The author goes back to the distinction D. W. Winnicott made between three forms of representational activity (daydreaming, dreaming and imagining) and shows that this distinction helps to establish a typology of ways of playing video games. These three ways of gaming differ both in the way objects shown on a screen are invested and in the way the gamer relates to his internal objects. This model breaks with that of addiction while laying the groundwork for a clinical and therapeutic approach to different categories of video game players.
Teaching with serious games is increasingly a response to the challenges of pupil education. The present research was conducted over the 2009-2010 school year. This study focused, on the one hand, on self-esteem and intrinsic motivation because these correlation strongly with good results at school, and, on the other hand, on gender, because it has an effect on self-esteem and intrinsic motivation. The aim is to measure the variation of self-esteem and knowledge, for thirty-two boys and girls, ten or eleven years old, after using video games for ten hours. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) has been used both before and after the experiment, to measure the children’s self-esteem. Learning increase has been measured using questionnaires. The results show an effect on self-esteem, with a greater one for boys than for girls. The effectiveness of the proposed serious game, which deals with History and Art History, was measured and pupils learned a great deal. A gender is seen to have an effect on both self-esteem and knowledge.
The author recognizes action as a fundamental element of the video gamer’s psychology because, on the one hand, the gamer projects himself dynamically, through action, into the moving character, and, on the other hand, the gamer is going to have to represent these actions to himself as his own. But only in part, since it is important for the playful dimension that the player have fun seeing the representation of actions that are impossible for his own body. The virtual character is thus described as another self, both the double of oneself and necessarily different from oneself.
Starting with the distinction made by D. Arsenault and M. Picard between sensory, systemic and fictional immersion, the text tries to provide a metapsychological point of view of the phenomenon. Immersion can be caused by saturation of the senses, mastering of the game or identification to the protagonist. Regression, denial and attractor object correspond to the different types of immersion. As regression, the video game immersion is a fantasy of uterine regression and corresponds to different stages of the construction of reality. As negation, it relies on the suspension of the judgment of existence and a prevailing operation of self-pleasure ; as an attractor objet, video game immersion organizes the psyche around an aesthetic object. The different types of video immersion are linked to the ways each one interiorizes the world and reflect symbolizations by the body, by images and by words.
This article suggests three imaginary representations – exile, combat and masquerade – as illustrations of the unconscious forces that give rise to the digital behavior of adolescents.
Considering the important place they occupy in youth recreation, video games and the way they are used have become unavoidable objects of study. Among the questions raised by this research, two are particularly sensitive because of their ideological and political implications. The first is the over-investment these games can generate, sometimes called « Internet addiction » or « obsessive passion ». The second, revived every time incidents occur involving minors, focuses on the possible exportation « Into Real Life » of the violent content of some games. In this context, the Walloon Institute for Mental Health carried out at the request of the Walloon Minister of Health, Social Action and Equal Opportunity (Belgium), an inventory of what is known about these two issues. The article provides a summary of this work.
a systematic review of empirical research in the literature
history, and the Internet has emerged as a playground whose playing population is continually growing. Studies suggest that Internet gamers present symptoms traditionally associated with substance addiction, such as mood changes, increased tolerance and behavioral outbursts. Because today’s scientific knowledge of Internet games is abundant and appears relatively complex, this review of the literature aims to reduce the confusion by providing an innovative framework in which all the studies conducted up till now may be categorized. A total of 58 empirical studies are included in this review. There are polemical debates abouThe activity of « playing » has always been part of human t Internet gaming addiction running the gamut from the existence of a past etiology and risk factors, to the development of full-fledged addiction, followed by ramifications in terms of negative consequences and possible treatments. The results are evaluated here and propositions for future research are advanced.
After school, adolescents are on the net. Social networks, Facebook in particular, take up a large part of their virtual life. The virtual world seems to be a true platform for the playing out of adolescent games and issues. In this article, we see Facebook partly as a theater of self, a stage in itself and for the self. Talking about Facebook as a stage where the adolescent exposes himself presupposes that there is a show to see, and we may ask ourselves if this is not a showing of the adolescent moment, of the projection of certain fantasies, inner scenes that we are permitted to see through the window of Facebook. Using the case of Elisa, we will discuss the way in which Facebook can become the adolescent’s own place, an interface where adolescent fear recedes and a place for identification with peers. Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 471-481.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are two antinomical heros, with opposite qualities. One is elfin, the other is hulking ; one is elegant, the other is earthy. Distant descendants of Ulysses and Achilles, heroes often come in pairs, both indivisible and complementary. Does the psyche need this kind of bipartisanship ? Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 467-469.
In the movie Dans la maison (« In the House ») a professor and writer lives through a gifted student, who himself can live only through people he observes and makes into the heroes of his novels. It would seem that the analyst could also live by proxy through his patients who become, if not heroes of novels, at least characters in clinical vignettes. Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 461-466.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7