Within the framework of an educative mission in specialized prevention, the authors try to shed light on the movements elicited when supporting “unwelcome” children in their journey through adolescence. Between rearrangements and repetition compulsion, these cases draw us towards the realms of the archaic, but a way out can be found with help from a “helpful other” participating in “culture work”, in order to re-establish a bond with humanity.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 247-258.
The aim of this article is to understand how, from a psychoanalytical perspective, the group plays a central role in the journey of adolescence. It will sustain the process of dis-investing childhood family relations that seem incestuous, and allow one to turn towards extra-familial object choices. The group and the often-huge investment of it in adolescence ultimately helps one to become oneself and fosters the work of subjectivation.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 233-246.
Through a clinical vignette, we will illustrate how hospitalization in a pediatric-psychiatric unit plays a part in the treatment of young people who have withdrawn from social life. Immersion in the institutional setting, participation in individual and family interviews, group activities, and networking helps remobilize objectal investments and restart the process of differentiation and subjectivation.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 219-231.
At the beginning of adulthood one is faced with a number of losses. Group therapy has relevance at this age as a support for projections to bring out and then deal with this issue. Clinical vignettes show how the place that each one takes, the way that each identifies with the others, the anxieties and conflicts that emerge in sessions, are all drivers that enable young adults to engage in a therapeutic process.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 205-217.
This article presents a case study of an adolescent girl in social withdrawal (hikikomori), including interviews with her parents. The Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI – informant version), and the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI) are used. The author emphasizes the necessity of starting treatment early, via home visits, and insists on the feeling of abandonment in both young people and their parents.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 193-203.
Using a clinical case, the author will illustrate the psychoanalytic work that can be offered to autistic subjects, by presenting therapeutic steps attesting to the strides that have been made in the development of the bodily ego. The therapeutic proposals consist of welcoming the autisticizing process and offering accommodations, such as sensorial exploration through touch, sharing of affects, and the creation of scenarios involving bodily shapes.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 179-192.
Adolescent school phobia is associated with an anxiety so great that the resulting inhibition becomes an obstacle to the patient’s access to a fantasy life. It is often coupled with the conduct of at-home claustration, which calls our attention to the archaic fantasy of the Claustrum developed by D. Meltzer. This is a form of intrusive projective identification that thwarts the oedipal conflict by opposing the differentiation process. We will develop these notions using a clinical case.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 167-177.
At the age when many are beginning to venture outside their family, other adolescents, who are reclusive and have stopped going to school, adopt such a monkish attitude that they stay “cloistered” in their room. Unbeknownst to these youths, the religious register returns in different forms in their treatment. Their renunciation of sexuality and their refusal of the outside world, which they wish to ignore completely, fulfills an ideal of purity – which makes it difficult to form bonds, even therapeutic ones.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 155-165.
The author proposes to decline the word “cloistered” in the masculine, using the treatment of males who withdraw socially in adolescence. To do this, she will explore what is specific to the construction of narcissism, boundaries, and the processing of loss in boys. She will then show how these components take part in the boy’s journey through adolescence. Lastly, she will illustrate her arguments with a clinical account, which leads to the issue of the mirror function.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 141-153.
The movements at work in the therapy of a young adolescent girl who suffered a sudden breakdown symptomatic of anorexia nervosa during the lockdown illustrate the roots of this pathology’s psychic imprisonment: the struggle against excitations, the suppression of affects, and the hampering of fantasy elaboration, like a body frozen in its psychosexual development. The activity of representation can once again take place with help from the transference dynamic, which re-actualizes perceptions and feelings.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 129-140.