Introduction

1 Not only are societies changing, but the attitudes, behaviors, motivations, and aspirations of their members—in short, their psychology—are also in flux. If the changes currently taking place remain so opaque, it is due in large part to our ignorance of these changes. This then points to the need to interrogate this difficult-to-approach but essential field. Since its founding, Le Débat has constantly welcomed and encouraged these kinds of studies, and it continues to do so.
The breadth of changes that personal experience has undergone over the last half a century makes us wonder whether we are in the presence of a "new anthropological order." Olivier Bobineau takes account of these ruptures and shows how their convergence is laying out a modernity not seen before.
Current events regularly present us with the spectacle of unexplainable outbursts of violence at educational institutions. The fact that these massacres reoccur means that they cannot be considered as isolated moments of madness. They must come in response to a common inspiration. David Le Breton profiles this unique kind of murderer and examines the significance of their actions.
Psychologists are at times so caught up in the psychological movement (of which they are specialists in principle), that it takes them over. This clearly is the case of psychoanalysis which, after having made great strides in the understanding of the human mind, discredited itself through parochialism and theoretical sclerosis. Sebastien Dupont seeks out the roots of this enigmatic misdirection.