[Delusion, an enigmatic experience initiated by the advent of elementary phenomena]

The processes by which delusions are produced and created enable the subject to reconstruct a reality that escapes him. Several sequences make up the delusional temporality. They are not chronological, but allow us to trace the evolution of fertile moments through to stabilization in delusional certainty.

Devouring and Asphyxia Symptoms of a Cultural Complex in Present Times

The article discusses dominance and oppression in society due to cultural complexes filled with collective memories of destructiveness and perpetration, implicit memories which have remained repressed. Individual personal complexes and traumas are intertwined with traumatizing historical circumstances, setting up pairs of perpetrator and victim. The metaphors of devouring and asphyxiation are used to denote interpersonal and group relationships in which feelings of imprisonment, suffocating anxiety and expulsion are predominant, all of which leads to painful projections and introjections, dissociation and suffering. Asphyxiating death symbolizes not only environmental devastation by fire, the pandemic and the plague, but is also seen as a symptom of acute anxiety in modern times. Devouring stands for the annulment of the objectified Other in a patriarchal society best revealed in fratricidal struggles, the oppression of women and, ultimately, wars.

[The discourses of the feeling of being oneself]

Forms of discourse and practices of caregivers can help a patient who experiences affects of "loss of self". Four effective discourses can be distinguished: "containing" discourse, "empathic-sympathetic" discourse, "image" discourse and "project" discourse. For the first three to restore a person's ability to act in the world, they must be coupled with the fourth.

[The signs of the heart's suffering inscribed on the body]

Adolescence is a particular period during which certain buried sufferings can awaken. Psychosomatic pain represents a significant number of the complaints made by adolescents in pediatric services. In these cases, a multidisciplinary care will be proposed to the young person, in order to help him to recognize and to elaborate his psychic suffering, but also to understand what is hidden under the somatic complaints having no organic etiology.

Essential anxiety: COVID-19 in analytic practice

This paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on my relationship with analysands and my inner world. I reflect on the role of the archetypal Self during times of existential anxiety that may lead to an experience of 'essential anxiety'. This term refers to a meeting by a fearful ego with an inward recognition of the Self, when faced with threat. The efforts to curb the spread of the pandemic changed our ways of life, while the virus itself threatened our existence in debilitating or outright destructive ways. But what also came into view, in sessions of analysis and supervision, was the creative instinct, and a celebration of life. The soul-to-soul relationship, and the connection with images of the archetypal Self, made the experience of existential anxiety at times an essential experience that facilitated psychological growth. I discuss some advantages of on-line Jungian analysis where, despite distance and partial view, the body still serves as container to hold important psychological material, conferring a sense of wholeness for analyst and analysand. The COVID-19 crisis is terrible and terrifying but it also provides an opportunity for self-regulation and individuation.

[Anxiety, fear and panic in the time of a health crisis]

A health crisis arouses fear, anxiety and panic in healthcare workers. The aim is to make this fear and anxiety tolerable to enable work to continue. What insights can the philosophical clinical approach provide concerning the channelling of these affects?

[The philosopher to the aid of the anxious caregiver in the time of COVID-19]

Based on a clinical situation of a patient infected with COVID-19, the caregivers of the Saint-Étienne mobile psychiatric team describe their anxieties. Are the procedures carried out appropriate? Did we respect the safety measures? Are we at risk of contracting the virus and contaminating other people? The scientific discourse of "experts", who used to guide our actions, has throughout this crisis been inadequate and people's beliefs have crumbled. This abandonment is a source of anxiety for everyone, an anxiety about death. However, this reflection should kindle hope, a precious emotion for those working with patients in psychiatry.

[Virtual reality and palliative care, a complement in the care provision]

Commonplace in the world of gaming or the cinema, virtual reality headsets have made their appearance in the hospital over recent years. A nursing team in Lyon shares its feedback regarding the benefit of these tools as a complement to the care provided to patients in a palliative care unit.

[The motivational interview in a context of palliative care]

Palliative care remains a practice at the crossroads between several theoretical approaches. The palliative approach in terms of support requires a certain amount of diversity in order to reflect the plurality of the sources of anxiety. This anxiety causes ambivalence, a source of existential difficulties. This study analyses the motivational interview as a potential approach in the process to support patients suffering from progressive chronic diseases in order to improve their quality of life.

[Learning to separate together, the separation-individuation group]

The 'separation-individuation' group is offered to children aged between three and five, in outpatient consultations with a paediatric psychiatrist. It was created following the testimonies of early childhood professionals describing the feeling on the part of parents of being torn from their child, during the first year of school. Open and held on a weekly basis, it is combined with a parents' meeting organised simultaneously. The individualised group tool supports the separation-individuation process when this is particularly painful, for the child and the parents.

[Sophrology for developing strategies to help patients adapt to cancer treatments]

Radiotherapy forms a significant part of cancer treatment. Caregivers support and advise patients to help them to adapt to the treatment and limit the occurrence of side effects. A nurse and member of a mobile support care and palliative care unit shares her experience of working in a team using sophrology to relieve the anxiety resulting from the wearing of a mask in radiotherapy.

Race, religion and a cat in the clinical hour

Racial and religious identities are complex, often mired in dynamics of 'othering'. Such dynamics easily become a means of distancing the pain, fear and rage of intergenerational traumas, thus undermining ways race and religion can be powerful vehicles for the transference and countertransference. Drawing from a history of race in America as well as Jung's anxiety when meeting the stranger within himself, this paper focuses on 17 years of work between a black female patient and white female clinician (me). Together we encountered themes of hatred, silence, guilt and intimacy in the transference and countertransference, themes eventually symbolized by the presence of my cat which was locked into the bathroom for each session. This cat came to represent a bridge through developmental traumas and wounds of racism.

[Anorexia and borderline personality disorder : bonds pathology]

Comorbidity with a borderline personality disorder is far from rare in patients suffering from eating disorders. Clinically, this presents as chronic instability in many areas: interpersonal relationships, self-image, emotions, mood and acting out. Treatment is mainly based on a containing and reassuring therapeutic framework. A care plan may be put in place that incorporates reducing impulsive harmful, eating and self-harming behaviours. Dialectical behaviour therapy is intended in particular to prevent suicide risk in borderline personality disorder patients.

[Patients' questions and caregivers' answers regarding pain]

Today, although the relief from pain is well managed, it is still a major source of anxiety for patients. Caregivers must be attentive to these concerns and communicate with patients in order to determine their specific questions and fears and to provide some answers.