You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The group is characterized by its informal nature (an open group) and heterogeneous membership, which has proved to be both a difficulty and an advantage. After a period of high turnover, we are now a group of 24 participants who are highly committed to our monthly meetings. We come from a wide range of professions: about two-thirds are mental-health professionals and art therapists, while the rest are clinical neurologists and neuropsychologists. Our main goal is trying to establish a working dictionary, in order to bridge the gap between the various participants of the group. After having studied the concept of “agency”—as described in our earlier report—we now aim at examining the different terms related to “control mechanisms” (monitoring, error detection, impulse control, ego functions, self-monitoring of social organizations, etc.).
During the spring of 2004, a series of cases were each presented by a clinician and discussed by another member, representing the neurobiological point of view. During these meetings we had fruitful discussions. We therefore wish to use this method as a model for our future meetings, and perhaps it is also a good format for eventually publishing our proceedings. With this in mind, we devoted two meetings to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), with two discussants: a neuropsychologist and a psychoanalyst. The discussion centered around similarities and differences between the psychoanalytic literature concerning OCD and the underlying neuropathology of the disorder.
We have also discussed issues of pain as it is processed somatically and experienced emotionally, its monitoring functions, and its emotional valence. With the help of a neurologist and a movement therapist, we addressed the problem of motor control by studying the awareness of Chorea patients of their abnormal movements.
We end each meeting with 15 minutes of reflection on the work done during the meeting. This procedure involves the group in reflecting on the way in whic