This study contributes to a better understanding of contemporary anxieties in American culture by applying meanings derived from mythology to panic inducing cultural phenomena. It asks if the Greek god Pan metaphorically exemplifies the archetypal core within an American cultural anxiety complex. The principal technical device used is Jung's method of amplification, rendering cultural material at a more psychologically substantial level. This hermeneutic research interprets primary sources and commentaries for three historical events. A pattern of escalating anxiety in America is posited as underlying bullying and scapegoating that led to the 1999 Columbine massacre. In 2001, American reactions following the terr,orist attack on 9111 congealed into panic-driven legislation and escapism. Currently approximately 26,000 military personnel are raped by their peers, aided by apathy that allows a persecutory element within the military to remain in command. These problems fall within the mythological purview of Pan. Manifest destiny, exceptionalism, the historical domination of the Mideast, bullying in public schools, and the chain of commarid in the military are all examples of a dominant group negatively projecting onto an out-group. This thesis found the best predictor of the birth of a cultural complex is if a dominant group or culture has inadequate means to examine its own projections. Pan and his companion nymphs are envisioned here as both a defensive shell of "exceptionalism" and a core naivete in American culture. Pan's compulsion into life is a symbolic expression of an archetype that was once alive in the bold spirit of America, but has rusted into paralysis due to a lack of initiative towards contemporary problems. Where the US once unconsciously identified with the most courageous and expansive in the Pan archetype, now the archetype of panic stalks America.

This thesis investigates national identification by applying psychosocial methodology to discourses produced in Russia during the era of ‘Putinism’ (2000- ). Existing literature on post-Soviet Russia frequently claims that at the heart of the nation lies an absence of symbolic functions or subjective formations with which Russians could identify. At the same time, there has been relatively little empirical work that seeks to examine national identification using a psychosocial approach. The study fills this lacuna by looking for moments of identification across different texts, such as interviews, surveys and media representations. Using as its starting point the conditions of possibility of post-2000 Russia, the study pays attention to societal shifts and disjunctures, examining how they are reflected in discursive patterns and formations. The dissertation’s empirical element consists of two parts. Through the analysis of interviews and open-ended surveys, the first part documents respondents’ ambivalent relationship with Russia and Russianness, which is characterized by splitting and disavowal. In the second part, the study deploys a case study approach. The first case study focuses on discourses of rejection and (dis)identification as featured in the Russian public’s responses to Pussy Riot. It concludes that in their policing of Russianness and the demarcation of features deemed undesirable as embodied by the group, participants in the debate have found ways of both shifting the threat Pussy Riot represents, and also of once again ‘enjoying the nation’. The second case study examines discourses that seek to elicit identification in the populace via representational mechanisms around the figure of Vladimir Putin. It is argued that the various strategies employed to activate leader love, ranging from hypermasculinity to hyperrealism, seem to indicate a void at the heart of the Russian president’s persona and, by extension, his national project, making them profoundly unstable. Overall, the thesis provides a rare empirical contribution to the psychosocial study of national identification. It addresses the interrelation between imaginary and symbolic identification and the pivotal role of fantasmatic processes therein. The identifications I locate in the thesis are precarious and fleeting, speaking of the loss of a fantasy of national greatness, and of an internalization of images and scenes borrowed from literature and history. The study also offers a consideration of the implications of such attachments for Russian society, thus providing further illustration of the interdependence of the psychic and the social.

Despite Darwin's wishes for evolution to influence psychology, evolutionary psychology remains a controversial issue and as such lingers in the shadows of counselling psychology. It is argued that although it can be difficult to support evolutionary psychology with tests, it may be of use in counselling psychology if it is experienced by clients as valuable. In the current study, data was gathered from focus groups, dyads, 1:1 interviews and email responses from people with social anxiety to discover more about the experiences of receiving an evolutionary perspective of social anxiety and to consider what implications these experiences have on how participants then make sense of social anxiety. Qualitative content analysis was used to interpret the data and a range of experiences were reported. The main themes elucidated were: negotiating with the breadth and depth of the information and plausibility of the perspective, emotional experiences of the perspective including normalising, validating and shaming, consideration of the bigger picture, and consideration of the future. It is concluded that evolutionary perspectives may be useful to consider in counselling psychology, but that this should be carried out in accordance with the individual needs of the client. Further research and practical implications are explored.

