Using a case involving a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and exchanges between therapists during a Seminar in Adolescent Psychotherapy, we will try to pinpoint what underlies the issue of identity conquest and the problem of homosexuality in adolescence. The « fantasy of the blade » – a reference to the religious identificatory figure of St. George – helps organize theoretical and clinical observations.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 917-934.
It is standard practice to attribute the human acts of excessive violence that occur regularly in private and in public to an unleashing of aggressive drives : one speaks of the weakness of instances of the superego which have not fulfilled their role. Freud regularly refers to this schema, starting with his establishment of the second topic, and he is the inspiration behind most of the educational models now in force. However, the very ideals that are supposed to control drives can sometimes lead to violent passages to the act. In such cases, there is idealization without sublimation, and the ideal which is at the heart of the idealization is invested for its own sake. Instead of being the vector for desires, opening the way for sublimation, it bottles up drive energy and liberates it in an explosive way. This is why a deeper analysis of ideals is needed if one is to discover the components of the explosion and the way of dealing with it.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 897-915.
Adolescent exaltation before its idol will considered as a fundamentally religious moment. To grasp the psychical stakes of this social phenomenon, the author suggests that its metapsychological coordinates and function be considered in light of the scene of Hiflosigkeit – the matrix of religious representations. The idol will be understood as the perceptive image which saturates the gaze, thus annihilating the blind spot which establishes perception from the starting point of lack (la Chose). Paradoxically, this passion for the idol will be turn out to be a rampart against desire. This reading enables us to understand better the unusual strategy of the monotheistic Jewish religion against idolatry – which de-totalizes the figure that cannot withstand lack. Finally, to understand how the idol is a specifically adolescent phenomenon, the author offers a rereading of the idea of sexual trauma, as revealed by the moment of adolescence.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 885-896.
Exploring love means facing up to the wounds it inflicts ; it means taking into consideration its cruelty as well as its tenderness and sensuality. Its possible consequence, sexual pleasure, will be looked here from the perspective of psychical reality, and the expression the this reality confers upon it in the Christian religion
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 873-884.
Transcultural consultation with immigrant adolescents who have entered France alone and have experienced trauma express the mobilization of religious reference points that help us to reflect upon the conjuncture between adolescence, trauma and religion. The patient’s reference to religion is developed through three spaces: the symbolic space of the word of the father, the space of social discourse which historicizes the subject and affiliates him with a culture, and the space of myth and universal questions which bind the individual to the group. By looking clinically at the dynamic of consultation in the cases of two young Muslim patients from sub-Saharan Africa, we are able to see the mobilization of religious feeling as a therapeutic tool.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 853-871.
Using two clinical cases showing how impossible de-idealization is in late adolescence, the article explores the specific nature of religious idealizations. It shows the intrinsic relation between the ideal, the need for the absolute and faith in a divine figure. The ensuing study of paths followed by three adolescents helps give an idea of an ambiguity intrinsic to the religious ideal.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 835-851.
From a reading of Freud, this article focuses on the notions of idealization, ideal formation and Ego Ideal. The post-Freudian distinction between Ego Ideal and ideal ego is made explicit. The article concludes by distinguishing between idealization and sublimation.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 823-834.
RPG and MMORPG-type video games offer adolescents the opportunity to redynamize their belief processes, which have been blocked by archaic conflicts reactivated in puberty. They seem to help soothe the depressive affect proper to the pubertary through an manic investment of the virtual universe ; this enables the adolescent to invent a grandiose self, and to work at reconstructing a self that is grieving for childhood.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 815-821.
The adolescent approach to the religious takes on an unusual aspect in our world-weary time when religiosity plays out everywhere, far from dogmas and churches. Adolescent ways of broaching the ideal are also varied. They go along with a strange solitude, with regard to current heterogeneity of the religious object, but can also swing towards more rigid, even fundamentalist, positions. They are most often complex, split, doomed to an autarchic creativity. This article provides illustrations of the paradox of adolescence in the contemporary universe, where rigidity and fluidity by turns attempt to deal with a religious object that has become diffuse and elusive.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 801-813.
In this issue, « Ideal and idol », the authors have tried to analyze the different variations that help to understand the dynamic of the relationship between idol, ideal, religious ideal. They cover the relations between incarnation and de-idealization, the transforming power of the ideal, and the « religious moment » of the Ego. By focusing on his historical figure the myth of an ideal, eternal youth, Michael Jackson compels us to reconsider the postmodern function of the idol in adolescence.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 791-800.