His main research focuses on family secrets, relationships with images and new technologies.
Family secrets Serge Tisseron is interested in family secrets. He claims that revealing such secrets can cause injury. He advises asking good questions, avoid demanding answers, developing an interest in family history and to recall how elders responded to earlier questions. Tisseron deduced that
The Adventures of Tintin, a comic series created by the Belgian
cartoonist Hergé reflected the previously undisclosed fact that the author's father's own father was unknown, a fact later confirmed by journalists.
Images and media He investigated relationships with cartoons and photography.
Photography In 2008, Tisseron published an updated version of "
Camera Lucida" by
Roland Barthes, "Les mystères de la chambre claire". In this book, Tisseron questioned the commonplace of photography and adds the concept of digital picture. He analyzes the relationship between a man and a picture from a psychological point of view. Tisseron said, opposing Barthes: ''The picture isn't only a nostalgia from the past, a picture is the result of two different moves : stopping time for the representation and following the motion of the world''.
Comic strips and drawings Tisseron became interested in
subculture and used his passion for drawing to create several militant
comic strips. His medical PhD was a comic strip that recalls the history of psychiatry. He continues to draw for specialist magazines such as
Psychologies Magazine.
New technologies and child development In his book
Virtuel, mon amour, Tisseron talks about the
misunderstanding between adults and the next generation. He explains teenagers express their
anxiety has changed to include
chat,
video games and other new technologies and that parents are often unable to process these new expressions. In 2013, he promoted a web site with the General Secretariat of Catholic Education to explain parents and children how to "tame" screens. It highlights his "3-6-9-12" rule.
Screens Tisseron says that home screens can dangerously isolate users. He worked on a project called «Dizaine pour apprivoiser les écrans» that was inspired by the Student Media Awareness to Reduce Television program in 1996-1997 by Robinson's team in California. It attempted to increase children's awareness and control over their screen time. It proposed that over ten days or a week, kids be invited to choose their favorite TV programs and video games and give up all others. Meanwhile, parents and instructors organize and lead other activities including focusing on photography and world building to encourage them to develop their own imagination.
Identity Teenagers may use the Internet to explore alternate identities, hiding their appearance from those they encounter. Conversely others, including predators, may conceal their own identities in order to engage with those who fail to recognize the deception. Internet relationships are not typically managed according to traditional social conventions that protected (and limited the choices of) young people who had not developed strong defense mechanisms to protect themselves. The intermittent and deliberate nature of digital interactions give participants greater control over the pace and timing of their relationships. The absence of physical contact limits the kinds of harm that participants can experience. Digital interactions can broaden the range of people that young people can reach, creating the potential for those unable to find community within the "real world" to do so within the larger online world.
Video games Tusseron draws lessons for education from the success of
Video games. Self-pacing, the chance to repeat an unsuccessful lesson or test, experiments with various learning strategies, point systems, levels and anonymity can all inform online education development. Potential negative effects, particularly when the player focuses completely on sensory and motor interactions, potentially leading to addiction.
Advice for parents Tussore advises that parents should frequently speak with their children, including about their digital experiences and be aware of their activities.
Extimacy Historically, extimacy named the concept that no useful distinction separated the psyche from the external world. Tissoren used a separate meaning, to describe the repositioning of elements of private lives into public view to produce feedback. It differs from both
exhibitionism and
conformism in that it is an attempt to develop the self and the concordant self-esteem rather than simply position the exhibitor with respect to others. Extimacy is then the desire to reveal some aspects of the inner self.
Symbolism He elaborated three major concepts coined by
Freud and
Ferenczi:
projection,
introjection,
internalization. They noticed that patients could project their fantasies on other subjects, introject good objects or
internalise intersubjective relationships. This remark provided the theoretical grounds for psychoanalysis. Tisseron said that all stress is mediated by the seven senses (including
proprioception and
vestibular perception) coupled with non- and verbal
communication. Tussore defined sympolization as the process by which a subject internalizes experiences of the outside world. For this purpose, three media are used:
sensory-motor skills, images and words.
Sensory-motor skills For example, a woman is followed by three girls. The woman walks quickly and stumbles. She
gesticulates and manages to retrieve her balance. She turns and curses the sidewalk. The three girls had a strong reaction and became afraid. These last three react against the event. They all tap on the sidewalk in
imitation. They accepted the event and introduced it into their psyches. They connected the perception with the emotion and the
motricity. It demonstrates that every situation can be contextualized.
Image Tisseron explains that images are not real, but that the emotions they trigger are. Culture, including that of individual families, directs such emotions. He assigned responsibility for such direction to parents. A second developmental role for images is early childhood drawings that usually begin with lines going away from the child's body.
Empathy Tisseron advocates that psychoanalysts employ empathy as the primary analytic relationship to patients. He claimed that the objectivity sought by earlier generations worsened patient discomfort without advancing therapeutic goals.
Resilience Tisseron uses resilience as a psychological concept. It is the ability of a patient or a
community to withstand or rebuild following trauma. He does not define the term, claiming that its scientific usage is limiting and concludes that is a complex process never completed. == Recognition ==