Racial identity can be defined as the personal understanding, both explicitly and implicitly, that one is similar to some people and different from others, according to concepts based around the idea of race. In the US, there has been a lot of research, including on the identity of persons having parents from different races. However, in the UK, there is the view that race is a taboo topic, and this is particularly true in psychology; hence strikingly little such research has been conducted. This situation seems most evident particularly regarding how mixed-race persons develop their racial identity. This thesis begins to redress the imbalance. A literature review on "race (Chapter 1)", is followed by a literature review on "mixed-race (Chapter 2)", with many ideas forwarded in these two chapters then tested in five further qualitative and/or quantitative research chapters. In order, these investigate the salience of race at the explicit level (Chapter 3), then at the implicit level (Chapter 4, regarding black and white persons). Chapters then investigate the mixed-race identity qualitatively first in adults (Chapter 5), and then qualitatively/quantitatively alongside self-esteem measures in adolescents (Chapter 6); before a fifth empirical chapter considers the implicit level again but this time specifically regarding attitudes by and towards mixed-race persons (Chapter 7). Taken together, the five empirical chapters find that the parental races tend to see "race" differently to each other. Regarding specifically mixed-race, we find that mixed-race persons shift in identity first from childhood (a more black identity) to adolescence (white identity), and then back again from adolescence to young adulthood (black identity). We additionally find that mixed-race persons tend to have a less definite sense of identity than their parental races, and that this view of mixed-race is also held by one of the parental groups (the white group). It is hoped that further research will now begin to build on these findings. The final chapter (Chapter 8) offers a start at this, outlining a new theoretical account of the development of a mixed-race identity.

Au regard du fait que le père soit toujours incertain, nous avons tenté de saisir comment se fait l’appropriation psychique de la paternité des hommes français et turcs de France, dans le monde contemporain. Dans cet objectif, nous avons tenté de recueillir les ressentis, attentes ainsi que les marqueurs du devenir père, au fil de la période périnatale. Nous avons procédé, au travers de paroles singulières d’hommes devenant père, à ce recueil de données. Nous avons observé que la conjointe amorce le processus amenant à la paternaliité lors de l’annonce de sa grossesse. Le rapport imaginaire de ces hommes à l’enfant va forger cette construction mais également tous les protagonistes avec lesquels ils seront en contact. Le remboursement de la dette symbolique est le moteur de cette construction. En effet, le père par les signifiants qui lui sont propres, créé son rapport particulier au père. La langue dans laquelle il s’inscrit y joue un rôle : le père est éminemment un produit culturel. / Given that the father is always uncertain, we tried to understand what drive French men and Turkish men from France to claim ownership of psychic fatherhood, in the contemporary world. In order to achieve this, we attempt to collect inner feelings, expectations as well as father becoming’s indicators, throughout the perinatality period. We proceed by data collection by way of singular talks of men who are in the process of becoming-father. We observed that wife primes the process leading to fatherhood at the time of the announcement of pregnancy. The imaginary link of these men to the child will forge this construction but also every protagonists with whom they will be in contact. The symbolic debt’s refund is the driving force of this construction. Indeed, the father with his own signifiers, creates a personal relation of father. The language in which he comes within plays a role : the father is eminently a cultural product.

