Archives de catégorie : ENG – Regards – 2004 T.22 n°3

Dominique Agostini : Melanie Klein, Analyst of Adolescents: I. The Case of “Felix”

In the analysis of Felix, Klein explored pathological inhibitions that hampered the thought processes of this adolescent. She discovered that thinking is born from sufficiently creative bonds between the internal parents. The concepts of internal object and unconscious fantasy constitute, in this sense, one of the most innovative aspects of this analysis. Klein argues that revisiting the early Œdipus complex in puberty is an indispensable preliminary to the joint development of psychical bisexuality and “ psychical puberty ”.

Jean-Yves le Fourn : Poe’s “The Spectacles”

The tale “The Spectacles,” one of Edgar Allan Poe’s Extraordinary Tales, is a story of the “grotesque” showing us that if in adolescence one looks without seeing or sees without looking, the resolution of the enigmas of the sexual, of identity, of social development will be difficult because, like the hero at the outset, one will remain entangled in the net of Oedipal and incest issues. The adolescent gaze is above all “a language and it develops the proof.” (Jean Cocteau).

Brice Courty : Adolescence as a Horror Movie

The study of a particular category of horror movie, the slasher, draws us onto the stage of the adolescent experience, both in terms of its content and its form. The skeleton of the uncanny and its syncopated temporality offers one a glimpse of a common unconscious issue. The adolescent finds a solution for how to represent and elaborate the central issue of the feminine in the identifiable figures of killer and victim. The slasher movie as a vehicle for a degraded initiation rite is a resource for the adolescent facing the upheavals of puberty.

Pascal Hachet : The Perspective of an Adolescent Reader on a Literary Text Written by Another Adolescent

The specific case of teen literary writing is a rich medium for the identification of teenage readers. Teenage writers who have continued and broadened their writing gifts in adulthood provide a constructive identification based on a successful subjectivation of the puberty process, while those who wrote only during their teens arouse a strong fascination in young readers who are inclined to deny the reality of the puberty process. Sticking by such a writer or his writings can be the sign of an effective or possibly bad mental outcome of adolescent crisis. The case of a seventeen-year-old boy, Jean-Marie, who was very fond of Rimbaud’s life and poems, is a good example of this problematic issue.

Marika Moisseeff : Lolitas, or the Story of a Structural Otherness

Following the 1955 publication of Nabokov’s novel, “ physically attractive, flirtatious young girls giving the impression of ingenuous naïveté ” (Petit Robert dictionary) are indifferently designated by the terms lolita or nymphet : potential women whose bodies have yet to undergo the upheavals associated with motherhood. A nymph also designates the chrysalis of certain insects whose larvae, while undergoing a transformation into a reproductive creature, conserves its juvenile characteristics. What might be the meaning of this connection between prepubescent “ innocent ” femininity and an inferior animal such as an insect ? The analysis of certain works of science fiction may provide the key.

Alix Bernard : Deafness and the Staging of a Forbidden Difference

Deafness modifies the relationship between voice and gaze. The deaf person actually “sees” voices. This primacy of the visual is often accentuated by a late understanding of speech. Using the case of Perrine, we question the links between deafness and its denial and a high penchant for exhibition/voyeurism. Perrine, subjected to the gaze of the other considered as a source of narcissistic reassurance and a super ego moment, is actually trapped in a static scenario. She repeatedly expresses her desire for an encounter, an impossible encounter, with sexual difference pointing to another difference: her forbidden handicap.

Sabine Belliard : Gaze and Skin Color

The color of a patient’s skin is something not often taken into account in therapeutic work. The psychotherapy of Denise, a twenty-two-year-old Antillean girl, shows how her color, in connection with her specific history, had profound psychological effects, especially in her relationship with her mother and in her narcissistic construction. These observations about the psychological experience of skin colors in the Antilles are linked to the specific history of this part of the world, marked as it is by the slave trade.

Michel Delage : Seeing in Family Therapy

Problems related to adolescence, or the end, of adolescence, are often expressed in terms of parenting each time parents attend an appointment regarding their child. In these cases, it seems important for the suggested therapeutic interventions to consider what is at play both at the level of individual psyches and at the level of the relationships between the various protagonists. A critical study of this kind of intervention is made, especially in terms of the position of the therapist(s) with respect to the concept of “resonance” as defined by Elkaïm.

Françoise Hurstel : the father’s gaze

Few studies have been devoted to the father’s function during the girl’s adolescence. One of these functions, that of the father’s gaze and speech in the development of the feminine, is studied here. This gaze of the father renews the operation of the mother’s gaze in the mirror stage, but on the side of identity. It takes on meaning insofar as the father does not appropriate his daughter as a sexual object and establishes with her a relation characterized by the paternal function.