Bion's unfashionable thought is a challenge for our times in which anesthesia and mass thinking prevail. The themes this book addresses are time and the unconscious. In the present/past, the here and now reveals its relationship with the unredeemable time, which conditions our behaviour and is at the root of a state of hallucinosis in the form of a short-sighted view that is distorted by deep-seated wounds. The book also highlights the resonances with contemporary epistemology and physics that underlie the (...) new paradigm of psychoanalytic field theory. The topic of the unconscious raises questions about its origin and the difference between the Bionian and the Freudian unconscious. In Bion we see an evolutionary, process character emerge, with a double movement of repetition and expansion within a single system in unstable equilibrium, for which there is no conscious feeling that does not also carry with it the shadow of the unconscious. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical concepts this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers and anyone who wishes to understand more fully what it means to be human. (shrink)

Deciding between different voluntary movements implies a continuous control of the competition between potential actions. Many theories postulate a leading role of prefrontal cortices in this executive function, but strong evidence exists that a motor region like the primary motor cortex is also involved, possibly via inhibitory mechanisms. This was already shown during the pre-movement decision period, but not after movement onset. For this pilot experiment we designed a new task compatible with the dynamics of post-onset control to study the (...) silent period duration, a pause in electromyographic activity after single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation that reflects inhibitory mechanisms. A careful analysis of the SP during the ongoing movement indicates a gradual increase in inhibitory mechanisms with the level of competition, consistent with an increase in mutual inhibition between alternative movement options. However, we also observed a decreased SP duration for high-competition trials associated with change-of-mind inflections in their trajectories. Our results suggest a new post-onset adaptive process that consists in a transient reduction of GABAergic inhibition within M1 for highly conflicting situations. We propose that this reduced inhibition softens the competition between concurrent motor options, thereby favoring response vacillation, an adaptive strategy that proved successful at improving behavioral performance. (shrink)

Assimilé à la French Theory, Jean Baudrillard a été aussi célèbre, ou presque, sur les campus américains que Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari ou Lacan. Mais il est loin d'avoir aujourd'hui leur diffusion mondiale. Il a même presque totalement disparu des écrans radars. Officiellement sociologue, aucun sociologue ne le cite, aucun étudiant de sociologie ne le lit. Il faut dire qu'il a tout fait pour brouiller les pistes, en se refusant à tout simulacre de réalisme pour mieux tenter de prendre la (...) réalité de vitesse, jusqu'à annoncer son évanescence dans l'hyper-réalité du virtuel. Sa pensée, fulgurante, attirait étrangement, mais on pouvait croire que cette séduction fatale tenait à un goût tout pataphysicien des paradoxes. Or, force est de se demander s'il n'avait pas au bout du compte vu plus juste et mieux anticipé que tous ses contemporains ce qu'est désormais devenu notre monde. Ce volume, qui réunit sociologues, philosophes, économistes, théoriciens de l'esthétique et des médias, permet de prendre la mesure de son œuvre inclassable. Avec des contributions de : Gérard Briche, Alain Caillé, Jean-Paul Curnier Françoise Gaillard de Serge Latouche, Chin Min, Katharina Niemeye, Nicolas Poirier, Anne de Rugy, Clara Schmelck, François Séguret, Jean-Louis Violeau. (shrink)