La Corse figure parmi les zones les plus criminogènes d'Europe alors que ceux qui y vivent, et les touristes qui la visitent, en parlent volontiers comme d'un paradis terrestre. Cette thèse tente d'interroger ce paradoxe en faisant appel aux concepts de la psychanalyse pour ouvrir de nouvelles pistes permettant d'éclairer autrement le phénomène de la violence insulaire dans un débat déjà largement ouvert par les spécialistes des sciences humaines et bien sûr les journalistes. En prenant appui sur la théorie du signifiant élaborée par Jacques Lacan nous analyserons le drapeau, cet emblème qui identifie une communauté à l'international et auxquels les membres de cette communauté s'identifient généralement. Deux versions historiques seront étudiées : celui à tête de Maure et celui à l'effigie de L'Immaculée Conception de la Vierge Marie qui lui succède pendant la révolution pour l'indépendance, en 1735. Cette confrontation permet de soutenir que, si la Corse ne parvient pas à passer de la horde à l'État, c'est en partie en lien avec les signifiants proposés aux insulaires par son héraldique lesquels ne favorisent pas la compréhension des lois exogamiques et donc les passages que constituent les complexes d'OEdipe et de castration. La définition du terrorisme comme « guerre psychologique » justifie le recours à la psychanalyse pour en détecter les ressorts à travers une thématique qu'elle connaît bien : la notion de limite et de franchissement des limites à l'oeuvre dans toutes les formes de terrorisme. / Corsica is one of the most crimogenic areas in Europe, even though the residents and visiting tourists refer to it as an earthly paradise. This dissertation attempts to examine this paradox by calling on concepts of psychoanalysis in order to explore new avenues that may be able to provide insight and otherwise shed light on the phenomenon of insular violence in a debate that is already largely open and discussed by social science specialists and, of course, journalists. Based on the theory of the Signifier, developed by Jacques Lacan, we will analyse the flag, the symbol which identifies a community to the rest of the world and to which members of this community generally identify themselves. Two historical versions will be studied: that of the Saracen's head and the effigy of the lmmaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, which succeeded it during the revolution for independence in 1735. Such a confrontation enables the supposition that if Corsica is unable to pass from mob rule to State rule, this is partly in connection with the signifiers suggested to the islanders by their genealogy which does not encourage the understanding of exogamous laws and thus the routes leading to Oedipus and castration complexes. The definition of terrorism as "psychological war" justifies the use of psychoanalysis to discover its origins by means of a thematic which it is very familiar with: the notion of limits and transgressing limits.

