Migration, exil, déportation, transplantation, exode, expatriation, autant de mots pour qualifier le départ d’un pays. Autant les sciences sociales se sont attachées à comprendre la migration sous toutes ses formes depuis longtemps, autant la psychologie « de la migration » n’en est qu’à ses débuts. Elle s’est, pour l’heure, surtout intéressée aux difficultés rencontrées par les immigrés, mais peu à l’émigré.Il est donc question dans ce travail de tenter de mettre à jour les processus psychiques, et dynamiques préalables au départ. Pour ce faire, j’ai choisi de me mettre également en situation de migration pendant le travail de la recherche, pour rencontrer, accompagner et prendre en charge des candidats aux départs, et des migrants en situation de transit. S’est révélé, au cours de ce travail, la complexité due aux emboitements des différents espaces de réalités auxquelles chaque sujet a à faire. Malgré tout, il est possible de dire que les processus migratoires se mettent en place à partir de contextes tyranniques (familiaux, sociaux) au sein desquels l'emprise et la violence sont au cœur du lien. Le prétexte économique, souvent mis au premier plan, vient symboliser la dualité dette / réparation de la dette, et semble consécutif au fantasme de meurtre qui agite le groupe familial. La migration manifeste une forme de libido d'expression épistémophilique. Elle est la mise en acte d'une quête de sens sur la jouissance de l'autre, parent, de la violence qu'il a agie en tyrannisant le groupe. La migration est métaphore, mais elle est aussi symptôme ; elle est à la fois tentative de mise en conflit par le déplacement de l’originaire aliénant, et répétition par retournement de mécanismes de rejet, d’exclusion. / Migration, exile, deportation, transplantation, exodus, expatriation are as many words to describe leaving a country. Though for a long time, social sciences have been attempting to understand all forms of migration, migration psychology is starting out. Up to now, it was interested in studying the immigrant's difficulties more than the emigrant.This study tries to update the psychic and dynamic process preliminary to departure. This is why I deliberately became a migrant during the whole research: I encountered, accompanied and took in charge prospective and transit migrants.My work enlightened on the complexity due to the diverse and intricate spaces of realities each subject has to deal with.However, migratory processes can be described as induced by oppressive contexts (in family or society) where control and violence are at the core of the bond. Economic motives are often put forward: they symbolize the duality of debt and reparation, and seem to be resulting from the murder fantasy in the family group.Migration denotes a form of libido and of epistemophilic drive. It is the actuation of a quest for the meaning of the other's (the parent's) narcissistic pleasure; it questions the violence and the control the other exerts over the group.Migration is both a metaphor and a symptom; it is the attempt to challenge and to modify the original alienation, as well as a repetition and a reversal of mechanisms of rejection and exclusion.

En Afrique de l’Ouest, les conduites suicidaires, estimées autrefois rares, sont de plus en plus fréquentes. Dans le Sud Bénin, les études effectuées au centre national hospitalier soulignent non seulement l’augmentation de la fréquence des tentatives de suicide et l’absence de prise en charge psychologique des suicidants, mais aussi la nécessité de prendre en compte des interprétations culturelles. La question du sens et de la prise en charge des actes suicidaires s’y pose donc avec une grande acuité.En conséquence, l’objectif de la présente recherche est d’approcher le sens psychique des tentatives de suicide des jeunes adultes dans le Sud Bénin et d’y évaluer le rôle et la place du psychologue clinicien d’orientation psychanalytique.Il s’agit d’une étude qualitative. La mise en tension des références psychanalytiques avec des éléments d’anthropologie sociale ou des caractéristiques du contexte constitue un des axes principaux de ce travail. La méthodologie adoptée est une recherche-action comprenant l’instauration d’un protocole d’accueil des suicidants et la réalisation de « rencontres anthropologiques » afin de mieux cerner les questions suicidaires dans le contexte béninois.Il ressort de l’analyse que les suicidants sont en proie à une crise identitaire où l’acte, réactionnel, prend la valeur d’une recherche de refondation psychique et répond à un double mouvement de désintrication et réintrication pulsionnelle. Tandis qu’une situation-écran engendre un vécu traumatique qui conduit à l’autodestructivité, l’acte suicidaire s’inscrit dans un processus de réintrication pulsionnelle et de remaniement identitaire. Ce processus, que j’ai nommé ici refondation, est rendu possible par l’accueil fait au suicidant à l’issue de sa tentative de suicide. De cette compréhension découlent un cadre conceptuel pour le clinicien et des dispositifs cliniques pertinents pour la prise en charge des suicidants dans le Sud Bénin. / In West Africa, suicidal behaviors, estimated once rare, are increasingly becoming frequent. Yet, in Southern Benin, previous studies at the National University Hospital have noted an increase in young adults’ suicide attempts and the lack of psychological assessment and support to the attempters, but also the need to take cultural interpretations into account. So, the question of the meaning and the care of suicidal acts arises with acuity.It is in this framework that our research is being carried out. The aim is to achieve a better psychodynamic understanding of young adults’ suicide attempts in Southern Benin, and to assess, in this particular context, the role of a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist. This is a qualitative study. The confrontation of psychoanalytic references with social anthropology elements or characteristics of the context is one of the main focuses of this work. The methodological procedure used for data collection includes a clinical intake protocol, which is adapted to the context and implemented to suicide attempters, and «anthropological encounters» as a way to open up local concepts of suicide in order to better identify suicidal issues. It appears from the clinical understanding that attempters are experiencing an identity crisis wherein the suicidal act represents a research of psychic overhaul. One can thus argue that some young adult suicide attempts in Southern Benin meet two movements of drive defusion and fusion. While screen-circumstances produce a traumatic experience which leads to self-destructiveness, the suicidal act is part of a drive fusion process and specific rearrangements in identity processes. This process, which I named here “psychic refondation” or “psychic rebirth”, is made possible by the clinical reception given to attempters after their suicide attempts. From this understanding arises a conceptual framework for clinical psychologists and relevant clinical settings to take care of suicide attempters in Southern Benin.

