The tectonic forces of romantic passion are evoked as after effects of the original human trauma: its distress, its inscription in language, its nostalgia for the fusion with and loss of parental ideals, its relationship with the Oedipal taboo… These are various ways of going “through the psychical looking-glass” that await the adolescent. This article will discuss the links between romantic passion, control, desire and the role of Kairos, of chance, of detail and partial objects, as well as emptiness and mourning affects, in the triggering of passion.

Adolescence, 2015, 33, 1, 9-31.