Le Mali est un pays du Sahel dans lequel les Musulmans constituent plus de 90% de la population. L’islam est une religion qui y est ancrée dans le quotidien et la mémoire sociale. Cette étude part d’observations cliniques sur la pratique de l’islam par de jeunes Maliens, suite à un passé de difficultés psychiques. L’objectif de la recherche est de déterminer les bénéfices thérapeutiques de l’islam pour les Musulmans maliens, et de préciser en quoi ces bénéfices peuvent s’appuyer sur une relation d’objet avec Allah, le Dieu de l’islam. De décembre 2010 à juin 2012, nous avons interrogé des savants islamiques, historiens, et des anthropologues, sur la place de l’islam dans les sociétés ouest-africaines. Dans une approche complémentariste, nous sommes partis de constats pluridisciplinaires, pour mener des entretiens cliniques de recherche. Les huit participants rencontrés sont des Maliens, femmes et hommes, entre vingt-trois et vingt-huit ans, dans la fin du processus de construction identitaire adolescent. Ces personnes ont été sélectionnées, car leur pratique de l’islam s’est récemment renforcée. Il s’agissait d’analyser les nécessités et bénéfices de leur pratique nouvelle, et ainsi constater ce que l’islam et la relation avec Allah ont pu apporter comme fonctions. L’islam et son Dieu semblent permettre une réécriture de soi, dans la correspondance avec un sacré transcendant les vicissitudes quotidiennes, et délivrant de l’oppression social, ou des insatisfactions que les participants sentent qu’ils ne peuvent outrepasser. Cet islam est puisé dans un noyau familial, et historique, dans lequel Dieu trouve une figuration objectale en écho avec des objets de l’ontogénèse, et du transgénérationnel, pour colmater les fragilités individuelles. Les frustrations liées à la pratique religieuse sont pensées comme des évènements sacrés, dans un Jihad, une lutte sainte, vers l’épanouissement. L’islam et ses pratiques offrent un contexte de contenance. / Mali is a country of the Sahel where Muslims amount to over 90% of the population. Islam is a religion that is rooted in everyday life and social memory. This study stems from clinical observations regarding the practice of Islam by Malian youths, following prior psychic hardships. The aim of the research is to determine the therapeutics benefits of Islam for the Muslim Malians, and to precise how such benefits grow from an object relationship with Allah, the God of Islam. From December 2010 to June 2012, we have met Islamic scholars, historians, and anthropologists, inquiring about the place of Islam in West African societies. With a complementary approach, we drove our reflection with multidisciplinary acknowledgments, to lead clinical research interviews. The eight participants we met are Malians, women and men, aged twenty-one to twenty-eight, ending the identity construction process of adolescence. These persons were selected because their practice of Islam recently intensified. We purported to analyze the necessity and the benefits of their new practice, and thus note what functions Islam and the relationship with Allah brought forth.Islam and its God seem to allow a rewriting of oneself, in correspondence with a sacredness transcending everyday tribulations, and delivering from social oppression or dissatisfaction the participants felt they could not overcome. This Islam is tapped from family and social cores, in which God is represented as an object, echoing other objects of the ontogenesis, and the transgenerational legacy, so as to amend individual fragilities. Frustrations linked to the religious practice are thought of as sacred events, in a Jihad, a holy war, to self-fulfillment. Islam and its practices offer a context of holding.

Le travail statistique a finalement été effectué avec 317 personnes. Les outils de collecte de données étaient l'inventaire de personnalité NEO PI-R, la version abrégée du questionnaire de l’OMS sur la qualité de vie et le questionnaire d'intelligence culturelle. Pour l'analyse des données, des statistiques descriptives et inférentielles (analyse de corrélation, régression et équations structurelles) ont été utilisées. Les résultats montrent que les traits de personnalité ont une corrélation significative avec la qualité de vie. Parmi ces traits, il y a une corrélation négative avec le névrosisme et une corrélation positive avec les quatre autres facteurs. Par ailleurs, tous les facteurs de la variable « qualité de vie » présentent une corrélation positive significative avec toutes les composantes de l’intelligence culturelle. En ce qui concerne les indices de qualité de l'ajustement du modèle final, nous pouvons affirmer que le modèle fourni et ses coefficients de régression montrent que ces coefficients expliqueraient avec précision la prédiction de la qualité de vie basée sur les traits de personnalité et l'intelligence culturelle. / The statistical work was completed with 317 people. The data collection tools were NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), short version of the WHO quality of life questionnaire and the Cultural Intelligence Questionnaire. For analyzing the data, descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation analysis, regression, and structural equations) were used. The findings show that personality traits have a significant correlation with the quality of life. Among those traits, there is a negative correlation with neuroticism and a positive one with the other four factors. Meanwhile, all the factors of variable “quality of life” have a significant positive correlation with all the components of cultural intelligence. Regarding the goodness-of-fit indices of the final model, we can claim that the provided model and its regression coefficients show that these coefficients would accurately explain the prediction of the quality of life based on personality traits and cultural intelligence.

