FEATURED AUTHOR

Catherine Morin

I have been working as a neurologist in the rehabilitation department in Pitié-Salpêtrirère (Paris, France) as a neurologist. I also got a psychoanalytic training, which I used to listen to stroke patients' words. I developed a new tool (drawn self-portrait) in order to get access to body image disorders in brain injured patients. I am now retired , but I keep working on the clinical implications of my findings (for example, how to manage anosognasia in Right hemisphere patients).

Subjects: Applied Linguistics, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuropsychology

Biography

I was born in 1945, I am married, with two children and five grand children. I have been learning neurology as a resident in several neurology depatements (1968-1972) and then worked in the Rehabilitation Department in Pitié-Salpêtrière first as a neuroscientist in the neurophysiology laboratory this deaptement (1972-1984) and then as neurologist and psychoanalyst. Since 1977, I have been a researcher in Inserm (Institut National Scientifique de la Recherche médicale). I retired in 2010.

Education

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Personal Interests

Books

Featured Title

Articles

Daughter-Somatoparaphrenia” in Women with Right-Hemisphere Syndrome: A Psychoana

Published: Jan 09, 2014 by Neuropsychoanalysis, 7, 2005, 171-184
Authors: Catherine Morin, Stéphane Thibierge, Pascale Bruguière, Pascale Pradat-Diehl & Dominique Mazevet
Subjects: Neuropsychology, Psychological Science

Anosognosia and somatoparaphrenia may be associated with body schema neurological disorders in the right-hemisphere syndrome (RHS). The content of the patient’s discourse may be considered an alteration of what Lacan called specular image. We present three detailed observations of women with anosognosia and hemineglect, who personified their paralyzed hand as being or belonging to a daughter of theirs. This symptom may be heard as a disclosure of the object that is normally repressed.

The Self and the Subject

Published: Jan 09, 2014 by Neuropsychoanalysis, 2010, 12, 91-93
Authors: S. Thibierge & C. Morin
Subjects: Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychological Science

A performing brain is necessary but not sufficient for the development of a psychic subject. The brain must be connected with a language system that exists prior to the birth of each child. The psychic life (including self-consciousness) is governed by the lack of a repressed object that cannot be represented. This is shown by misidentification syndromes and somatoparaphrenia, which both involve a failure of this repression of the object and a breakdown of the patient's « self » .

Identification, recognition and misidentification syndromes

Published: Nov 15, 2013 by Frontiers in psychology, psychoanalysis and neuropsychoanalysis
Authors: THIBIERGE Stéphane, MORIN Catherine
Subjects: Psychological Science

The consistency and the permanency of body image in neurosis is what permits the recognition of other people and ourselves as unique beings. This is related to object repression, a process altered in misidentification syndromes, which also involve a damage to the specular image and an absence of object repression. Therefore, in the psychiatric disorders related to a damaged specular image, disorders of cognition cannot be studied and managed using the same methods as for neurotic patients.

Stroke Hemiplegia and Specular Image: Lessons From Self-Portraits

Published: Feb 12, 2003 by The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 2003 56(1):1-41
Authors: Catherine Morin, Pascale Pradat-Diehl, Gilberte Robain,Michel Perrigot
Subjects: Neuropsychology, Psychological Science

A stroke may affect the patients' body image. In a prospective study of 308 self-portraits by control subjects, right and left stroke patients, patients with spine or bone lesions, portraits lacking clothes, hands, mouth and eyes (expressing the narcissistic injury caused by any sudden handicap) were found in all groups. Right hemisphere patients drew inclined portraits with unilateral omissions. This was shown to reflect the fragmentation of not only body schema but also body image.