Le psychical phase of adolescence necessarily confronts the subject with the de-idealization of childhood gods, those that the child created for himself because of his fundamental dependence. Now, the postmodern social bond has changed the status of social gods, so that mystical adolescent passion is no longer a symbolic “ assumption ” of these, in the form of an interiorized ego ideal, but rather an “ incarnation ” in reality of the gods that sustain an ideal ego, in keeping with the divinisation of the human promoted by postmodern liberalization. The mystical passion of the adolescent thus takes the new forms attested to by current adolescent psychopathology.

Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°1, pp. 9-21.