Archives par mot-clé : Superego

Fanny Dargent: “the infernal machine”

Using excerpts from a treatment carried out during the pandemic, the author explores the connections between the inner attack of the drive and the external attack of collective events shared by the patient and the therapist. These recent collective events may echo some adolescent processes marked by the “internal saboteur” and by repetition compulsion. A transitional space is established where the psychic functioning appears as a third party that can be discussed by the two participants for as long as is necessary.

dolescence, 2022, 40, 1, 53-67.

Olivier Douville: the appeal of jihad

This text shows how a psychoanalyst in Paris hears the way that young people, boys and girls, are seduced by the appeal of jihad. These young people are not fanatics. They are consulting a psychoanalyst on the advice of friends or family members. The author describes the significant identity issues and psychological wounds of these young people, but also their ideals and hopes.

Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 291-303.

JURRANVILLE A.: Chid epilepsy and trauma. A few thoughts on a new kind of moderne “ possession ” 

This paper suggets a new appproach of the problem of the psychological status of some kinds of epileptic fits in chidhood and adolecence as linked with some trauma tic situations, in terms of the traditional Freudian interpretation of Dostoievski and parricide. It is in terms of an incorporative defence of a melancholic nature that one may stress the strictly psychosomatic dimension of the fit. Such a fit enables a “ suject ” to surge (in fact, quite desubjecticized) possessed by the “ obscene and creul ” superego as mentioned by Lacan. Such a fit seems to be an impossible task of mourning,so long as in its drive like violence it “ recaptures ” the trauma’s libidinal loading by repeating it on a kind of “ infernal ” way (Freud). The thera peutic perspectives underlying such a paradoxical function of trauma go further beyong the clinical and theoretical dialogue open between Freud and Firenczi 

Philippe Gutton : el peligro de crear

La héroizacion de la adolescencia podría comprender dos procesos. Uno de ellos es del orden de la creación de la intersubjetalizacion construyendo así los ideales de la adolescencia ; el otro da lugar a aquella construcción constituida del intercambio de miradas del mundo infantil y adulto institucionalizado en un superego societal.

El héroe, seria aquel que resiste a sucumbirá pesar del discurso del maestro que lo repudia en un breakdown lauferien y se dice a favor de la causa adolescente.

Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 281-298.

Gérard Pirlot : the guilty pleasure of remorse … or the one of teeth biting the eye of the unconscious

If in the case of the patient called “ Didier ” described by Bonnet, a whole psychotherapeutic work is necessary, once the narcissistic bases have been consolidated, to make remorse appear as the starting point of a genuine psychoanalytical work, things can be very different with a neurotic patient. Remorse, sometimes there from the start, actually attests to a too great attachment to the maternal imago, which then limits any possibility of subjectively assumed guilt. Thus the author, using a clinical vignette of a subject in analysis, after having brought remorse nearer to reproach and evoked the link between remorse and auto-sadism (narcissistic sadism), attempts to define what the term connotes meta-psychologically, following the different French and German etymologies of the term “ remorse ”… The drive economy of remorse reveals itself to be a putting into play of oral sadism mixed with scopic and controlling drives ; its dynamic is a conflict of psychical forces which may extend from hallucinatory perceptions (cf. the nightmare) to somatization (dizziness, “ second state ”, etc.) or passage to the act ; and finally, its topic is ego-splitting before the castrating omnipotence of a maternal and totemic superego ( “ an eye for an eye ”). In the sado-anal regression which characterizes it, remorse is a form of return of psychical function into the “ primitive cavity ” described by Spitz, which then serves as a “ container ” for the ego’s Self (its the narcissistic bases). The subject in the throes of remorse, like Cain, or Oedipus at Colonnus, “ crushed ” (subjectively) by a guilt that menaces the cohesion of the Self of his ego, can regress alone in remorse until he “ re-bites ” (re-mord) repeatedly this ego through an “ incisive ” and castrating superego. The therapeutic and analytic treatment of remorse will aim to “ transfer ” on to the psychoanalyst, through speech, the guilt underlying this remorse in order to free it from this self-sadistic auto-erotic muck which is remorse.

Claude Savinaud : why do some adolescent sex offenders feel no remorse ?

In our encounters with a certain number of adolescents who commit sexual abuse, we have observed the absence of feelings associated with these acts, while they show no sign of disassociation or deficit. However, this lack or remorse can be considered as a flaw in adolescent subjectivation, resulting from the omnipresence of an archaic superego figure. The primordial maternal imago constituting this figure is neither integrated, nor put into internal conflict, but projected onto the object rendered “ indifferent ” to serve as an outlet for drive excitation. The splitting of the ego is not enough to assure a minimal distinction between “ good and bad object ” and introduces a confusion which results in the criminal act. The emergence of a transferential guilt may be the consequence of restarting the associative process in the treatment.

Tatiana Pellion : « head in the clouds », or some questions raised by the treatment of an adolescent suffering from migraines

The question of the migraine as a body event in an adolescent is treated with reference to its articulation with the drive. We thus explore the shared elements of both pain and drive, with respect to their connection to the body. Furthermore, we discuss one of the analyst’s interventions during a session, as well as its clinical consequences on the subject’s relationship with the invocatory drive and with its object, the voice. The function of the voice and of its drive shaping as mediation between primitive parental authority and the constitution of the subject’s superego is also developed here. We mostly insist on the function of extraction of the voice object from the body, and we therefore refer to the Freudian concept of « the thing », as well as to the Lacanian object a, in its primary dimension concerning the drive. We thus emphasize the relationship between the drive and the little object a during adolescence.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 143-155.

Philippe Gutton : at risk of creating

Making adolescence heroic involves two processes. One has to do with the creation of the intersubjectalization that constructs the ideals of adolescence ; the other places this construction in confrontation with the gaze of the infantilo-adult institutionalized as the the societal Superego.
The hero would be the one who refuses to succumb in spite of the discourse of the master which disavows him in a Lauferian breakdown, the one who stands up and pleads his adolescent case.

Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 281-298.

François Richard : can one speak of a « society of discontent » ?

In this article, the epistemic confrontation between psychoanalysis and the social sciences is re-problematized using the arguments of A. Ehrenberg (and other researchers in sociology) and hypotheses about the specificity of the current discontent in the civilization. Freudian ideas are brought to the point where their subjectivism paradoxically introduces a perspective of renewing historicity. Current forms of discontent in civilization (contradiction between morality and cynicism, complementary relation between individualism and gregariousness, sexual liberation masking a lack of satisfaction, suspension of judgment, prevalence of functioning based on primary processes, violent acts, disorders of subjectivation) are depicted and commented upon.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 571-582.