Serge Hefez : Adolescence and aids, the impossible transmission

Most questions asked by HIV positive adolescents belonging to our speech-group deal with the secret around the contaminations.

Such a secret entail splittings and denials which, at first, protect the adolescent and the rest of the family. Then, however, it rapidly turns into an attractor which swallows the emotional cathexes, which structures a post towards which the resistances of the discourse converge and which cristallizes the defence mechanism system into an organizing figure of both repetition and homeostasis.

The disavowal mechanisms of its transmission have been studied a great deal on the transgenerational level. Groups and family work however compell us to be more careful about new mechanisms, namely the processes and psychological mechanisms at work in the intergenerational dynamics.