Thanks to social media, the adolescent is experimenting with his relation to others and himself. Sometimes these expressions of identity through images go too far. Even though the content shared by adolescents may shock, hypothesizing that this is all “deviance” has its limits. On the Internet, what differentiates psychical suffering from a typical adolescent posting would be the young person’s ability to inscribe him or herself afterwards between narcissistic and objectal, within a desire for “extimacy.”
At a time when the practice of the selfie is spreading like wildfire, the presentation of self-portraits created by two young artists (Francesca Woodman, Zhang Huan) will attempt to shed light on the way that these creations can contribute – by capturing the disquiet, the tension that is proper to the pubertary – to the subject’s ability to appropriate metamorphosis for use in subjectalisation. Engaging in such a creative process is never without risk, particularly the risk of breakdown or self-destruction.
The unusual case of Hebrew illustrates the itinerary of the adoption of a language that is both old and new in the 19th century. What psychical processes underlie the adoption of this new language that will become of mother tongue? Between the desire to forget and the desire to reconstruct, with impromptu reminiscences of the past, this process of adoption and subjectivation attests to a new psychical filiation as recounted by the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld.
Adolescence in the context of international adoption tests the filial bond and generates conflict in identifications. The issues at stake are, on the one hand, identical to those encountered by all adolescents and, on the other hand, more complex. The issues of abandonment and uprooting will necessitate a transplant that is both genealogical and socio-cultural.
Adoption revives the psychical stakes of the debt proper to every filiation, a debt that feels unbearable in adolescence. Adolescent protest in adoptive filial relationships has a specific characteristic, demolishing the theme of truth and putting in its place that of parental legitimity. This is not without consequences for adoption protocols.
Adoption is not predictive of psychopathological troubles in adolescence. Nevertheless, clinicial experience shows that there is a tendency towards acting out in some adopted adolescents who are “potientially vulnerable” insofar as they present narcissistic fragility.
abandonment, the necessary prelude to adoption, is here conceived of as the first step that enables filiation. The adoptive child must himself abandon his birth parents in order to adopt his new parents. This reappropriation of abandonment is made inevitable by the subjectivation of adolescence. It requires that one get past the real trauma of rejection in order to inscribe it as the structuring trauma of the loss and the gift. It affects every subject when he or she re-establishes filiation in adolescence.
Two clinical cases will be used to support the thesis that the term “biological parent” is without meaning, an impossible (real) that is unsettling for adopted children. This would be the case for any child, even one who was not adopted, for whom the notion of biological parent belongs to the register of the unsaid. The biological parent belongs to the real and has no place. He/she is an oxymoron. Only parents who assume the responsibilities of parents count for the child. They are the parents the child has adopted.
This article tells of the psychotherapeutic treatment of an adolescent who was abandoned, adopted and placed in an educational institution. It deals with the impact in adolescence of earlier experiences of abandonment and the later ability of adoptive parents and institutions to cope with these. The steps of the therapeutic process and the troubles presented by the young boy are described through transferential exchanges and adjustments which give meaning to the treatment and its evolution.
Though adoption in adolescence often happens without serious problems, there are nevertheless situations where the collusion between traumatic aspects linked to the child’s past and its reactivation in adolescence, and the vulnerability of the parents, prevent any affiliation or grafting. The author has called these situations of great individual and familial distress “survival states” in reference to the writings of J. Altounian.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 743-752.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7