Text in English / This research was aimed at giving a voice to three women, who are constructed as having had a traumatic event recalled from their autobiographical memory. To achieve this objective an epistemological framework of social constructionism was used to investigate autobiographical memory recall of trauma. Three in-depth interviews were conducted with participants who constructed themselves as having had a traumatic event. A case study approach was used to gain access to the information and to compare themes. The research explored the way in which dissociation, voluntary thought suppression, minimisation and outright denial enabled the three participants to alter unbearable memories through the use of recurring themes. To interpret these stories the content of the themes was analysed using thematic content analysis. The participants represented different cultures, languages and religions. In sharing their symptoms this did not necessarily mean they attached the same meaning to a specific theme, as individual meaning-making corresponded to the individual‟s background and history and their perception of the trauma. The stories related by the three participants revealed a shattered worldview that brought them into opposition with community norms and standards, which the narrators experienced as silencing and judgemental. In this regard the researcher‟s aim was to generate information from the participants themselves. This inquiry into the personal trauma stories and meanings suited a qualitative research approach, a form of methodology that allowed personal insight into the meanings the three participants attributed to their trauma and the autobiographical recall of trauma. At the same time it allowed a co-constructed reality to take shape between the researcher‟s reality and the participant‟s reality, always acknowledging the importance of their being the expert of their own individual trauma memory. This is in contrast to a quantitative approach which focuses on numbers to quantify the results; a qualitative approach on the other hand is a personal, rich information-gathering tool that takes into account the emotions and meaning-making of each individual story without any intention to generalise the information gathered to a larger population It is hoped that through this research there is a realisation that although trauma victims share symptoms, the meaning-making of the individual attached to this trauma is influenced by their society and history within their respective environments. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

This research was aimed at giving a voice to three women, who are constructed as having had a traumatic event recalled from their autobiographical memory. To achieve this objective an epistemological framework of social constructionism was used to investigate autobiographical memory recall of trauma. Three in-depth interviews were conducted with participants who constructed themselves as having had a traumatic event. A case study approach was used to gain access to the information and to compare themes. The research explored the way in which dissociation, voluntary thought suppression, minimisation and outright denial enabled the three participants to alter unbearable memories through the use of recurring themes. To interpret these stories the content of the themes was analysed using thematic content analysis. The participants represented different cultures, languages and religions. In sharing their symptoms this did not necessarily mean they attached the same meaning to a specific theme, as individual meaning-making corresponded to the individual‟s background and history and their perception of the trauma. The stories related by the three participants revealed a shattered worldview that brought them into opposition with community norms and standards, which the narrators experienced as silencing and judgemental. In this regard the researcher‟s aim was to generate information from the participants themselves. This inquiry into the personal trauma stories and meanings suited a qualitative research approach, a form of methodology that allowed personal insight into the meanings the three participants attributed to their trauma and the autobiographical recall of trauma. At the same time it allowed a co-constructed reality to take shape between the researcher‟s reality and the participant‟s reality, always acknowledging the importance of their being the expert of their own individual trauma memory. This is in contrast to a quantitative approach which focuses on numbers to quantify the results; a qualitative approach on the other hand is a personal, rich information-gathering tool that takes into account the emotions and meaning-making of each individual story without any intention to generalise the information gathered to a larger population It is hoped that through this research there is a realisation that although trauma victims share symptoms, the meaning-making of the individual attached to this trauma is influenced by their society and history within their respective environments. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)