Gifted. Genius. Early. And in recent years, a new term: HPI, to designate an intelligence quotient (IQ) greater than 130. This concerns only 2.3% of the French population, according to epidemiological studies.
And yet today, the High Intellectual Potential invites itself everywhere. On the Internet :// , on Facebook Groups, Blogs… In bookstores too, HPI is becoming a fashion. Among the best-selling books on the subject are, in particular, those of the psychologist Jeanne Siaud-Facchin. What decide some parents to push the door of his Parisian cabinet.
I didn’t feel very well in general. I had a lot of anxiety
Inès, 11 years old, detected HPI
There we met Ines, 11 years old, who has just been diagnosed with HPI. She tells us:I didn’t feel very well in general. I had a lot of anxiety, especially at night”. His mother abounds in explaining having asked questions about a “depressive state”, wondered, “explored avenues”, while being a little helpless. “In any case, this result reassured us“, she concludes.
For this HPI test, this mother had to pay 98 euros for a first consultation, 410 euros for the IQ test, 98 euros for a report, and finally, 88 euros for a family guidance consultation. Understand: learn to manage this HPI diagnosis. That is to say in total: nearly 700 euros.
Sensitivity in an HPI, the world needs it to seize the invisible, to understand the implicit
Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, psychologist
But what is this diagnosis based on? In addition to the classic IQ test, recognized by the scientific community, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, clinical psychologist, combines it with a sensitivity test, the Z test of Zulliger which consists in interpreting these tasks. It has become his specialty. She assures him: “We can’t do general psychology at all, we really have to do hand-sewn. Heart-sewn with them. The HPI, it’s very rare that it doesn’t go with a hyper sensitivity, and sensitivity is something the world needs to grasp the invisible, to understand the implicit”.
His formula is successful. Jeanne Siaud-Facchin has even made a mark of it. In 2003, she founded the Cogito’z centers. There are now 7 in France, and soon 4 abroad.
But some former patients are sounding the alarm. They affirm that they would have been fooled and denounce what they call “a business”. Like this 40-year-old diagnosed with HPI when she presented, she says, an autistic disorder: “I had been in therapy for years and I didn’t understand why I was so different from the others. So I was looking for answers. So I went to Cogito’z. I had the hope that I would be given a complete neuropsychology assessment, that we would explore the specificities that could have shown autism. In fact, what I am offered is only an IQ test that reveals that I am HPI. they stop at the HPI diagnosis because it’s an easy-to-understand diagnosis and behind it, they can possibly offer guidance. It’s known in these centers, there are a whole bunch of sessions behind it, you can clearly see the posters offering the emotion management workshops“.
What is sick at Cogito’z is the clan side
A former Cogito’z psychologist
Two psychologists who have worked in the past in two different centers denounce “a form of control over patients” and diagnoses that would be made “with wet finger“. They testify anonymously: “It was very marketing, you had to do a lot of numbers, people really came for the high potential, and the shrink team could highlight high potentials when there were none. As soon as a patient entered Cogito’z, he did not leave. There was no opening to other professionals, other institutions. What is sick at Cogito’z is the clan side“.
Eight requests from former patients of Cogito’z centers were sent to the Interministerial Mission against sectarian aberrations (Miviludes) which confirms: “Miviludes has received disturbing information on situations described by relatives, of change in behavior, accompanied by family and friend ruptures, progressive and rapid, after people have carried out training in Cogito’z centers “.
Lies, boasts and exaggerations
Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, psychologist
We transmitted these testimonies to Jeanne Siaud-Facchin. She defends the seriousness of her work and evokes “lies, boasts and exaggerations”, intended, she says, to harm her.
Among our sources (non-exhaustive list):
Miviludes’ statement to our investigation
The HPI business by Nicolas Gauvrit, mathematician and cognitive science researcher
Read “Psychology of high potential: Understand, identify, support” by Nicolas Gauvrit & Nathalie Clobert
Information and intox on intelligence by Franck Ramus, Director of Research in Cognitive Sciences at the CNRS
To find out more about the Cogito’z centers, founded by Jeanne Siaud-Facchin
The official publisher of psychometric tests