Archives de catégorie : ENG – Masculin-Féminin – 2007 T.25 n°2

Serge Lesourd : the feminine in adolescence : the making of a place

Based on the results of an adolescent girl’s treatment, the author discusses a major discovery made at the time of adolescence, i.e. the discovery of femininity as such, unknown until then to the subject, whether boy or girl. This “ femininity as such ” is construed by the subject as separate from the sexual being he considered himself as a child. Sexuality rests on phallic primacy which limits relations with others. At puberty, the adolescent will refuse this phallic primacy as a regulating agent of ifs relationship with the outside world, as a limit to sexuality, as a boundary to enjoyment. This “ beyond ” of the phallic dimension, femininity as such, which is a type of enjoyment not fully marked by the phallic limit, must pass through unconscious logic, to allow the emergence of an heterosexual love relationship. The encounter with THE difference, one which embodies all differences, is difficult for adolescents. This detour through femininity, which is a necessary disruption, can also be the cause of serious social and psychic disruptions in adolescents.

Philippe Gutton : the pubertaire savant

The construction of identity is mobile and present ; it has the important quality of being sexual. First of all, the phallic infantile, then, at puberty major readjustments take place because of the experience of the pubertaire. The author describes this “ metamorphosis ” in a number of works which are recalled and brought together here. He now emphasizes on the organization that constitutes the other: what other ? The unconscious of the other in romantic seduction.

Christian Bonnet, Stéphanie Pechikoff : Guenevere in her coat of arms

If the child constructs his identity out of the bits of discourse about him that he picks up in the Wincottian environment, the adolescent attains a sexually-differentiated identity through a process we propose to call “ coat of arms ” : fragments of the body, eroticized by the play of partial drives would through this process be seen to be assembled into a whole constituting sexually-differentiated identity. The case of Akira, who captures bits of her friend’s body with her cell phone camera, enables us to investigate this coat-of-arms aspect of the construction of the sexually-differentiated identity of the subject, and even of the object, in adolescence.

Daniel Marcelli : boys/girls. The difference between the sexes, a question of physiology or culture ?

The difference between the sexes is a politically dangerous question ! The author explores, with this difference in view, what he calls the evident epidemiological that it would be useless to deny, the particularly delicate interpretation of this information which implies the analysis of the request for care according to sex : man or woman, girl or boy, do not have the same attitudes when they formulate a request for help. Finally, in boy/girl differences, one cannot ignore ideological issues. In all societies the “ masculine ” and the “ feminine ” are cultural and social marker that no individual can escape. Speaking of this difference always leads the author to sail into the rock of the biological within the “ real ” whose uninterpretable can lead to all interpretive fantasies and, on the other hand, the weight of culture, wherein all possible ideologies are easily lumped together ! Dangerous waters then, when one is dealing both with the issue of adolescence and that of sexuality, which touches the very heart of individual privacy. These lines of tension find an excellent illustration in the different types of treatment offered to adolescents. Do these take into account the issue of sexual difference ? This is not at all certain ! This article tries to show that although woman or girl, man or boy, can arrive at the same result, most often they get there by different routes. But these differences are rarely taken into account when a certain treatment is recommended or during the course of the treatment. These remarks give an account of the difficulties encountered by all treatment structures dealing with the care of young adolescents, those who are called middle school pupils.

Ignacio Melo : masculine and feminine in the process of sexualization

Genitalization is the last step of sexual development described by Freud. Its occurrence at puberty gives sexual difference its definitive form. Simultaneously, it affects the preceding phases retroactively to transform them. The limits between different steps appear less in their chronological sequence than as a work of reformulating after the fact, which suggests a re-evaluation of the theory, in particular of the phallic-genital articulation. Some hypotheses are formulated regarding the originary and the primitive, of the castration complex and the negative at puberty.

Gérard Bonnet : for the love of sex

One cannot love others if one does not first love oneself, which the psychoanalyst translates in another way when he reminds us that narcissism is an indispensable preliminary to any relationship. The same thing could be said of the sex, properly speaking. The human subject cannot love the other’s sex, and thus face up to the difference that it represents at every level of existence, if he or she does not first love and invest his or her own sex, as a genital, drive and ideal object. This presupposes that he or she is provoked and recognized by the adult, and keeps the possibility of regularly getting free of this control in order to assert him- or herself according to his or her own desire.

Jacqueline Schaeffer : fear and conquest of the feminine in adolescence in both sexes

The appearance of the feminine erotic at puberty is what breaks in at adolescence, for the girl and for the boy.
The adolescent boy or girl must tear him- or herself away from maternal seduction and control which tend towards non-differentiation, within a new work of access to differentiation of the male and female sexes, which may be called “ work of the feminine ” and which leads to the erotic and romantic encounter.
Paternal seduction acts as an after effect, reorganizing the early maternal seduction. It has the two characteristics of being breaking, in the sense of rupture, sometimes traumatic, but also nurturing, in the sense of re-structuring. It is therefore initiatory and begins the change of object. Between the two a difficult operation of appropriating the body and sexuality can take place, by way of drive self-seduction. The therapist’s function as “ double ” enables this to be elaborated