Citation

Bourrat M. Neuropsychiatr. Enfance Adolesc. 2004; 52(4): 210.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0222-9617(04)00067-4

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Confronted in our practice as catchment area pedopsychiatrists with referral for consultations, not only for difficult babies but also for young children with sleeping problems, we have noticed the frequent presence of traumatic elements in these babies' family antecedents who seem to show what we call a hyperactivity. Both formerly and at present, we have worked and received grieving parents after perinatal deaths, we have compared our observations in these two situations. It seems to us that these two situations could be mutually enlightened. What we will try to clarify is the link that may exist between the hyperactive symptom showed by the baby and the maternal psychic functioning in the case of a trauma. In fact, if there has been much interest in maternal depression and its incidence in interactive dysfunctions, as far as we know there have been a lot of fewer studies looking forward to the specificity of traumatic situations, which seems to dismiss the impossibility of symbolisation, fantasization and to oblige the mothers to repeat everything to do with the trauma which should not be conscious. In accordance with our thoughts, there exists a flaw in the maternal excitation barrier system which means that what is normally transformed by the mother into thought elements (elements beta of Bion) activates the baby's motor. The baby is reduced to carrying out an act deprived of any meaning in absence of the "thought machine" which thinks and, in a circular way, produces a physical response (walking with the baby in one's arms, playing with him or sitting him in a baby walker)...which keeps and maintains, in the same time, the act and the exhaustion which prevents from thinking. We state the importance in this context of undertaking has an early mother-baby therapy which could enable us to restore the thought capacity. The risk is the escape in the recovery, either it is the one that happens very quickly after the beginning of the treatment before there is a psychic elaboration and interiorisation, or the one brought on by walking, which gives the impression that the child, with the independence that this brings, has calmed down.