Objective“Michael’s game” (MG) is a card game targeting the ability to generate alternative hypotheses to explain a given experience. The main objective was to evaluate the effect of MG on delusional conviction as measured by the primary study outcome: the change in scores on the conviction subscale of the Peters delusions inventory (PDI-21). Other variables of interest were the change in scores on the distress and preoccupation subscales of the PDI-21, the brief psychiatric rating scale, the Beck cognitive insight scale, and belief flexibility assessed with the Maudsley assessment of delusions schedule (MADS).MethodsWe performed a parallel, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled superiority trial comparing treatment as usual plus participation in MG with treatment as usual plus being on a waiting list (TAU) in a sample of adult outpatients with psychotic disorders and persistent positive psychotic symptoms at inclusion.ResultsThe 172 participants were randomized, with 86 included in each study arm. Assessments were performed at inclusion (T1: baseline), at 3 months (T2: post-treatment), and at 6 months after the second assessment (T3: follow-up). At T2, a positive treatment effect was observed on the primary outcome, the PDI-21 conviction subscale (p = 0.005). At T3, a sustained effect was observed for the conviction subscale (p = 0.002). Further effects were also observed at T3 on the PDI-21 distress (p = 0.002) and preoccupation subscales (p = 0.001), as well as on one of the MADS measures of belief flexibility (“anything against the belief”) (p = 0.001).ConclusionThe study demonstrated some significant beneficial effect of MG.

The term hysteria has been used in the history of the psychoanalytical movement to describe a large variety of psychic modalities. What is the common denominator of the hysterias? The author suggests that ambivalence in relation to penetration in its passive form (vaginal desire), in its pregenital and genital valences, constitutes the essence of hysteria. It seems that the issue of hysteria thus configured finds its best resolution in the fantasy of an incorporeal penetration, which leads to orgasm, and spares one from the anxiety of destruction to the internal space as well as from the anxiety of guilt following the hoped for climax. The author is attempting to discern, by means of two case studies, how disembodied penetration, depending on whether it is fantasized or delusional, constitutes a solution, neurotic or psychotic respectively, to the issue of hysteria: the private theatre in neurosis, as well as the inhabited and influenced mind in psychosis (delusion of control), act as psychic figurations of vagina.

La recherche sur les théories du complot connaît un engouement grandissant ces dernières années. Les travaux sont issus de diverses disciplines du champ des sciences humaines. Ils mettent notamment en évidence que l’adhésion aux croyances conspirationnistes connaît un rebond à chaque moment de « crise ». La crise sanitaire que nous traversons n’échappe pas à la règle : la pandémie de COVID-19 se double d’une infodémie , selon le mot de Tedros Ghebreyesus, Directeur Général de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé. En effet, on assiste à la production et la diffusion à l’échelle internationale de fausses informations et, notamment, d’explications complotistes du coronavirus et de ses conséquences. Cette flambée du conspirationnisme est l’occasion d’interroger les enjeux psychiques et psychopathologiques de ce phénomène face à la « crise », qu’elle soit collective ou individuelle, sanitaire ou existentielle. Après avoir procédé à une revue de l’importante littérature scientifique internationale consacrée, ces derniers mois, aux théories conspirationnistes relatives à la crise sanitaire du COVID-19, nous soutenons l’intérêt d’aborder le phénomène conspirationniste sous un angle psychopathologique.

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Objectives. The Beck Cognitive Insight Scale (BCIS) is composed of two subscales, selfreflectiveness and self-certainty, assessing reflectiveness and openness to feedback, and