Philippe Givre : self-sabotage as a way of being an adolescent

Beyond being a mere psychopathological disorder, self-sabotage, according to Jeammet’s definition, reflects the maintenance of a dependence situation and translates a failure of the internal psychical processes to organize the relation. Thus, through this behavioral language or neo-language, the adolescent seeks to create a neo-identity capable of compensating for the deficit in the process of interiorization and, by the same token, to stamp out the narcissistic flaws that the adolescent processes have brought to light in their quest for sensations.
The auto-sadism which underlies self-sabotage, rests on a sort of « compensatory autoeroticism ». This is also an autoeroticism that has been petrified or perverted (as happens with addictions), into something purely mechanical and self-destructive, by fostering, among other things, the dis-objectalization of these conducts, which will then be edified as a way of being. A way of being that lets a taste for dereliction take the place of the desiring dynamic.