TREATING CONCENTRATION PROBLEMS THROUGH PSYCHOTHERAPY IN PARIS 9

Why see a psychologist to treat attention disorders?

Like most thought disorders (obsessions, mental ruminations, difficulty prioritising, procrastination), concentration problems result from the inner battle that the person wages against their own unconscious desire. Most often belonging to the clinical picture of obsessive neurosis, concentration disorders form a particularly common symptom.

To clarify the nature of this intrapsychic battle which causes concentration difficulties, we must quickly return to the Freudian discovery. At the end of the 19th century, Freud discovered that human beings defend themselves against unconscious tendencies that they refuse to recognize because they are not compatible with the image they represent of themselves: to avoid these unbearable thoughts, we use defence mechanisms that allow us to maintain these unconscious representations.

If it is possible, for example, to repress certain thoughts that we consider unacceptable, Freud also noticed another mechanism which consists of isolating thoughts by breaking the link that articulates them, as if they had no connection with each other.

This defence mechanism, Freud will call psychic isolation, is mainly at play in concentration disorders.

Characteristic of obsessional neurosis, psychic isolation makes it possible to keep disturbing thoughts at a distance by keeping them isolated. But by cutting the logical links between thoughts, isolation goes against the very idea of concentration, that is to say this tendency to unite, to gather, to synthesise. It separates the associated thoughts and creates more and more circumscribed islands of thoughts, disconnected from each other, in which the being can get lost and turn in circles.

Thus, psychic isolation creates islands of focus that monopolise all interest and form obsessions.

Like mental blinders that prevent you from seeing the whole landscape, the price to pay of this obsessive defence mechanism affects most thought processes. By focusing attention on details disconnected from the whole, the thought disorders produced by psychic isolation are represented both in errors of reasoning, in obsessions and ruminations, but also in mental disorders. attention and concentration.

For example, attention to detail can result in a tendency to scatter and be distracted: by focusing and monopolising his attention, any exterior or interior element can easily distract the neurotic. If this proves to be harmful for school, professional and family life, it should also be noted that the difficulty in concentrating seems to increase when the task to be carried out constitutes a request coming from another. Indeed, the infantile fixation which characterises obsessional neurosis in the relation to demand can generate a form of inhibition which saturates any possibility of concentration. Like a

psychic blockage that inhibits thought, the request of the other can have an effect of mental stupefaction.

If psychic isolation leads the obsessive neurotic to focus his attention on details, generating difficulties in abstraction and synthesis, it also produces a form of rigid and restrictive concentration, an obsessive concentration.

Whether all the interest is monopolised by a job, a video game, stock market shares or even by baking a cake, this form of exclusive and successive concentration can lead the obsessive to forget the other essential parts of his or her life. existence: work, love life, hygiene... Concentrating excessively on one task at the expense of others, the neurotic's "mono-task" functioning can become hell, both for himself and for those around him: by having difficulty prioritising and by no longer assuming the rest of the functions necessary for one's existence, it is often the environment which pays the price for this form of limited concentration for which the term obsessive is particularly appropriate.

For fear of losing himself by transforming his projects into obsessions, the neurotic can easily find excuses not to confront them. Whether he procrastinates or does a job that is of no interest to him, he may come to avoid any centre of interest and ultimately isolate himself from the world, from his desires, from his existence.

To avoid this perdition into which his own obsessions can lead him, the obsessive neurotic may be tempted to set up a form of rigid organisation which dictates his existence. Like a list of tasks to be carried out like rituals, he can easily adhere to life guides that he follows mechanically. And beyond religious functioning of which Freud already noted their properly obsessive dimension, we can notice today this same tendency at work in "therapies briefs” and other life coaching. In other words, these ways of proceeding unknowingly form obsessive techniques which aim to avoid obsessions by replacing them with rituals: doing the same gestures every day, repeating the same positive thoughts every day, etc.

Whether these ritualised suggestions take the form of drug treatment, CBT, hypnosis, sophrology, coaching or even meditation, it is a matter of realising that these obsessive conditioning techniques do not treat the cause of the problem. symptom or do not treat it but displace it in new rituals and new obsessions.

Moreover, the methodological bias which underlies the illusion of effectiveness of these techniques results precisely from psychological isolation: attention is focused only on a single symptom and on a very restricted temporality. The displacement of the symptom and, above all, its return over time is therefore excluded from this form of limited concentration. By this psychological isolation which considers the disorder in a narrow spatio-temporal framework, the link between it and the other symptoms is broken, as is the link between this disorder and what causes it.

It is this same obsessive way of concentrating or with blinders which generates false, narrow-minded theories like that which contributes to the creation of the DSM or even the diagnosis of ADHD. (On the question of the epistemological influence of obsessive functioning in the medico-social environment, you will find more information in the text on “the drift of the medico-psychological field”.)

Any technique that does not treat the psychological isolation at the origin of concentration disorders is therefore not intended to treat them. It can only displace the inner struggle into new symptoms, including new obsessions and new rituals.

Thus, Freud's discovery of obsessive neurosis and psychic isolation is concomitant with the discovery of psychoanalysis, or of the method for curing it: it is by freely associating thoughts within the

framework of his treatment that the patient can discover the unbearable thoughts that fuel psychological isolation and the resulting concentration problems.

In Paris, in the Paris region and everywhere else, concentration problems are treated using the method of free associations, either within the framework of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis .

Do not hesitate to contact me if you would like more information on the care of concentration problems and why not, to undertake the journey which will make it possible to discover the suffering desire which generates them.

Psychologist to treat attention disorders and concentration problems in Paris Why see a psychologist to treat attention disorders?