Jeanne Siaud-Facchin is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and founder of the Cogito’Z Center. She practices and teaches mindfulness meditation in Paris and Marseille. A recognized specialist in the gifted, she is the author of L’Enfant surdoué, Trop intelligent pour être heureux? and Tout est là, juste là, all best-sellers.
“What is psychology, and what good is it? Rather: what good is it for me? Because that is the ultimate question: psychology should help us to live better.
That is the subject of this book: how a new psychology has become necessary. Incontrovertible. Life-saving. A psychology that gets out of the rut of being only an archeology of suffering and turns toward a psychology of resources. A psychology that integrates with intelligence and flexibility all the current contributions and knowledge of the neurosciences (affective, cognitive, social) to provide everyone with the means to be well. A mature, integrative psychology that looks at the complete human being, but acknowledges the need to be effective.
Every child, every teen, every adult that I’ve encountered has presented me with the same challenge, which I admit I have always accepted: please, help me live. It’s the sheep in The Little Prince. It is the search for what will enable each person to advance, to find fulfillment. To be happy? I don’t know. Happiness is another matter. To feel you’re in your place, to be proud of who you are, of what you have accomplished, to be able to turn back on your life and have no regrets – that is what seems to me to be most valuable.
But to accept that challenge, one can’t be afraid to engage body and soul with one’s patient. The promises of the new psychology are ultimately simple: each psychiatrist is responsible for what he or she undertakes in the service of the patient. A psychiatrist is no longer the one who listens, at best understands, but the one who co-constructs. A building of life. The blueprints are made together, revised, adjusted together. With this somewhat mad idea that if the worst may sometimes occur, one must also anticipate… the best! We are not sheltered by the best, we must keep telling ourselves that! It’s enough simply to know it’s there!” J. S. F.