Dépersonnalisation et divortialité: Une étude de cas menée au centre social de Yaoundé VI

Abstract

Divorality leads to the expression of a social malaise, experienced as a loss of identity and personality, with a feeling of being transformed into someone other than oneself, or even into a split personality, and can lead to a feeling of imminent psychological annihilation. Feelings of strangeness and transformation usually go hand in hand with doubts about self-identity. In some cases, people are still aware of their previous personality, but others feel that they have been experiencing this phenomenon of personality strangeness since birth. This transformation of the personality manifests itself mainly as a feeling of inner emptiness, even to the point of losing one's will or feeling like living like an automaton. Sometimes it is a feeling of unreality of memories, altered intellectual activity or loss of intelligence accompanied by doubts, scruples and perplexity. Hence the problem concerns the functions of attachment and attributions in regulating psychological adaptation following marital breakdown. This problem gives rise to a main research question as follows: how do attachment styles and attributional styles contribute to psychological adjustment following marital breakdown? To answer this main research question, we formulated the following main hypothesis: individuals with a secure attachment style with self-attribution will have better psychological adaptation and make fewer attributions of causality, responsibility and blame than subjects with preoccupied, fearful and detached self-sufficient styles. The main objective of the study is to understand and explain the differences between individuals in terms of their adaptation with regard to their attachment style and their cognitive processes. To achieve this objective, we adopted a qualitative design, with a study sample consisting of 5 participants aged between 38 and 55, i.e. 3 men and 2 women. We used a purposive sampling technique. Information was collected via semi- directive interviews. The results show that post-break-up adaptation is being revisited here, taking into account a number of concepts identified in the literature. Although there is little consensus regarding the categorisations that allow a definition to be accepted by the authors, we retain the presence of problems of an internal and external nature, problems that encompass the main categorisations identified in the literature. We use these terms for the simple purpose of grouping the data. Problems of an internal nature are seen as those that concern the intrinsic nature of the individual. Problems of an external nature refer to difficulties at a relational and social level.