“HPI is a marketing fantasy that decides quality can justify suffering.” Caroline Goldman’s steadfast speech.

Not everything in the Goldman family has to be centered around music. Members of the Sisterhood, especially the women, are driven by a deep “devotion to the care and work of children” to the point of making it a profession. This is what psychologist and psychopathologist Dr. Caroline Goldman testified this Tuesday, September 3, at the microphone of France Inter. The daughter of a famous composer, but also a psychologist and the older sister of an emergency pediatrician, is back in the spotlight this fall, having been released. A guide for today’s parents (Ed. Flammarion). The book is a literary adaptation of his podcast and France Inter columns. Chronicles that, moreover, did not fail to make noise among the listeners, who, among other things, reproached him for the speech blaming his parents or even for the suspicion of attention disorders with or without hyperactivity (ADHD). At the microphone of journalist Matilda Serel, the psychologist defends himself and reaffirms his positions.

“Fight with their weapons”

“Criticisms interest me as much as thanks. Some made me grow, others not so much. (…) (My detractors) are often positivity peddlers who are not interested in me restricting their marketing,” he notes. With more than twenty years of professional experience in her liberal office, the forty-year-old publicly deplores the damage of a positive French education that rejects educational boundaries at home. “I didn’t want to spend the next forty years of my career disproving what self-proclaimed educational gurus who never studied psychology said. I said to myself. “We have to go to the war site and fight with their weapons,” he recalls.

HPI is a marketing fantasy that decides quality can justify suffering.

Caroline Goldman

His criticisms have not changed, he has been hitting them for almost four years and again this Tuesday morning at France Inter. “Obviously, I’m here to say that we’re being lied to, made to feel guilty in order to sell books and coaching methods. In fact, difficult children should be set boundaries when things are going well,” he adds. And add: “There is the theoretical child, which is presented to us, and then there is the real child, which is very concrete, which tests all the psychological and physical resources of the parents. Whether they do well or badly, either way, children are tornadoes; adorable tornadoes that require us to have some discipline and good reactions to their movement.”

Child and adolescent psychologists also continue to oppose the overdiagnosis of ADHD and HPI (high intellectual potential) cases. “We throw out labels that are supposed to explain a child’s uniqueness, but those labels are too crude. HPI doesn’t even exist in the mental illness classification, it’s a marketing fantasy that decides quality can justify suffering. However, just like having beautiful hair or performing well in sports, being smart does not have any bad effects on the psychological system,” he notes.

Another era, other problems

Another point of tension is the screens. On this issue, Caroline Goldman pleads for better use rather than a total ban. “The influence of screens reveals family problems. Or it will be used in a virtuous way and have the consequences of satisfying the child’s curiosity. In that case, it will be an indicator of the family environment built in advance for the child, he emphasizes. Or the screen is having a harmful effect, in which case we can question what else the child is getting.

After going on a brief media diet following a barrage of criticism of his columns on Inter France, the clinical psychologist has visibly regained momentum in recent months. Faced with those who accuse her of being repressive, a “reactive psychologist,” even the epitome of an “anti-Dolto,” Caroline Goldman counters and argues. “I love Françoise Dolteau, but it was another time when children were depressed because of an emotional and not an educational handicap. If I had been born sixty years ago, I would have gone on a crusade with Dolto, so that people would understand that a child is a person, that he needs attention. But these are no longer really the sins of the time (…); today we are regulating the leak.’

For some patients, Caroline Goldman embodies the role of psychologist, contrary to the portrait painted in the media. One who has a sense of formula, metaphor and the occasional Florence Forrest-style humor when the occasion suits her, reports journalist Matilda Serrell. At the end of the interview, the psychologist also sends a message to his “little patients”, wishing them “to be light, happy, to live their childhood fully, carefree, in “instinct, joy”. And to conclude. “Because a happy childhood is a whole destiny of happiness, and destiny, life is long.”