It is often in adolescence that great athletes are discovered. Once they commit to their sport, their bodies are subject to intense training pushing them beyond the limits of what is normal. Sometimes these youths go too far. Unable to express and to be understood in words, their subjectivity comes to be expressed through their bodies, through a sometimes traumatizing wound.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 575-586.
Between fetishizing a body that has become a gauge of the subject’s value, and maintaining play as a way to obtain narcissistic and libidinal satisfaction, sports have become a source of investment where the subject, the social and the political meet. Using the biography of Andre Agassi, the famous tennis player of the 1990’s, we will explore the different aspects of parental control – in this case, a father’s – of the psychical fate of a top athlete.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 259-272.