L'arachide au Sénégal : un moteur en panne

L'arachide, qui a été le moteur du développement de l'économie sénégalaise jusqu'au milieu des années 1970, en fournissant la majeure partie des revenus en milieu rural et en assurant 80 % des exportations, a connu un recul important cette dernière décennie. Cette crise rappelle celle qu'ont connue les pays voisins, il y a une vingtaine d'années, et qui a conduit à la disparition de cette culture. Inquiet de cette situation, le gouvernement du Sénégal a demandé à une équipe du Cirad de déterminer les raisons de la désaffection des paysans envers l'arachide, afin de pouvoir y remédier et relancer la production. Cet ouvrage est le résultat des travaux de cette équipe. Il montre que, contrairement aux idées selon lesquelles la crise de l'arachide serait principalement une crise de l'approvisionnement des huileries, avec un repli des producteurs sur le marché informel, on assiste à une 'grève' des producteurs. Par une méthodologie originale de recensement, les auteurs démontrent que la production a été longtemps surestimée. L'enquête auprès des producteurs explique la chute des rendements par la dégradation des facteurs de production (baisse de la fertilité des sols, diminution de la qualité des semences), par la disparition des services agricoles, par une politique du prix d'achat de l'arachide qui décourage les producteurs. Relancer la production de l'arachide ne suffit plus, il faut aussi prendre en compte les potentialités agricoles du pays, chercher à mieux valoriser les autres productions et tracer une politique d'appui en milieu paysan

The role of empathy in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A historical exploration

Empathy is one of the most consistent outcome predictors in contemporary psychotherapy research. The function of empathy is particularly important for the development of a positive therapeutic relationship: patients report positive therapeutic experiences when they feel understood, safe, and able to disclose personal information to their therapists. Despite its clear significance in the consulting room and psychotherapy research, there is no single, consensual definition of empathy. This can be accounted by the complex and multi-faceted nature of empathy, as well as the ambiguous and conflicting literature surrounding it. This paper provides a historical exploration of empathy and its impact on the therapeutic relationship across the most influential psychoanalytic psychotherapies: classic psychoanalysis, person-centered therapy and self-psychology. By comparing the three clinical schools of thought, the paper identifies significant differences in the function of transference and therapist’s role. Then, drawing on the different clinical uses of empathy, the paper argues that the earlier uses of empathy (most notably through Jaspers’ and Freud’s writings) are limited to its epistemological (intellectual or cognitive) features, whilst person-centered and self-psychology therapies capitalise on its affective qualities. Finally, the paper provides a rationale for further study of the overarching features of empathy in contemporary psychotherapy research

Not Belonging to one’s Self: Affect on Facebook’s Site Governance page

This article makes a contribution to a growing number of works that discuss affect and social media. I use Freudian affect theory to analyse user posts on the public Site Governance Facebook page. Freud’s work may help us to explore the affectivity within the user narratives and I suggest that they are expressions of alienation, dispossession and powerlessness that relate to the users’ relations with Facebook as well as to their internal and wider social relations. The article thus introduces a new angle on studies of negative user experiences that draws on psychoanalysis and critical theory

Turning to God in the Face of Ostracism: Effects of Social Exclusion on Religiousness

The present research proposes that individuals who are socially excluded can turn to religion to cope with the experience. Empirical studies conducted to test this hypothesis consistently found that socially excluded persons reported (a) significantly higher levels of religious affiliation (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and (b) stronger intentions to engage in religious behaviors (Study 2) than comparable, nonexcluded individuals. Direct support for the stress-buffering function of religiousness was also found, with a religious prime reducing the aggression-eliciting effects of consequent social rejection (Study 5). These effects were observed in both Christian and Muslim samples, revealing that turning to religion can be a powerful coping response when dealing with social rejection. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

'Throughout my life I've had people walk all over me': trauma in the lives of violent men

In this article we present original qualitative data gathered during prolonged ethnographic fieldwork with violent men in deindustrialised communities in the north of England. We use the data as an empirical platform for a theoretical exploration of the symbolism and subjectivising influences of traumatic life experiences in these men’s biographies. We conclude by making the tentative suggestion that there is a complex and mediated causal link between traumatic experience and a deep subjective commitment to aggression and violence in adulthood

Recognising Desire: A psychosocial approach to understanding education policy implementation and effect

It is argued that in order to understand the ways in which teachers experience their work - including the idiosyncratic ways in which they respond to and implement mandated education policy - it is necessary to take account both of sociological and of psychological issues. The paper draws on original research with practising and beginning teachers, and on theories of social and psychic induction, to illustrate the potential benefits of this bipartisan approach for both teachers and researchers. Recognising the significance of (but somewhat arbitrary distinction between) structure and agency in teachers’ practical and ideological positionings, it is suggested that teachers’ responses to local and central policy changes are governed by a mix of pragmatism, social determinism and often hidden desires. It is the often underacknowledged strength of desire that may tip teachers into accepting and implementing policies with which they are not ideologically comfortable

Social Media and its Impact on Therapeutic Relationships

In the current age of social media, the boundaries between the online and the offline, the personal and the professional, have become blurred and ambiguous. This poses significant challenges to the practice of psychoanalysis, which for a long time has been thought of as a technology‐free and private space. This paper compares how social media impacts therapeutic relationships in the broader field of psychotherapy and in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in particular. Direct breaches in therapist privacy were found to be more frequent with non‐psychoanalytic psychotherapists due to therapists’ higher online presence. Psychoanalytic psychotherapists, on the other hand, generally have a lesser online presence because of different views on therapeutic anonymity from other clinical orientations. The author suggests that this leads to different forms of virtual impingements: due to the absence of psychoanalytic therapists’ online presence, patients seek to re‐create therapists (and, by extension, therapeutic situations) on a virtual level rather than discover something that was already ‘put out there’ by therapists. Virtual manifestations of anonymity, splitting, and solipsistic introjection processes are discussed with reference to John Suler's concept of the online disinhibition effect. Further recommendations for research on social media impact are discussed

Love, artificiality and mass identification

How are we to understand the phenomenon of mass identification, epitomized in recent exhibitions of national feeling such as that of South Africa’s 2010 Football World Cup celebrations? Rather than focussing on the concepts of discourse and nationalism, or advancing an analysis of empirical data, this paper outlines a conceptual response to the challenge at hand, drawing on the tools of psychoanalytic theory. Three explanatory perspectives come to the fore. Firstly, such exhibitions of mass emotion might be understood as demonstrations of love, as examples of the libidinal ties that constitute and consolidate mass identification. Secondly, the marked artificiality of such displays of emotion and the fact of the ‘externality’ they entail might be seen, paradoxically, to be essential rather than inauthentic or secondary features of the displays in question. Thirdly, we might advance, via Lacan, that many of our most powerful emotions require not only recourse to the field of the inter-subjective, but reference also to the anonymous, ‘fictional’ framework of available symbolic forms