance? What do the mother and other interactive persons convey to the infant?

[Dysphasia]. / Dysphasies.

"Dysphasia" has been chosen to cover the severe problems related to the awareness and organization of language by the child overall in this study. Using this purely descriptive definition, we usually distinguish clinical forms, emphasizing a group of signs or a psychic movement, which are compared to an etiological value. Then, the theoretical choice justifies the therapeutic treatment and sometimes limits its action and effectiveness. During treatment related in detail, understanding the dysphasia of the child being treated develops as child and parents combine their efforts. Whether it's a question of "therapy" or "psychotherapy" isn't really relevant.

[Evaluation in adolescence of patients treated during their childhood and the prevention of psychoses]. / L'évaluation à l'adolescence de patients traités pendant leur enfance et la prévention des psychoses.

The Evening Care unit is designed for 30 children and adolescents who present severe disturbances in their psychological development and who live in perturbed-families. Results are not assessed against symptom evolution or behavior modification criteria but by studying changes in mental functioning and subject's capacity to work through the adolescent ruptures. This assessing process is illustrated with three particularly difficult case presentations.

[Young children and books]. / Les jeunes enfants et les livres.

Children come into contact very early with the written language. The work of Emilia Ferreiro, a student of Piaget, has shown that from early on, well before they can read, they know that the written word has a meaning. Their successive hypotheses show an elaboration which does not occur by chance. Experience shows that babies have a specific interest for a book as an object. They recognize the value of the pictures, as much representations of their mental representations as are words, whereas these two capacities evolve in a complementary fashion. The capacity to be interested by a narrative introduces a new form of organization in the chain of representations, whether they refer to absent or imaginary objects. A good story has a special place among the narratives the child hears, which actually have the specific structures of the written language. The authors of this work report a number of examples of very young children who are put in contact with books. They see in this a new model for mental health work which can be set up by virtue of meetings outside the school rooms, the mental health services, and even of the libraries, by people of different professional skills, in order to loosen the vice of the children's daily routine, and to give the child time to dream with the books, and to draw the adults in to a salutary disorder.