Sensibilisation aux émotions et formation de représentations par biofeedback social - Une révision du modèle et ses implications cliniques

Undifferentiated at birth, emotions would become intelligible by being raised to consciousness through the development of sensitivity to the inner sensations accompanying the emotion, their representation and symbolization (Gergely & Watson, 1996). The social biofeedback theory of parental affect-mirroring of Gergely and Watson (1996), furthered by Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target (2002), explains how these somatosensory signals are so important that a complex, probably implicit, and possibly innate social biofeedback interaction exists between caregiver and infant, where the latter learns to differentiate between emotions through the parent’s mirroring of his emotion expression. The aim of this thesis is to revise this theory, and more precisely the ‘markedness’ hypothesis, which would be necessary to dissociate the parental mirroring from the parent and allow appropriation of its informational content as pertaining to the infant. The process of sensitization to these sensations is conceived to be integral to the symbolization of emotions in children and adults. However, ‘motherese’, the singsong prosody of markedness hypothesized to be necessary to foster successful social biofeedback interactions between caregivers and infants, requires that therapists use ‘therapese’ in the clinical setting (Fonagy, 2010), a proposition difficult to reconcile with the therapy of adults. The revision investigates whether the sensitization and symbolization of an emotion is accomplished through an internalization mechanism requiring the ‘markedness’ hypothesis, or solely through social biofeedback mechanisms based on infant contingency detection. It demonstrates that the infant’s contingency detector (similarly to biofeedback training in adults) mediates the iv functions of sensitization, representation, and symbolization of an emotion through its processes of covariance-invariance detection, maximization, and the contingent control of the parental mirroring. It allows the emotion to be raised to consciousness, with the help of the parental mirror, whether it is ‘marked’ or not. The revised model thus becomes applicable to the therapy of adults. A clinical vignette analyzed with the Boston Change Process Study Group’s perspective on change is used to contrast and illustrate the processes of sensitization and representations of emotions, and their application in adult psychotherapy. The thesis considers the clinical implications of the new model and speculates on the consequences of parental difficulties with surrendering to the social biofeedback needs of the infant, and on the consequences of emotional trauma disconnecting sensitive emotion sensations from their representations. Finally, it suggest that both kinds of difficulties can be repaired through sensitive mirroring of emotions in therapy, and that the model might be used concurrently with other models of change, by facilitating the generation of felt and symbolized inner states that can be used for self and other communication in the repair of emotional and relational difficulties in children and adults.

Keyphrases: Miroir de biofeedback social, Sensation, Emotion, Sensitization, Symbolization, Social biofeedback mirroring, Self, Representation, Sensation, Self detection, Social biofeedback