La recherche explore les liens existants entre le vécu socioculturel et le fonctionnement psychique des femmes qui demandent une aide psychologique à Alger-Centre. Nous avons démarré par l’idée que le vécu traditionnel pèse lourdement sur le fonctionnement psychique. La problématique de ce travail a été posée ainsi : quelles seraient les liens de cause à effet entre le vécu socioculturel et le fonctionnement psychique des femmes souffrantes ? Les hypothèses de travail supposent que le vécu socioculturel pourrait favoriser un fonctionnement hystéro-phobique. Méthodologie : Ce travail s’inscrit dans un référentiel psychanalytique. La population d’étude est de 100 femmes, toutes soumises à l’étude par un entretien clinique et un test projectif. Résultats : la majorité des femmes présente un fonctionnement hystéro-phobique. Elles ont toutes une fragilité du moi avec un besoin de dépendance. Elles ont, dans leur ensemble, une difficulté à assumer ou vivre les désirs, notamment ceux relatifs à la sexualité. Ceci confirme la prégnance d’une forte répression qui pèse lourdement sur leur fonctionnement psychique. / The research explores the links existing between a sociocultural experience and the psychological functioning of women that request psychological assistance in downtown Algiers. We have started our reflection from the idea that women’s experience in a traditional environment has a significant influence on their psychological functioning. The issue of this research was formulated as follows: what is the cause and effect relationship between the sociocultural experience and the psychological functioning of the suffering women? Our working hypotheses assume that the sociocultural experience could contribute to a hystero- phobic functioning. Methodology: this work is carried out within a psychoanalytical research framework. The study population was composed of 100 women, all subjected to a clinical interview and a projective test. Results: most of the women had a hystero-phobic functioning. They all have a weak self and a need to depend on someone else. Most of them have a difficulty to admit or to live desires, especially sexual desires. This confirms the strength of a powerful repression that heavily influences their psychological functioning.

Ce travail de recherche explique comment à travers la mobilisation de certains mécanismes socio-cognitifs, les populations camerounaises parviennent à préserver la stabilité dans leur pays. L’hypothèse de départ de cette recherche était que le savoir partagé à propos du risque et l'illusion de la permanence de la justice dans la société camerounaise sont un paravent à l'éclatement d'une crise sociale majeure. Cette hypothèse de départ a été testée par le biais de 3 enquêtes visant à ressortir l'influence des représentations sociales de la paix et du risque, et de la croyance en un monde juste sur la stabilité qui prévaut au Cameroun. Grâce aux données recueillies (N=156) par le biais des questionnaires d'associations libres et de caractérisation, nous avons mis en évidence le fait que l'évocation de la paix renvoie principalement à la sécurité et au brassage des populations. Pour nos participants, la sécurité et le brassage des populations sont considérés comme ce sur quoi la permanence de la concorde sociale repose. L'évocation du risque a quant à elle révélé que les carences de gouvernance, illustrées par l'allusion à la mauvaise gouvernance, la corruption ou le chômage, sont considérées comme les principales menaces qui pèsent sur la pérennité de la stabilité. / This research explains how through the mobilization of some socio-cognitive mechanisms, the cameroonian people manage to maintain stability in their country. The hypothesis of this research was that the knowledge shared about risk and the illusion of permanence of justice in Cameroon are a screen to the breakup of a major social crisis. This assumption was tested through 3 investigations to highlight the influence of the social representations of peace and risk, and the belief in a world just on the stability prevailing in Cameroon. Data collected (N=156) using the questionnaires of free associations and characterization highlighted the fact that the evocation of peace refers primilary to security and the mixing of populations. Security and the intermingling of populations are thus considered to be the pillars of the permanence of social harmony. The evocation of risk revealed that the shortcomings of governance, illustrated by the allusion to poor governance, corruption or unemployment, are considered to be the main threats weighing on the sustainability of the stability. These social representations of peace and the risk do not show a questioning of cohabitation between individuals and communities living in Cameroon. This state of affairs reflects the effectiveness of the existence of a common language and a specific identity ot the population about the prevention of social crises. These results highlight the existence of a form of consensus about other countries in serious social crises. The study of the influence of the belief in a just world on the attachment of Cameroonian to maintain peace (N=213) did not established links between these two factors. If the results of studies in relation with social representations corroborate with other works, the finding of the research on the belief in a just world did not highlight none of the correlations contained in the literature.