Philippe Gutton : paradoxes in metamorphosis

Metamorphosis establishes a paradoxical contradiction between originality and program, « hazard and necessity », disorder and order, difference and similarity, subject and subjection, making possible a reflection between sublimation and control. Also paradoxical is its happening in time, for the illusion of the pubertaire is creative insofar as there is oscillation between it and disillusion. Repeat R. Kaës’ fundamental adage whose paradoxical character cannot be missed : « The subject is first of all an inter-subject », the pubertary metamorphosis is in an exemplary way that of the inter-subject : it includes the other in its very procedure. There is no solitary structural change. The pubertaire is not a (re)finding of the object but a revelation of genital alterity

The « metamorphic contract » is singularly enlarged when it connotes the ongoing creation of a bond between subject and society, individual and group, singular discourse and cultural referent.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 171-189.