The virtual is often criticized as a new addictive substance for adolescents. Here we will take the point of view according to which this tool fosters the elaboration of depressive capacity before their is a playing of the « I » (mise en je) in the real. Screen and body of the subject, the computer would be a first place of symbolization, on the way to genuine subjectivation. Leading to another space and another time, the virtual first allows one to approach in a different way the issue of temporality in its relation to loss. Since loss of the object engenders the « I », how might the virtual be another place where absence can be appropriated ? How can it help in the movement from intemporality to atemporality ? This idea will be illustrated by the case of an autistic youth as an archetype of the issue of loss and the passage from the imaginary to the real.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 417-427.