In an older adolescent with psychosomatic symptoms, the autosadistic symptom of trichotrillomania brings together deficiencies in the Body-ego and its attempts at autoerotic appropriation. These repeated traumatophiliac wounds are a survival method maintaining the excitation of a disavowed maternal absence whose memory traces infiltrate the memory of the sick body. What is at stake in the therapy is the revisiting, in the transference, of the homo- function and primitive auto-reflection.

Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 587-596.