Working with borderline functioning adolescents in a psychiatric institution to create masks using facial imprints helps restart a process of subjectivation. This mediating activity welcomes identifying projections onto concrete supports, the therapists and the setting. Crafts, imaginary creation and scenic play exercise the corporal and group dimensions, and help the formation and reinforcement of envelopes, echoing the primary processes.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 315-324.
Psychical dependence during adolescence is here approached from two angles: the Ego/other relation and the inside/outside polarity. In this passage from childhood to adulthood, the experience of separation from the object is the central component of the issue of dependence, particularly when it comes to addictions. We will try to show the paradoxical nature of separation process in adolescence, its primary and Oedipal core whose interweaving provides the basis for its impasses.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 303-314.
This paper presents a theory of filiation as a dynamic shape, and argues that today’s society suffers from a difficulty living within temporality. Today’s relation with time is depicted through the prism of transhumanist theories, illustrating the idea of a present which is not deployed and a future that lacks momentum, while memory itself is “perfect.” A clinical vignette is used to show the subjective impasse of “total” recall.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 289-301.
The author examines the conditions for transmission, using a clinical history to explore its prerequisites: the generation gap, an ability to face up to loss and otherness, the activation of the exogamous process, and the organization of a third function.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 277-287.
The author will try to show that transmission, identifications, subjectivation, feeling of identity, identity suffering and pathological manifestations are registers that appear to be related in complex and sometimes paradoxical ways. Should not the various forms of identity construction in adolescence be considered along with today’s “civilization and its discontents”?
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 269-276.
The author explores the links between crisis of transmission, crisis of transgenerational identifications, and crisis of identity, and the effects these have on adolescents’ identity construction. In our clinical practice, are we not confronted with the conflicts of these three domains and are we not, in the transference (and counter transference) potential supports for the three modes of object relations with the adolescents and families we encounter?
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 261-268.
Some philosophical and literary detours are needed to tackle a phrase as substantial as “transmission and identity”: a Greek paradox about identity over time; Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly; the “phantom limb” in J. Michelet; Bergson’s remark about ways of telling; Peguy’s remark about education; Kafka’s “Letter to the father” and several other past or present references
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 247-259.
The author presents the activities of the “Collège Aquitain de Psychopathologie de l’Adolescent” (CAPA) and investigates the malaise of today’s adolescents, caught between the identificatory impasses and a lack of historical perspectives. The article then discusses clinical treatments.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 237-246.