Archives par mot-clé : Intergenerational confusion

Nicole Catheline : puberty and psychotic functioning : an inter-generational confusion

The symptomatology of early adolescence (13 to 15 years) raises a number of questions: is this the expression of changes induced by puberty, or should we see in it the seeds of an onset of mental illness (e. g., schizophrenia)? The parents’ reaction to their child’s adolescence seems to be a determining factor in any attempt to answer this question. Indeed, when the child’s puberty too strongly solicits the parents’ own experience of adolescence, inter-generational confusion can set in, weighing upon the process of disengagement from Œdipal bonds and hampering the adolescent’s identity process.